The Game

Murray walked out of the book store, his purchase tucked into his briefcase. The book with its lavish colour plates had tempted him to spend what he might consider at any other time to be an enormous, a reckless sum for such a commodity. He absently fingered the change in his pocket, then turned back up Yonge Street, back to a plaza with glass-bubbled display cases set on its piazza. He would not, after all, need an expensive lunch. He strolled absently through the plaza, noting distractedly the tanned leathers, appealing tweeds, inhaled the aromatic fragrance of the Laura Secord shop he passed, then stopped at the McDonald's.

The place was thronged with youngsters. He wondered why they were there, not at school, then recalled there was a school nearby and this was, after all, lunch hour. The place buzzed with adolescent ferment, chatter. But the analogy to a hive ended there, he thought wryly. Nothing productive was being accomplished, rather poor nutritional habits were being validated. He shrugged mentally at his own presence there, refusing to feel personally guilty.

At the counter he waited his turn, slightly out of place among all the casually dressed. He in grey suit, maroon tie, socks to match though no one but he would know that. Carrying his order to a tiny pedestalled table stuck in a corner he sat, not bothering to unwrap the hamburger, its odour suddenly unappetizing. His eyes strayed to a nearby table of girls and he watched them covertly as he pried open the Big Mac box, fingers searching blindly for the food. The girls wore uniformly long hair, faces shining with radiant health and youth. They looked strangely indolent there, presented a disconcerting appearance of sophisticated ennui.

God, he thought, Marilyn can't have been much older when he'd first met her. Younger than he'd been, but he hadn't known that at the time. She'd seemed older, as though she had been around. But then, things are rarely what they appear on the surface. He ran fingers through thinning hair, picked up the dripping hamburger, bit it, eyes still on the group of girls themselves alternately eating, chattering and sweeping eyes around the room like beacons inviting stray ships onto dangerous shoals. As though his steady stare had drawn her, one of the girls turned full around, looked straight at him and smiled hugely. The smile lingered, turned sultry, inviting.

He felt nauseated, pushed his food away, hastily rose, the chair scraping on the tile floor, grating his nerves. The book he'd bought weighed heavily in his briefcase. He'd almost forgotten to pick it up, propped on the floor against the table pedestal. He had to suppress an urge to use the briefcase as a battering ram to get through the crowds of shoppers, so dense they impeded progress through the mall, out the doors. Where had they all come from, so suddenly?

*******************************************************************

He'd awakened early that morning, anticipating the alarm. His mouth felt like a rusted sewer pipe, his tongue swollen and barbed like a cow's. Over in the other bed Marilyn slept, head a dark smudge in the half-light. She must be sleeping with her mouth open, he thought with disgust, her breath too audibly whistling in, wheezing out. Too much to drink as usual. But then he'd had enough time to become accustomed to the pattern, the predictability of it.

Those neighbourhood-friendly parties, how he detested them. "It's the least you can do", Marilyn insisted. "To come out with me. How would it look? You not there." How, indeed. He knew, she wasn't aware, that he was her entree. Oh Marilyn and Murray, what a distinguished pair, he the arts expert, she the artist.

Couldn't she see beyond the fawning: "What a wonderful relationship you two must have! The common interest. The stimulation you must derive from your discussions of the finer points of art appreciation. How utterly enviable!" Etcetera, ad nauseum. He tried not to listen, tried to ignore the remarks - directed at Marilyn anyway, since he never responded and she always did, obligingly telling her audience exactly what she imagined they wanted to hear.

Increasingly, art was a sound investment. Even so, it wasn't polite, just to purchase a painting and show it off. Too vulgar. The upwardly mobile among whom they lived didn't consider themselves philistines. One had also to discourse knowledgeably about one's acquisition. It had become de rigeur not only to host little cocktail parties to introduce one's latest investment - although it was never termed that - but also to impress with the 'originality of the vision', the 'execution', the 'scintillating colour', the ... oh yes, the artist's 'growing reputation'. And who better to invite as a foil than himself, the neighbourhood expert.

Marilyn, idiot, can't you see they're using you? Those paintings of your own that hang in your erstwhile friends' homes, they only grace that space temporarily. Your paintings earn sniggers you'll never hear about, the subject matter so ridiculously at variance with the sweet picture of domestic harmony you paint so eloquently with words. Why don't you tell her, Murray? Because, he told himself truculently, there would be a price to pay he was not yet prepared to face. And oh yes, the children.

"The career I could have had by now, the following!"
"No one stopped you."
"I'm hamstrung! You, your children. Always pulling at me, demanding my time."
"You wanted the children."
"You're the one who persuaded me I'd be a good mother!"

Endless, circuitous, frustrating arguments accomplishing nothing but further alienation. What held him to her? God knew, the slack flesh clinging to those big bones no longer attracted him. Her talent, her original flair that he thought he recognized years ago that never borne fruit. Her self-generated bitterness stagnated whatever genuine awareness she might have had.

So Murray dutifully accompanied Marilyn, stood about nodding agreeably. Expert and so amiable Murray agreed in monosyllables with all the arts sycophants into 'art appreciation', eagerly taking non-credit courses offered by Carleton University, itself eager to cash in on the tight-economy squeeze, milk the growing awareness of art-as-security. His presence, the seeming concurrence of a National Gallery curator was all that was desired. He knew that.

Later, his name would be used, outrageous comments attributed to him, regarding their exemplary taste. Garbage, schlock, without one iota of originality or mastery of execution.

He had tried to give sound advice, at first. Visit recognized art galleries, public and private. Develop your own sense of aesthetics. Help it along by reading good art books. Carefully scrutinize and try to understand art in all its forms throughout the ages. No six-week arts appreciation course could adequately prepare or encourage a fine aesthetic taste.

Unsaid of course, was his conviction that one was born with that fine awareness, and one naturally gravitated toward appreciation of the genuine. The people to whom he spoke would listen, look reasonably intelligent, then interject with "but for the moment, what do you think? Should I look for a blue-tinctured landscape to match the living-room decor?" He could only wince when told seascapes made one person ill, portraits gave another the eerie sense of being watched. Gentle, nonthreatening landscapes were the hands-down favourite and most of the people to whose soirees they were invited were not averse to commissioning an 'artist' to paint "lots of flowers, and predominately in the orange hues - to match the drapes."

All of which helped to convince him that most people were boors, functionally incapable of distinguishing the obvious good from the palpably bad, and he finally gave up giving what he considered to be sound advice. No one, he finally admitted to himself, was really interested. Tacit, apparent approval was all that was required of him and his mere presence, quietly benign, sufficed. He became known in their expanding circle of acquaintances as "The silent type, you know. But one word from him speaks volumes. He is an expert, you know".

"You won't help me any other way, damn you! You could use some influence to give me a leg up, couldn't you? Couldn't you! You won't, or perhaps don't even have the ability to recognize my talent. Fake, hypocrite!"

He'd long ago learned to listen, or appear to be listening to her. The words resounded in the cavern of his mind. That mind he deliberately blanked free of thought. They made no impression on him. Not any longer.

God only knew what her continual rages did to their children. They learned too though, to quickly absent themselves. "Mom's having another fit", he'd heard Jeff squeal once as the two of them rushed hurriedly out the door. Could he take them away from her? Would a court award him custody? Was he prepared to try? Would he, alternatively, leave them with her? Conceivably her rage would then be turned against them. Vulnerable, his children. And he their protector. Who would protect him?

He'd slipped silently into his clothes, gone downstairs for a quick cup of instant coffee. Noticed as the day lightened that it was a fogbound morning. Wondered whether to call Air Canada to confirm his flight, but didn't.

********************************************************************

On arrival in Toronto he fled the sterile mausoleum of Terminal II, took the airbus service downtown, went on immediately to keep an early appointment at the R.O.M. Concluded his business there and checked into his hotel at eleven. Took a shower, called to confirm his appointment next day at the Sigmund Samuel, another at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and twelve-thirty found him wandering up Yonge Street.

The city was in constant flux. There seemed very little resemblance to the city of his youth. He still recognized landmarks, they were there still. Some of them, seedy corner buildings, some uplifted with the growing trend to urban renewal. The University of Toronto eating up properties in its relentless growth. Each time he returned there were changes. Yonge Street was still brash and colourful; gauche. Squalid, too. He was no prude, but the blatant advertising bothered him. The blaring disco soiling the air whenever a door was opened on the strip, repugnant, faintly distressing. Despite that, and despite his fatigue he enjoyed the walk.

He continued to amble unhurriedly up Yonge, turned left at Bloor, then continued, finally stopping before the Old Gold Shoppe. A disembodied face looked back at him. With hostility, he imagined. He was reminded of his childhood when he would linger after school in front of the window of a variety store and gift shop. One of those places that dotted the city, selling magazines, cigarettes, chocolate bars, glassware, cheap statuary and jewellery. Miniatures of classic Greek sculpture like "Discobolus", "Dying Niobid", "Athena Lemnia" and the wonderful "Poseidon", enthralled him. The store had stood at the corner of Dundas and Spadina. No longer there. He'd checked. But he could recall clearly the voice of the proprietress who would always come bustling out to spout her magical cant that was supposed to drive lingerers away: "Vanna buy a vatch? Ged avay frum da vinda!"

Which reminded him to check his watch, and he realized he had less time to make his appointment than he'd thought. Back to Yonge, down into the northbound subway entrance, footsteps echoing hollowly, the station strangely deserted. He looked about nervously, recalling newspaper reports of people being pushed out onto the tracks before oncoming trains. Or people being mugged. Things like that happened invariably when there were no witnesses about to report or to intervene. Intervene? Good luck! He started, thinking he heard a sound behind him. But there was nothing. He tugged his shirt cuffs to show the required quarter-inch of white, juggled the briefcase.

Carefully he watched the street names flashing whenever the train pulled into a station. Certainly didn't want to miss his stop. Felt edgy about the few other passengers sharing the coach, studiously avoiding eye contact. They could probably tell, he thought, that he didn't belong. Finally, off at St.Clair. Then a short walk along the street, past a bridge he had never noticed before,where he crossed to the opposite side. Narrowly missed by a car, the driver swerved, swore and shook his fist. Murray shrugged, began searching numbers.

Ahead, a wrought-iron standard bore the number he was looking for. A stone fence topped with ornamental wrought-iron, curving gates, leading up a long driveway. He turned up the drive, leaves from autumn-turning trees flanking the drive floating about him. He felt himself an incongruous figure, walking up the long, undulating drive that did not permit a view of the house which he felt certain must be just ahead. In such a setting no one should be walking. He should be in an expensive imported car, driving up the driveway as though he belonged there, casually accustomed to such opulence. He glanced down, checked that his vest was buttoned all but the last button. Reached down to flick a clot of dirt off the toe of his left shoe, then regarded his soiled fingers with a slightly perplexed air.

A leisurely bend in the driveway and there stood before him a grey stone turn-of-the-century mansion. Surrounded with ornamental shrubbery, flowerbeds, and off to one side a Loblaws-sized parking lot. One black, one grey Mercedes-Benz parked forlornly in its macadamised vastness. The building and its grounds reminded him of the fabulous houses of Europe advertised in 'Country Life' magazine. Who might imagine what lay beyond those gates looking in from St.Clair, in the middle of the city?

Feeling more than a trifle awkward he looked for an entrance where he could announce his presence. Saw only a door with discreet signage reading 'Service Entrance'. A dark woman with the blackest eyes he'd ever seen, wearing a salmon-coloured uniform-type dress opened the door. Smiled civilly and asked an accented "yesss?".

"Hello! he said heartily, louder than he'd meant to. "I'm Murray Lazar ... uh, Mr. Lazar. I have an appointment with Mr. and Mrs. Boehm ...?"

The woman's eyes dilated visibly, making her appear almost moronic, Murray thought. She nodded and said "Just a meenit, plees". And left him standing there, the door politely ajar. Within, the sound of voices rapidly exchanging in a musical cadence. He turned, watched a man he hadn't noticed before working in a nearby flowerbed, digging in loamy soil, pulling up bulbs, separating them. He turned back to the open door, startled, when a voice asked, "Mr. Lazar?"

An assured-looking, middle-aged woman in a long dress extended her hand, laughing. "The maids are upset", she explained. "No one, and I mean no one, has ever come to this entrance before."

"Well ... it was the only one I could see." No one? No one, she meant, who was anyone.

"Oh, she assured him, solemnly now, as though it mattered. "There's another one! The main entrance, around to the front. Would you like to come this way? It's really the kitchen and servants' quarters. Or would you prefer to come around to the front and enter there?"

"I'm here, now. This entrance is good enough for me", he said, acknowledging to himself that in the world she inhabited it probably was good enough for him. She stood aside and he entered, following her through a large sunny kitchen lined with mahogany cupboards, copper pots glinting off the walls. Two look-alike women flustered there, in the same uniform-dresses.

"This", Mrs. Boehm announced, bringing him through a long hallway, "this is the front entrance". He stood beside her in a chandelier-hung foyer, floor a checkerboard of marble squares, an elegant staircase double-spiralling to unknown upper reaches.

"I've never been in such a huge place before", he said. "That is, a private house." She smiled graciously, drew him into a lounge off the foyer, opening, he could see, into an immense drawing room set in period furniture.

In the lounge, with its pale green wainscoting, its baroquely gilded mirrors and burgundy upholstery, she introduced him to her husband, a grey-haired man with a carefully trimmed beard, mustache, seated on a lavishly-carved rosewood settee, wearing a navy silk smoking jacket. Mr. Boehm, it was explained, was nursing a cold. "Trying to smoke it out", he said complacently, puffing his pipe.

Both men reached to shake hands. Mr. Boehm not quite rising, but politely appearing to make the effort. "Mrs. Berensen sends her regrets", Murray said, trying to recall the little speech he'd rehearsed on his walk up the driveway. "She has entrusted me to give you the necessary details. She'd genuinely wanted to be here, but other, urgent business called her away." Hints of prime-ministerial calls, and from their expressions, he could see the effort was not wasted. Money and power are natural bedfellows, sharing the profoundest regard one for the other.

Murray looked around the room. From somewhere, Bach's aria 'Air on a G String' wafted ethereally about them, in exquisite counterpoint to the setting. He'd seen such interiors before in magazines like 'Apollo', 'The Country Squire'. God, the ceilings must be all of twenty-five feet. And the walls were hung, every square foot, with paintings. Not just any paintings, but masterpieces by early Canadian masters. There were even some hung, improbably, on the ceiling.

"I've never seen a place like this before", he explained, feeling awkward, unable to pull his eyes away from the distraction of so much that compelled him.

"That's all right", Mr. Boehm said, his voice warm with generosity. "Look around, it is rather unusual. You knew, of course, that we have an outstanding collection of Canadian paintings?" Oh, he'd known, but nothing had prepared him for the reality, not even Brenda's lavish, enthusiastic descriptions. Her disappointment at not being able to make the appointment had seemed to him ridiculous, but now he could see why ... it was quite the experience.

Mrs. Boehm, at her husband's suggestion, invited him to look around the ground floor rooms - a few of them - before they addressed themselves to the "business at hand". She led him through the salon. Along one wall were inset Gothic stained-glass windows, the autumn sun throwing a kaleidoscope over the oriental rugs. The walls were unabashedly crowded with Tom Thomsons, A.Y. Jacksons, Cornelius Krieghoffs, Emily Carrs, Paul Peels, and much, much more. He goggled.

The vigorous strokes of colour in one of Thomson's most famous of paintings took him back to his youth, recalling a large copy hung just off the principal's office in his elementary school. Another copy off the front entrance in his old high school. The jewel-tones of Krieghoff's habitant scenes recalled an art calendar with many of the same paintings reproduced. The sombre West Coast totems of Emily Carr stared soberly at him in a myriad of haunted eyes. Lorne Harris's angular northern landscapes chilled him.

Mrs. Boehm walked on, almost offhandedly keeping up a running commentary, an explanation of the history, the acquisition of each painting they stopped briefly before. She explained what a coup it had been, discovering the Verner in the dingy attic of some little out-of-the-way antique shop. He murmured his appreciation before each canvas.

The walls of a smaller lounger were hung with Kureleks. Murray recognized them, the originals, from a recent national magazine article. In that room a huge picture window looked out over the parkland of the estate. Emerald greens mingled with the orange and russets of early-turning maples, the mullioned panes of the great expanse of glass transforming the colours into balls of colour brighter than their reality. The leaves; he could almost smell their acrid flavour. Or was it inside himself, the acridity, a not very ennobling bitterness.

Back in the main salon Mrs. Boehm walked him down the opposite wall, chatting unaffectedly all the while. David Milne, Jacques Tournequer, hazy Horatio Walker pastorals. She stopped before an Ozias Leduc still-life, told him how much she'd paid for it, what its current value was. "I don't imagine you really want to see any more?" she asked brightly. He really did not. He felt drained. Incapable of taking in any more.

In the lounge he seated himself again across from Mr. Boehm, said, "I guess we'd better get down to business. I'm wasting your time." They protested, said not at all, they enjoyed talking about their acquisitions, showing people around. Noting reactions. Oh, Murray thought, doubtless.

"Now, about the tapestries...", he began, but just then one of the maids came in and Mrs. Boehm spoke quickly to the woman, then turned to him. "She's Mexican. I speak Spanish quite fluently, as you can hear. I spend my winters down there. I really love the place."

Mr. Boehm chuckled, coughed, looked at her indulgently, said nothing could keep her in Toronto "once the snow starts flying". The weather, she said, was "fit for barbarians", in wintry Toronto. Or poor slobs like me, Murray thought. Try Ottawa in the winter.

A few minutes later the maid was back, skillfully passing a tray of canapes, her face blandly disinterested, dark skin pulled taut over high cheekbones, black hair glistening. Removed in caste from those seated in the room as surely as she was by her ancient lineage. Murray was urged to help himself, and hastily chose a dainty concoction from the proffered tray, not really wanting it.

"Now, the tapestries", he sat back, trying again. "I understand you want me to appraise them ...?"

"Not at all!" Mrs. Boehm objected. "I'm perfectly capable of evaluating them myself. They are a valid art form." Her voice brooked no argument. "The tapestries are original works of art", she expanded aggressively, voice rising. "I commission Canadian artists to draw cartoons. From that the Mexican artisans weave the tapestries - entirely by hand."

Sounds like a cottage craft, he thought. Of course the nomenclature 'entrepreneur' to explain her part in the process would be unacceptable, offensive, too crude for her refined tastes. "I see", he said politely. "Perhaps I was misinformed?" What the hell had Brenda told him, in her haste?

"Murray", Mr. Boehm spoke gently. "Murray, you don't mind if we call you that? You mustn't mind my wife. She becomes rather excitable when she talks about art, cannot abide the thought of someone not appreciating her expertise."

"...I've been commissioned to purchase paintings for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, to conclude important negotiations for the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Museum!" she went on in an aggrieved litany. "Naturally, I'm confident of my expertise!"

"I wouldn't presume to question your credentials, Mrs. Boehm", Murray said quietly, noting the rising hysteria of the woman's voice, comparing it quite favourably to Marilyn's. "Far be it for me to cast any doubt as to the originality of the tapestries..."

She paused, her mouth opening, half closing a few times, as though she were a fish, drowning in oxygen. Then a short silence, and she smiled at him, graciously. Mollified.

"That's better, Dear", her husband said, smiling apologetically at Murray. "Now. Why don't you take Mr. ... Murray, down to have a look at the tapestries?"

Murray set the uneaten hors d'ouevre on its scalloped-edged napkin on the marble top of a commode, took a last hasty sip of his wine, placed the goblet beside the napkin, and followed the stiff figure of the woman out into the hallway, down a wide staircase to a lower level where, in another reception area, tapestries hung the walls. A number of tapestries, he noted, lay over oriental rugs, on the floor. Those on the floor, Mrs. Boehm commented shortly, were unsatisfactory.

"They cost about three thousand apiece", she said carelessly.

The tapestries were bright, beautifully woven. He examined them carefully, fingering the fabric, noting the closeness of the weave and remarked out loud on their craftsmanship. To himself, he noted their superficial resemblance in their epic subject matter and production to French tapestries of the 15th, 16, 17th Centuries. These were no Gobelins, but nice work.

He looked briefly around the room, wanting to run his hands over ormolu-mounted commodes, desks. Exquisitely carved armoires, rococo mirrors and tall-case clocks watched him, confident of their place in this sumptuous world of wealth.

Upstairs, he assured them that ample room could be found in the second-floor gallery for a show revolving about the tapestries. He told them the packers were expert, knew exactly what they were about, and they were fully bonded and insured. Perhaps, he mused aloud, they could ask the Mexican ambassador to open the show. He would suggest it to Mrs. Berensen. The Boehms appeared appropriately gratified.

They pressed another drink on him and he protested. He should leave now, really. they insisted that he stay, talk with them. He thrust himself back on the loveseat, tried to relax, felt unbearably weary, but hadn't the capacity to assert himself, insist he had to leave. He looked at the ceiling while Mrs. Boehm talked animatedly, eagerly. He half listened, looking occasionally over at Mr. Boehm, who nodded encouragingly from time to time in his wife's direction, as though reminding her of something she'd overlooked. Mrs. Boehm talked of accompanying her husband, years ago, when he'd gone on business trips. How, during the day, she would haunt art galleries and little shops and intuitively buy paintings that later proved to be priceless, a national heritage.

He wondered idly, would they leave the collection to the public, like the McMichaels? Probably.

With what seemed like a sudden clarity of vision, he realized that he and the Boehms were players in a game. He represented the majority of players who made their tentative, ultimately abortive moves hoping to improve their tenuous positions on the board. The Boehms, on the other hand, moved effortlessly from pinnacle to pinnacle of success, taking everything in their implacable stride forward. Winners.

The thought left a rancid taste in his mouth. He wished he had the nerve to ask now for that drink, after all.

Marilyn, when he goes on business trips, does not purchase incredible works of art. No, Marilyn paints incredible works of art.

She always likes to say she's emulating life as it really is. Marilyn does not care for non-objective art, insists on painting life-like, academy style, yet with a flair all her own. There was nothing, she said, surrealistic about her replications.

"You're very fortunate" he said to a startled Mrs. Boehm. "Oh, I don't mean just all this", he expanded, sweeping his arm all-inclusively, recklessly, around the lounge. "No. I mean that you've been able to realize a drive, satisfy an ambition of your own. Things are different, more difficult for other women with perhaps similar aspirations."

"Yes ...?" she responded, voice uncertain, not quite understanding where he was leading, but polite. Of course", she said delightedly, after another few seconds. "That is true. I've simply never thought of it. What does your wife do?" she countered, and her husband leaned forward, interest apparent in his face, intent on Murray's response.

"My ... wife? Well. Of course she's been fortunate too, I'm glad to say. My wife ... is an artist. Yes. An artist in the mold of say, a fortuitous combination of Mary Pratt, and let's see, Salvador Dali. Very original." His tongue had almost betrayed him, spoke the name of Hieronymus Bosch, that progenitor of tortured art depicting every human frailty, each fearful evil the sleeping mind envisages in helpless, nightmarish activity. "We're very proud of her. that is, I am, and our children."

"Oh?" Mr. Boehm queried, placing his pipe on a cabriol-legged table before him and wrapping his jacket more securely to his chest. "The whole family is concerned with the visual arts? How interesting. Your experience must parallel ours, then. How many children have you?"

"Oh, one boy, and a girl. The girl came first", he laughed, tightly. "She's always telling me it's symbolic, my wife."

"Well, that sounds like quite the family", Mr. Boehm said, leaning back comfortably. "Any time you have the family in Toronto, bring them by. We would be glad to show your wife around. Perhaps we'll see some of her works publicly hung some day." Was there more than a hint of a patronizing tone there? Murray, do you really care?

Oh yes, surely he'd bring the family around. Marilyn could bring a canvas for Mrs. Boehm, to demonstrate her talent. Perhaps, perhaps Mrs. Boehm would like to acquire one - or a dozen.

One or a dozen they were all the same. Each and every one a grotesque depiction of an eyeless woman-thing, crawling maggots for brain, breasts mutilated, spurting black ooze. Small children pulling pieces of the woman's flesh, voraciously devouring it. "It is different", he admitted, the first one he'd seen. "Your technique has improved" he said finally, viewing one after another; a stab of diplomacy. What else could he say?

But, to the present.

It bore thinking about.

Perhaps Mrs. Boehm could launch Marilyn's career. Droll. The discovery of a raw, new talent.

Trapped

 

Gluttony, they sneer; her vast and unappeasable appetite; her submission to the incessant demands of her appetite bespeaks her failure. Her all-consuming appetite drives her to gluttony. Sentencing her to a shortened life, to a life devoid of freedoms all others take as their just due. She makes no effort, obviously, to control her appetite, permitting it to rule her life.

Instead, she allows her enormous hunger to guide her to the ultimate failure of existence. If she does struggle, it is unavailing.

It's all very well for those regarding her at a horrified, distasteful distance, with fastidious disgust for the spectacle she presents. But conspicuously regard her, they do. She presents as a freakish prank of nature. Those merely on the cusp of obesity are among the most condemnatory. They assure themselves that by singular comparison, they don't look so bad, after all, merely slightly overweight, and if they really made the effort, they could shed those extra pounds.

But they, at least, do not repel and affront social aesthetic. They do make an effort to control their appetites. They are manifestly superior to the woman who suffers their stares, their silent condemnation easy enough to read by their body language. They don't see themselves in her, nor think for one moment that she once shared their more modest girth, comforting herself with the thought that she'll make the required effort, eventually.

Has she no shame? No idea of how physically repugnant, threatening even, her presence appears to the public eye? Oh, she has, and she does quite handily observe her outcast status. She stands outside herself, as it were, seeing herself as others see her, and takes no pleasure in the exercise. It causes her no end of hapless introspection, guilt, anger, that she is so firmly judged, found wanting, scrupulously avoided.

Granted, her drug of choice is a superabundance of foodstuffs. She is not brain-addled, merely suffers from absence of control, lack of restraint; mortally afflicted thereby. She feels pain, emotional distress, societal distance, physical fatigue, psychological hopelessness. And yet aspires to make the most of her life, as it is. Taking pleasure where she may.

She has a good mind, a pretty face, delicate, if dimpled hands and feet. She is capable of exquisite thoughts, leaping toward eternity. She is resolute in matters unconnected to diet and restraint. Socially conscious, she deplores a world of inequity, struggle, deprivation, where the strong consume the weak, where disease afflicts vast populations and 'tribal' warfare displaces millions.

Her body, vast in its spread over her frail bones and disappeared musculature, is a symbol of nature's providential capacity to alter, yet preserve living matter. Initially, when she was in the expansion process that brought her to her current bloated state, she thought the perfect ovoid of her form symbolically reflected nature's life-force. And then nature's perfect rotund symmetry came full circle.

To some she presents as a vulgar caricature, an unappetizing vision of physical degradation speaking volumes of society's fascination with and dependence upon all that harms us. And she is harshly judged. A contumacious failing of the majority imposing their values, priorities and custom on an exceptional, vulnerable minority.

She does, mightily, mourn her loss of freedom. Freedom of mobility. Freedom from the angry, accusatory glares of strangers scorning and deriding her. Her deleteriously-impacted body leaves her dependent on the goodwill and residual familial regard of those closely connected to her through consanguinity.

And she does suffer from a decidedly predictable lack of personal esteem. Her physician has prescribed a regimen of drugs to balance her fragile state of self-loathing, her insecurities, her severe depression. But more than the drugs, her little coterie of companion-felines ensure her ongoing interest in life, enthusiasms beyond her frail and easily-tipped existence.

Her exoskeleton, she is aware, is suffering. Her internal organs certainly threaten some imminent collapse, incapable of continuing their miraculous mechanical operation under the sheer unadulterated weight that smothers their capabilities, wondrous as they are. Her body's largest organ expands to accommodate additions to the fat her body so efficiently stores.

I will not succumb to starvation quite obviously; rather to the burdens placed on my heart, lungs, kidneys and moving joints. There are many who have expired from life from the effects of tobacco, alcohol and recreational drug-addiction, before they have even reached my current age.

And that is so too for people struck down by dread diseases like various types of cancers in various stages invading their bodies and inexorably spreading, becoming inoperable, steadily moving them toward the inevitable. Serendipitously, I live with my grossly overweight body, past my half-century mark.

I am a devotee and an ardent user of that great modern-day social emancipator, the Internet, and social networking. Where anonymity of physical appearance enhances my social exchanges. I am judged not on the morbidity of my obesity, but on the quality of my mind, my thoughts, my opinions, and my interests.

The Iconoclast

She had always been different. Even as an emerging adult she had scorned polite society and its conventions that were of no discernible value to her. In adulthood she had distanced herself from her family, townspeople in their rural community who paid obeisance to values that she knew were a shield keeping others members of the community from passing judgement, even while they all covertly lived lives whose non-observance of social niceties stamped 'hypocrite' in blazing letters on their placid superiority.

She had always been independent, proudly able to look after herself. Not like the complacent cows she had gone to high school with, on the look-out for a male partner who would keep them in material comfort. Not that she hadn't succumbed while still young and impressionable, with an early marriage of her own. He was a plumber, a stolid young man with deep religious convictions who attempted, fruitlessly, to instill in her a respect for faith.

When she left him after a few years of stifling dependence she left their infant son in his care. She meant her life to be untrammelled by any kind of responsibility other than to herself. She knew, if she truly cared, that the boy was in good hands, that her husband's mother whom she detested, would look to his care. She went back to college, studied animal husbandry in the technical care of small animals, thinking she would open a clinic.

Not to happen, since she wasn't really a veterinarian, merely a technician. So she secured employment with the local humane society, earning a low wage, but calling her own hours, and her own terms in exchange. Animals posed no threat to her; she could control them, and if some were recalcitrant to follow an unspoken code of behaviour, she could inflict her own kind of punishment, and they hadn't the means to communicate, to betray her.

By her late 40s she was still trim and attractive. Until one approached, and her ravaged visage surprised. It was as though her chaotic psyche had imposed its own punishment in a very visual and disturbing way upon her complexion, utterly marring the otherwise neat conformation of her facial features. The skin on her face was criss-crossed with deep, unnatural-appearing fissures creating a grotesque mask that repelled people.

The inner turmoil of her mind and her responses to outward stimuli that exercised her resentment seemed, over time, to increase the depth of her disaffection with people in general, making of her an unrepentant misanthrope. She was let go from her position with the animal shelter operated by the humane society, and she left town. She had decided to live completely rurally, shutting herself off from constant contact with people.

With her savings she had just enough of a down payment to acquire a property that had long interested her. A tiny log cabin set on three acres of beautiful land on the cusp of the Canadian Shield. Wild junipers, stately maples and colourful birch, along with pines and cedars grew on the property. Protuberant granite shelves alongside grassy meadows. Close to the road sat the little cabin. Built a century and a half ago to modestly and conveniently house a schoolteacher who singly raised her own three children there.

Across from that small abode was the schoolhouse itself, much, much larger. Originally comprised of three rooms, one extremely large. Over the years a second-story bedroom and bath had been added, a kitchen and a glassed-in entrance running the length of the log house. Added to that was another extension, comprising a miniature suite of study, bathroom, and upstairs another kitchen. The people who owned this place were elderly Dutch-Canadians whose work ethic and pride of ownership was abundantly evident.

The woman who purchased the small abode across from their property was greeted and welcomed by the elderly couple. But the welcome soon wore thin, as their new neighbour began populating her property with a menagerie that soon amounted to two full-size horses, a miniature horse, a gaggle of geese, three miniature goats, Pekin ducks, and seven dogs of various descriptions, from small to large. The noise emitted at all hours by the animals did not sit well with the elderly pair.

That the animals, all of them, were casually maintained, the horses with inadequate and inappropriate corrals was a matter of concern to the neighbours, since the miniature horse had wanderlust and would often break out of its corral. The larger of the dogs constantly ran on the road, and often visited their property; they were not fond of picking up after the dogs, nor of rescuing them from the occasional dunking in the bog that lay behind their house. Remonstrations with the young woman availed them nothing, and soon a full-blown animus resulted.

As for the young woman, she detested the elderly pair. She was comfortable with her dependent animals, her little house with its combination bedroom-living room, and tiny kitchen. She had taken herself off the electrical grid and used a gasoline-driven pump for her well, and a propane heater for winter warmth. She had no indoor bathroom facilities, and used an outhouse and that suited her just fine. And she had a mortgage to maintain. Necessitating that as a person of substance, she earn a living.

So she took service jobs with a coffee shop, and then a local MacDonald's, and then a fruiterer in the village, and then a succession of other low-paid jobs in part-time work that did not interfere too much with her way of life. Which was low-key, relaxed, and out of the public eye as much as she could manage. And then she met a fellow at one of her places of employment, and he seemed interested in her, and he seemed off-beat enough to elicit her interest.

He appreciated her mordant sense of humour and she appreciated his relaxed personality. He was grossly overweight, but imbued with a strong work ethic, inherited from his farmer-father with whom he lived on a nearby farm. Although he helped his father out on the farm he also drove a refrigerated truck for a local dairy and made daily deliveries in the area. In time they decided to consolidate their relationship and he moved into the little log house with her and with her animals.

His presence irritated the elderly couple across the street even more, because the man was of Dutch heritage, and they couldn't, for the life of them, understand how anyone decent could become involved with someone like her. After a few more years of accusations and denunciations flung back and forth across the road, the elderly couple sold their beloved property and moved back to the city. Now there was no one to complain about her animals, since the people who moved in kept a menagerie of their own.

And they had a young daughter. Who really enjoyed being with the woman and helping her to feed her farmyard animals. The year the family moved in, the woman and her boyfriend conspired to scatter colourful candy Easter eggs on the property across the street, which enchanted the young girl. 

Relations began to fray between the woman and her dairy-delivering boyfriend soon after he bought the mortgage on her property, even though she had encouraged him to do just that.

They began quarrelling, arguing between themselves. She was accused of spiriting away money from her job as a cashier in a shop in the nearby town, and charges were levelled against her. Soon afterward her common-law partner discovered that several thousand dollars he had put away in a 'safe place' where he thought she would never look (the glove compartment of his truck) had disappeared. He asked, but she had no knowledge whatever of where it had disappeared to.

He moved out soon afterward. And someone -- she thought it might have been the new people who lived across the street -- contacted the Humane Society about the degraded state her animals were living in. Their enclosures were never cleaned out, they were never properly fed, and their health was visibly declining. She sold the goats and the two horses, and gave up the ducks to people living further along the road. It was rumoured that they were destined for someone's table.

Two of her dogs mysteriously disappeared; her neighbours suspected they might have starved to death, and she had buried them on the property. Her estranged common-law spouse took legal action against her, to have her vacate the property, since he was the legal owner. After their dispute went to adjudication he paid her the stipulated sum she was awarded by the court, and she finally left the property that she felt had meant so much to her. The property was an absolute shambles.

When finally she did leave, he moved back in, and speedily set about removing the old clunkers she had left to decay, having driven them one after the other into the ground, then acquiring another and then another. The piles of trash were taken away. The battered-down pens were dismantled. The grass was neatly cut. The little log cabin was cleared out of all the detritus that had accumulated over the years she lived there and would never discard anything.

The dogs went back to the various rescue groups she had originally adopted them from. And she, she went off somewhere, no one is entirely certain. It is certain, however, that she will always be able to look after herself, even if it is to the disadvantage of others upon whom she will prey, a succubus on society who imagines herself to be courageously, defiantly, different. And in her way she most certainly is.

 

So, God?

 

My best friend's family is religious. They go to church regularly, every Sunday. I've gone along with them, twice. My mother doesn't believe in religion. She doesn't think there's a God. I'm asking you directly. Where are you? What do you do, exactly? It's like what my mother does for a living, she's a professional, she does project management and she has other skills, like she can do architectural drawings, and she does stuff like interior design. I mean I know she does that stuff, but I don't know what it is. Know what I mean?

My girlfriend's thirteenth birthday was a month before mine. I've been thirteen for a full month, almost. I'm not sure she believes in God - that's you - either. We don't talk about it, really. We get along really well together. I like being with her, and I know she likes being with me, too. She used to bug to come over all the time, and that was fine with me. I wasn't all that excited about going over to her house. Besides, I'm the one that has a trampoline; she has cattle, and you can't play with cows.

You may have guessed we live in the country. It can get pretty boring in summer. But know what? I'd rather have the summer holidays than be in school. I'm pretty good at school work, and get good marks, but being bored at home is better than being bored at school. There's a lot of kids that've gone through school with me I'd just as soon not see again - at least for a while. Until school starts up again, and I go into grade eight.

I've always wondered is there a powerful mighty guy. Is there really someone high above us in the sky watching our every move? That makes me kind of nervous. I don't want anyone watching everything I do. There are some things, actually lots of things I'd like to keep private. Anyway, if you do exist, God, are you why I'm here? Are you the one who takes people we love away with you, or is that fate?

I know that people who believe in your existence go to church because they want to prove to you that they have faith in your existence. That's kind of silly, isn't it? They pray there, as a way to tell you that they trust you and believe that if they do what you say, things will turn out all right. So, if someone does something bad, are you the one who decides what to do with them, or is it the police and the criminal justice system?

Don't we control ourselves, our behaviour, our actions? All right, if you exist, and I'm not right to question that, how about Mother Nature? How do you explain that nature is the one that makes things grow, including the food we eat, and is responsible also for our existence as human beings? Should nature not contest you? Is nature answerable to you? Did you create nature too?

There's no real way of knowing, is there? If there is a way of proving that you're real, that you exist somewhere, somehow, I'd sure like to know what it is. Nature isn't fake, we can see what it - or she does, we watch the seasons change, we see things grow, we eat the food that growing things provide for us. Who are we supposed to be grateful to, you, or nature? I know that people appreciate nature and worship you.

But no one can give me the answers I'm looking for. No one wants to, they say you've just got to take some things on trust. So why should anyone trust you, God? People kill one another and fight over you. If you're real why don't you put a stop to that? Why don't you stop the fighting, the wars, the children dying in poverty, the people starving? Aren't you supposed to be responsible, too?

It's not peoples' fault they can't live the way they want to. Healthy and wealthy. Why, if you're so fair and just and kindly, do you allow some people to have money and others not? Why are really nice people dying when they're young from some horrible disease, and the nasty people who don't care about anyone but themselves able to live long and healthy lives? Not my idea of fairness or justice.

Is it yours, God? Is there some kind of master plan I'm not smart enough to think of, maybe? You look down on all these pathetic, arguing, miserable people and just let things happen. Because you know we'll figure it all out some day? You know, like tough love? Is that it, God? You love the humans you created so much and respect their intelligence so much that you're prepared to allow them to make dreadful mistakes?

On their way to eventually becoming as smart as you? Will you be there, waiting to greet those people who believe in you, and who say they do all the good things you say they're supposed to, in the afterlife? Come to think of it, what's this stuff about an afterlife? Do we really have more than one life to live? Some kids laugh that off, and say life isn't a practise session. I think they're right, and they're smarter than me too.

So, God, what have you got to say for yourself? I don't mean to be rude. Just asking. 

 

 

Just So You Know

 

My god! you look wonderful. I've really missed you. Really, I have. Sure, there are the others, and we see one another all the time, but I missed you. Never realized you'd be gone for so long. I know, you hadn't meant to be gone for such a prolonged period. The emails you sent to keep in touch weren't exactly full of information. We kind of guessed that things weren't working out just the way you hoped they might. But you sounded fairly upbeat in those brief messages.

I'm sorry your attempt at reconciliation just didn't work out. Not your fault, that's for certain. He's an idiot. Sorry, I know you don't like to hear that kind of thing, but it's true. None of us can begin to imagine how someone as bright as him can't see what he's got in you. All right, what he had, in his relationship with you. Some people are just never satisfied, never appreciate what they've got when they have it.

But you don't look devastated at all. From my vantage point, you look fantastic. Don't mean to pry, but anything else happen while you were away? No, I don't mean that. No allusion to having met anyone, although I'm sure the opportunity was there, being where you were. Sounds so glamorous. We've known one another a long time, so don't take offense. I'm just curious.

Thought so! Well, it was a good decision on your part. You'd never know, if you didn't know you the way I do. Not that there was anything wrong with the way you looked. You always looked fresh and attractive, far younger than you are. Now there's a kind of dewy look about you, know what I mean? You're a knock-out Vanda, and I'm not just saying that to try to make you feel better.

I can see you don't need that kind of emotional support. But you don't want to discuss that, I can see. I'll bring you up to date on the gang, instead. Sure, I know you've heard from everyone, but they won't tell you the things you might really want to know. God, I feel like old times have returned. You're really the only one I could feel comfortable discussing things with.

You heard about Ellen? She told you herself? Did she also tell you why he left? Oh, she mentioned he succumbed to his wandering eye, did she? Nothing about her own hot affair with her personal trainer, right? I'm serious. None of us thought she would go ahead with an affair, we thought it just wasn't her style. Hey, you never know!

She's definitely not happy about the separation. Not the least because her daughter won't speak to her, and her son has gone to live with his father. The kids were devastated. They were the perfect family, right? Didn't we always say they were the best parents, the most devoted pair among us? Who might have predicted they'd represent the second marriage disintegration.

Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to remind you like that. Anyway, it's not the same with her, as it was with you and Harry, just not the same at all. And there's always the chance, I think, from what you wrote, that you might still get together, right? Wrong? Sorry. I won't pry. No, I'm not trying to pry, we just kind of fell into this. I was talking about Ellen. Okay, I'll be a little more sensitive. Sorry.

Anyway, are you coming along to Linda's garden party? She's invited some new people. Girls only, that's why she's holding it on Friday afternoon. I told her it would be more manageable that way, given the recent collapse of ... sorry. Guess what? I finally came out with it, told her that she shouldn't invite Monica. None of us enjoy having her around. Linda was adamant that Monica was an old friend, she wouldn't hear of excluding her.

Then I gave her the option of Monica or me. I meant it, and she knew I meant it. I just referred her to her options. Monica is too much of an embarrassment. We've all kept ourselves in pretty good shape, and she's a total, slovenly mess. Every time I look at her I feel like throwing up. I mean, most of us have discussed it; we're ready to disinvest ourselves of her presence.

She's grotesque, disgusting, can't even walk a few feet. The only part of her I recognize is her face, those features sunk in that mass of flesh. Her head looks like a grape on top of an exercise ball, her body is so bloated. She's beyond social acceptance. It's not like she couldn't do something for herself. She's a glutton. It was fun when we were younger and we all joked about it, and indulged ourselves, sometimes.

But enough's enough. We want to enjoy ourselves, not have to confront her misery. And it's a self-imposed misery. She could have stopped gorging herself, she could have gone out like the rest of us did, tennis, golf, running, gym workouts. She was always too damn lazy, and that's the result, morbid obesity. We want to enjoy ourselves when we get together, not confront her disgusting presence.

I still can't understand why Myron values her. He does, you know. He must, he's always hovering around here, when he's home. Not that he's home all that much, granted. Did you know his new job keeps him on the road? No kidding, he's gone all over the place. But when he's around, it's yes Monica this and yes Monica that. And can he fetch her a cup of tea?

She's disgusting, he's disgusting.

Vanda ... wait! Where're you going? What's the matter with you, anyway!

Her Menagerie

 
She walked over to the sink, kettle in hand, slid on a bit of spilled water from one of the dogs' drinking bowls, and caught herself just in time. Last time that happened she fell and split her lip. Could have been worse, much worse. The bruise on her elbow and her hip where she hit the corner of a cupboard took a long time to heal. It had turned amazing colours; purple and black and light red. Her lip still held a scar. She had to be more diligent about taking care.

There was always so much to do, so much that held her attention. She tended to forget things, tried to steel her mind to recall because there was always a nagging doubt back there, that she had forgotten something important. Sometimes she was able to recall whatever it was, and it turned out it wasn't important after all, and wouldn't have mattered if she had neglected to attend to it.

It was like that with her when the children were small, always yowling for attention, driving her to distraction, never knowing where to turn first. She tried to be a good mother. She was careful, before, to read all she could about what she would need to know for the care of babies and infants and young children. Trouble was, when you're in the midst of diapering, feeding, bathing, nursing everything was chaos.

Having two babies following so closely one on the other was a disaster for her. Her husband was always criticizing, always telling her how she should be doing things differently than she did. Impatient with her, insistent, blaming. She knew he wanted more than two children. She did not. Emphatically, did she not want any more than the two she was already incapable of adequately caring for.

When she was really young she was like all the other young girls. No thought to a future other than as a young married woman, capably caring for children, doing the housework, greeting her husband at the door with a breezy welcoming kiss, the children all neat and clean, the house tidy, and dinner prepared. Not her fault that wasn't the way it turned out. She had tried.

Not even her older sister who actually was capable of doing all those things could claim she hadn't tried. She had tried to model herself after Heidi, did everything she saw Heidi do, but it just didn't work for her. Later, when she simply gave up, decided to leave Henry and his three brawling brats, Heidi commiserated with her. Heidi never gave up on her. When no one else would speak to her, have anything to do with her, Heidi persisted.

She's long dead. Afterward, when her own children would never acknowledge her as their mother, Heidi's children would call, ask after her health, call her auntie. Even they no longer call, although one of Heidi's grandchildren did, for a long time, before she too faded away. Now no one calls. But she has her animals, her dogs, her cats and her rabbits. And they love her. They are wholly dependent on her. She never disappoints them.

They're fed only the best, all of them, and it's costly. Just as well her own living needs are modest, her little house long paid for, her ability to stretch her finances sound. She might skimp on her own food, but never theirs. They were all she had. Without them there would be no reason to bother about anything. As it was, she scarcely bothered to put food on the table for herself.

Perhaps it was guilt that motivated her. No, she felt no guilt about leaving Henry, and their three children. He was a better father than she was a mother to them. It took him little time before he re-married, had more children. And his new wife was a good manager, a lover of children, even those that were not her own. It was the little dog. They'd had a lovely little miniature pinscher.

It had been so used to being coddled by her that when the children came it silently, agonizingly fumed with jealousy. She did her best, tried to give it attention, took it with for walks when she aired the children, but nothing seemed to work there, too. The rebellious little thing began soiling its own bed, the household carpeting, leaving sordid little messes for her to clean up, hiding them from Henry who had no use for the dog.

There was a time when she bordered on the cusp of utter despair; the new-born third and the previous two, still infants, all in diapers. And the little dog's excrement to be cleaned up as well. She spanked the oldest child, furious that he resisted toilet training, and she began to physically abuse the little dog. Threw it once down the stairs. The memory of that, though it happened a lifetime ago, haunts her yet.

In her dreams, dreams not of her past life with a young family, but of the time before when she nurtured and loved the little dog, she tried to erase the reality of her later abuse of the creature. But she could not, and in an effort to reclaim some vestige of self-esteem she began to adopt abused animals. She now had nine dogs, three cats and five rabbits. Their care exhausted her.

She lived rurally, but with no fencing, was fearful of allowing the animals to be outdoors without her. Her days were punctuated with regular excursions with the dogs, to give them adequate exercise. Otherwise they tore the house apart in their frustration. On rainy days, on snowbound, icy days, she could not cope and locked them away in their wire crates, moaning in agony at the cruelty she was imposing on them.

Some of them had been badly abused, and it had taken her long patient months of careful observation and remedial work to calm them and finally impress them with the comfort that they were safe with her. Oddly enough the older rescue dogs were calmer, more biddable. It was the really young ones, their suffering had made them wildly ungovernable. Her greatest fear was that they would attack one another.

They did play-fight together, and as long as matters did not get out of hand, she allowed that. But occasionally the activity ratcheted up and before she could separate a group of snarling dogs, one or several would be bitten or badly scratched. She had herself often suffered the same, and had taken to having thick padded gloves around, in easy reach. The cats were no problem, nor the rabbits.

When all was calm, she was able to let the rabbits out, two by two, to hop about and explore the interior of the house, the dogs merely sniffing, posing no threat to them or to the cats. It would be different, she knew, if they were outside. The dogs would pursue the cats and the rabbits, and the larger ones, the mixed German-shepherd-malamutes would tear the rabbits apart, in all likelihood. The cats were never allowed out, other than on a lead, or in a large crate.

The constant cage-cleaning for the rabbits, the continual picking-up after the dogs, left her little time for anything else. She had once loved to garden, and the remnants of her once-loved and well-tended garden still remained, with a skeleton crew of persistent perennials overrun with weeds. She grew herbs, though, and clover, for her rabbits. She was hardly aware of the overpowering stench left in her house with the presence of her menagerie.

Postal delivery was at a rural mailbox located on the other side of the road. No one would now deliver straight to the house. The presence of a stranger at the door would result in an unbelievable tumult of hysteria as all the dogs, large and small, would bark, yelp, snarl and leap toward the presumed intruder. The cacophony of sound an assault that no one wanted to have repeated.

She was quite elderly, hair wispy grey, body a thin column of sinew and muscle. Her mental faculties ... almost sound, given her growing propensity to ... forget the most current and common things, frustrating her beyond belief. She could herself fell trees on her property that had succumbed to weather. She was independent, and proud of it.

She knew, because there were instances reported in the media, that there were others like her, people devoted to the welfare of animals who amassed a houseful of dogs, cats and other small creatures whom careless owners had abused or neglected or disowned, and who, in their zeal to save and protect, over-reached themselves. Finding, with their own ageing and ill-health that they were unable to care for their too-numerous charges.

That would never happen with her, she vowed. She was different. She might not have been a capable mother, but she was more than capable of caring for her dependent-animals. Her companions. Who cared for her when no one else did. Who depended on her. And upon whom she depended.

And she forgot, entirely, that the kettle was still on the stove, and it had already dried out and the stove was still lit. Forgot, after feeding her brood, that she had not herself eaten. Couldn't, in any event, she was simply too tired, worn out, needing sleep.

And sleep she did.

In Passing Judgement

 

I saw her for the first time at my mother's house where she had been invited with the rest of her family, to meet mine. It had been an occasion for celebration, according to my mother. My sister had finally met her future husband. The date was set for the wedding and there we were, both sides as it were, taking each other's measure.

On meeting them and talking with them I began to feel just a trifle superior. We all have our prejudices and dull people always struck me that way; social inferiors. This family was undistinguished; physically attractive, with a bovine touch. The men particularly offended me. They were so obviously unlettered. All the outward manifestations of material well-being there, but there existed an unforgivable paucity of intellect. And wit.

I'm of the opinion that if ever extraterrestrials did visit this Planet and took away a specimen - say someone of their ilk - they would come away convinced, as Frederick II of Prussia was when he placed a man in a sealed jar, waited for him to expire, then poked about inside the death chamber looking for that elusive theorem, the soul - that there is no such excuse for the human being.

"He's nice", Dorothy told me when she first began to go out with her future husband. "He's good looking and he's ... nice." Lamely, she said that. What word after all, is more tepidly insipid than that one; 'nice'. The word says it all. But not quite all, because she continued, preparing me.

"He has this funny way of talking, like a holdover from another time. You'd call it crude, probably."

"Is he halfway intelligent? Can you have a reasonable conversation?" I pressed. My mother was anxious for Dorothy to get married, not to have her end up like me. But I liked to think that when my younger sister did marry she would at least choose someone who might challenge her intellectually. Dorothy is a smart girl.

"Well ... sure. I guess. I mean, it's hard to tell. He doesn't say too much. Anyway, he drives a new car, has a good job." It was at that juncture that I began to wonder why I'd always thought my sister was fairly intelligent. Because she had a good academic record, that's why. Which, of course, means little, come to think of it.

My mother's concerns of potential spinsterhood running in the family had obviously begun to rub off. Had in fact, rubbed the sharp edges off my sister's fine sense of discrimination. Dorothy, despite professing not to care, it became evident, had been experiencing her own panic of uncertainty about her future.

This is all background, you understand; the story isn't about my sister and her husband. It's her husband's sister-in-law, his brother's wife, who was at the bottom of all this 'family mess'.

But they were cut from the same cloth. Actually, that's a fairly accurate metaphor since the family was in the business of manufacturing wearing apparel. They were cultural philistines, but they knew their fashion. They owned several boutiques and employed skilled people to handcraft their original designs.

I'd never shopped in one of their places myself. Couldn't afford to. You know the type of establishment - in a high-rent district. Yorkville, the Colonnade. Decorator-appointed rooms with no racks. You asked a member of the sales personnel to display garments for you and if you wished, live mannequins were available to model items of your choice.

When you saw them at a soiree they'd be dressed to the hilt. Talk of your sow's ears. The men were louts who drank too much and spoke too loudly. The women were only slightly venal by comparison, and probably were easily led, dominated by the men. Not being aware of anything that might be different than what their life experience had led them to.

But back to that initial setting. I can only speak for myself. I can imagine what they thought of 'our' side. My parents' house is shabby. Books have always been of more importance than material objects. So probably we impressed them as minutely as they did me. But Miriam, the woman in question here, appeared more promising than the rest of them. Perhaps it was only because her connection was not one of consanguinity. She seemed brighter than the others, chattering unaffectedly, like a friendly parrot.

Then, at Dorothy's wedding, her new husband looked pale and serious. No wise-cracking that day and evening. His brother however, made up for that lapse, obnoxious enough for two. Have you ever seen that painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder, the one called 'Peasant Wedding'? It's full of dissipated burghers, gross-looking and crude. The festive music of Leopold Mozart, when it's played as it was meant to be, is like that, too. Loud, brashly vulgar, common.

"Have 'nother drink!" Dorothy's brand-new brother-in-law kept urging me, following me like a trained seal all evening. Heaven knew why.

"Look't thim", he'd said, leering at my poor sister who always hated social gatherings and was now the focus of this one. "Just look't thim - they can't wait to get going."

Actually, I knew more than he did, the idiotic sot. I knew they'd already 'got going', that my sister was stupidly pregnant. But that's neither here nor there.

More to the point was Frank's - that was his name - wife Miriam following him following me around. "Frank, I wanna have a dance", she kept insisting, and he would shrug her off, obviously annoyed. "Come on, Ruthie, let's dance", he said to me every time she approached him, and she would regard me reproachfully. Well, I didn't want him. One dance with him had been enough, and I kept begging off, trying to lose myself in the crowd.

I finally, almost belatedly, made the discovery that if I threw enough little verbal puzzlements at him, expecting him to respond intelligently - that is looking as though I did - with questions like: "Wouldn't you agree that Pavlov's behaviour experimentation closely parallelled, pre-dating though it did, B.F. Skinner's boxes?" Or: "Ardrey and Lorenz aren't so far off the mark, are they?" His disingenuous and vacant smile changed gradually to one of offended incredulity, then doltish annoyance. Finally, he trudged off, leaving me free of his overtures.

But all that is history. Stale. My sister had been married to her dullard for five years and in that time we had become somewhat alienated. Me never wanting to visit with them, feeling uncomfortable in their company. They glad I didn't, knowing how I felt. Jack likely reciprocating. Then Dorothy telephoned one day to tell me: "Miriam's staying with us."

"Oh?" The extent of my interest.

"Yes. Her husband won't let her come back."

"Back?"

"Didn't I tell you? She went away. To Mexico, for a trip. Didn't even tell him. Just left him and her two kids and off she went."

"So?"

"So he won't let her come back. So, she's staying with us until he changes his mind."

A week later she called again. "She's still here. He refuses to see her, still."

"If I were her, I'd celebrate."

"Ver-ry funny! She wants to be with her children."

"Why'd she leave, then?"

"He's not easy to live with."

"I'd have guessed as much." Unsaid, she seemed no bargain either.

"But neither was she. Moody and possessive", my sister remarked. "Anyway, he had her committed once and he's threatened to do it again. She's terrified of electric-shock therapy."

"Nice family you married into."

"Ruth, my husband's family has nothing to do with the kind of life I lead."

Oh yes, of course. "So what's going to happen?" I asked. Not really caring, but making the effort. Regretting what I had said, attempting to divert her.

"We're ... Jack ... is talking to Frank. He'll have him see reason."

Not likely. Where there is no sign of intelligence there is no reason. But there is a passionate devotion to self. If the woman had had the good sense to take off, to leave the stupid bugger, she should have been smart enough to make a complete break. But then, there was that tangibly emotional element that I couldn't relate to personally, her children. I did, after all, feel sorry for her.

When Dorothy next called, she said she was getting tired of having her sister-in-law around. I reminded Dorothy that Miriam was, after all, her sister-in-law, and a troubled person, and as such she was her sister's keeper. Rubbing it in, maybe.

"Anyway, what happened? You sounded so optimistic last week. Said Frank had agreed to take her back. Though God knows why she'd want to go."

"Her children, remember?"

"I remember. What happened?"

"He changed his mind. Said no. She'd been ready to go back, packed and everything and then he called, said don't bother bringing her over."

"Just like that, eh? Does he expect her to stay with you until he changes his mind, eventually?"

"I don't know", she admitted dispiritedly. But then, that's how she always sounds. Since she married Jack, anyway. "All I know is that she walks around here like a living corpse. Getting quieter all the time. At first she played with the kids. Now she doesn't do anything but stay downstairs in the recreation room, just sitting there. Brooding, I guess. Or she goes out for long walks, alone. It's creepy."

"How about her family?"

"She's only got us. And the rest of the family. Her parents aren't alive."

"Well, one of Frank's sisters. How about one of them taking over, making a tiny personal sacrifice, if for nothing else but a sense of humane obligation?"

"You know what they're like. They say because she left their brother and the kids they won't have anything to do with her. They pass harsh judgement on her. She knows that, and doesn't expect anything from them."

"If she's as distracted as you say, maybe she needs some professional help."

"Don't I know it! But I've tried to talk her into seeing a doctor, a psychiatrist ... going to a social help agency ... she won't listen. She's fearful they'll put her away again."

Dorothy had my sympathy too. People have their troubles. People, but not me. The only time I've had any trouble was when people imposed upon me. So I've always felt the less I became involved with anyone the better. I almost told her, "that's what you get for being such a good soul", but I didn't. I didn't because I thought she was right, looking after the woman. I mean, what is right for me is not necessarily right for someone else. Is it?

Anyway, the next week she sounded more hopeful again. Said they were expecting Frank over on Wednesday. He had agreed over the telephone to bring their children over. To let them see their mother. The chance of a reconciliation, she said, looked brighter.

Soon these back-and-forth calls began to resemble something uncannily out of a grimly warped rendition of the "Keystone Kops"; on again, off again. And the strain was beginning to show.

"He didn't come. He just didn't show up. Here we were, all of us, waiting, and he didn't bring them over! When we called he said he'd changed his mind, again!"

"Didn't think he had one."

"Can't you be serious? It's a damn serious thing! Miriam is more depressed than ever. She's become almost paranoid. He said he promised to see her if she went to a psychiatrist first. She's torn with indecision. Doesn't trust him. Thinks it's a ploy to have her committed."

"Well?"

"Well, she won't! I told you before, I've tried and tried. She won't go! And really, I don't know what we're going to do. She's become a millstone. And it costs money to feed another person, too."

"Since when were you short of money for food?" The cheap bastard, Jack. That was him speaking through her. She never used to be like that.

Dorothy was miffed, said she wouldn't bother calling again since I was so unhelpful, so obviously hostile. I believe in telling the truth, so I said that suited me quite well.

Anyway, when she called again her voice was firm; decided. "She's got to go", she stated baldly.

"About time", I said. "Where to?"

"Anywhere, just out of here." A significant pause. "She's pregnant."

"Oh. Women do get pregnant, you know. You know."

"Goddammit! you're subtle. Not by him, not by Frank. It must have happened on her trip."

"I see. Well now, she does need help, doesn't she? He still wants her committed?"

"No. Now he says he doesn't give a damn what happens to her"

"So, what'll it be? Just throw her out? That'll be good for her in the state she's in, won't it? Positive action, that's what it is. If that doesn't make her put her life into perspective, nothing will, eh?"

"Look, don't come off so pious on me! Would you do differently?"

I dislike hypothetical questions. "She's not my family, remember?"

The upshot was that they rented a room somewhere downtown for her. She was being assisted by a social worker, and got a job. She tried, apparently, to convince her social worker that she should have her children with her. The worker told her that it was obvious she couldn't provide well for the children. So what the poor woman did, was go out and buy all kinds of expensive furniture on time payments. She put them in a nice apartment, and brought the worker back to have a second look. It was so pathetic, so transparent.

I didn't go to the funeral home or the service. Dorothy told me that Miriam looked 'serene'. "Her hands were tucked in under the bottom half of the casket, so nothing looked ... wrong", Dorothy said. "She looked at peace."

I had, though, gone out to the cemetery and stood apart from everyone, watching. I heard the pastor quote from St.Paul: "You have no excuse ... when you judge another; for in passing judgement upon him, you condemn yourself." Its meaning not lost on me.

It was a cold autumn day and there was a wind, enough to keep the dry leaves on the maples shushing in the way they do, like a monomial elegy. It had earlier rained, so the ground was muck. Where the earth had been dug into, it looked reddish and clay-ey,and there was a grass-like carpet over the open plot, waiting for the casket.

They were all there, looking grim, but elegant. Everyone appropriately attired in mourning black. The garments exquisitely cut in their own shops, draped just so. The men's shoes brought to a dull lustre, clots of mud clinging to the edges of the soles. Ah yes, clots of dirt clinging to the edges of their souls.

I saw, at one point, Frank flick some fallen seed-pods off the shoulder of his jacket. Later, he surreptitiously flicked a tissue over the back of his shoes. Their old mother, wearing her mink early this year, snuffled becomingly into a lace handkerchiefs. Appearance is crucial.

There were so many people. Obviously, a large number of business contacts and clients had attended. Out of respect for the deceased. Someone they'd never met. There had been a black-bordered notice in the paper.

When Dorothy called me the following week, she told me how upset the family had been. Oh, not what you're thinking. They were annoyed, she said, at my lack of concern for their collective sensibilities. Why me? Well, I had worn a plum-coloured pantsuit to the cemetery, number one.

And number two, I had managed to commiserate with Frank, in a loud aside, congratulating him for having solved the nuisance of 'that problem', so neatly.

The hell with what you're thinking. I haven't condemned myself. Look, that's life. Isn't it?

 

Geneva's Change In Perspectives

"Is there anything wrong ... Miss Haines?" The lawyer leaned enquiringly toward her, seeing her pause, pen hovering above the legal document. Having second thoughts.

Startled out of those thoughts, Geneva glanced quickly at him, his saturnine countenance close to her suddenly making her nervous. She'd never liked him, but he was her father's lawyer, a highly respected member of the profession, and extremely competent. He looked concerned at her hesitation but she knew his concern was likely due to the fact that he was busy, wanted to get on with things, see other clients. Rather than any regard for her own uncertainty. Not certain whether she should really commit herself to this change in her life.

"No, not at all, Mr. Kampfer", she said, bringing the pen down decisively, signing the two places he'd X'd. And it was done. She was the new owner of Heritage Antiqua and the rush of sub-leasing her apartment, moving her possessions, becoming accustomed to a new way of life, would begin.

******************************************************************************
The movers knew their business and it didn't take too long to have her posssessions transported, the projected change become, if not irrevocable, then at least a present reality. The moving bill startled her, far more than the estimate. But it was explained to her by the large bluff man who'd handled her things as though they weighed nothing: "After all, Miss. You told us thirty miles out of Toronto, but you never told us the roads weren't first grade, and moving your things in here did present some problems." She had to agree. It hadn't been easy hauling her heavy pieces, things she wouldn't part with for anything - family heirlooms that they were - up the narrow winding staircase that led to the rooms constituting her new living quarters.

Looking about her now, at the huge downstairs room filled with relics of another age, she sighed. A combination of fatigue, relief, and wonder at the future. Sunlight streamed through the long narrow windows, washing the pine pieces below a lighter colour, warming the copper bedpans, illuminating the paintings lining the wall. This was the shop; the tiny kitchen behind, and the upstairs represented her living quarters. An old converted warehouse close to a sleepy little town north-east of Toronto. The former owners had shown her their books. They were well known as the purveyors of quality antiques and their reputation brought customers out here. They were retiring, the price had been affordable thanks to her father's generosity in augmenting her savings with an interest-free loan, and out here she'd have the quiet surroundings she craved. In a congenial atmosphere, yet still be working at something she enjoyed.

Then why the heaviness. Why still so uncertain? Stupid! she told herself. He's gone and that's that. And you did it yourself; sent him away. Maybe it was her fault more than his, she thought, her mind wandering over old hurts against her will. But no, those old-fashioned virtues of constancy and commitment are ones I cherish and I won't give them up for anyone.

She thought back to the final scene in the drama of their breakup. "You can't be serious, Geneva!" Glen had appealed at first, his handsome face furrowed with concern and doubt, making her think he really did care, almost forcing her to retract her statement of absolute dismissal.

"I am. I am serious. I know it sounds melodramatic to you and not at all with-it. But Glen, it's a choice of me, or all the others you want to flit with. I absolutely refuse to be one of a casual harem. If you really care for me as you say you do, the choice shouldn't be that difficult."

He'd paced her living room, his mood becoming ugly, his voice husky with anger. "Don't hand me an ultimatum, Geneva. I won't be treated like a little boy who can't keep his fingers out of the cookie jar."

"Well then", she said softly. "What are you then? A responsible adult? You've asked me to marry you and I agreed, thought we had something of solid value between us. Now I feel ... soiled. You say you want me, but you won't be tied down. I can't buy that."

"Look, I wasn't out to hurt you, understand? So I may have kept certain things from you. But when I said we'd make a good team, when I asked you to marry me, I meant it. What that has to do with my being 'faithful' I hardly know. What an archaic concept that is."

"I'm not prepared to embark on an open-ended marriage, Glen. And that's it."

"I hope you've thought about this carefully", he said, stopping his caged lion act long enough to confront her, face tight. "If I leave now it's for good. I don't intend to come crawling back chastened, like some contrite sheep. Either you accept what's on offer or we're finished."

With a sinking feeling that she might well be seeing her future happiness drift away with his furious exit, she looked down at him in the street below, getting into his car, not even bothering to look up at her window as she thought, wistfully, he might. Her gamble on challenging him hadn't quite turned out the way she imagined it might.

************************************************************************
"It's not as though I'm running away from anything", she told her best friend. "I'm tired of the same old grind. I'm ready for some meaningful change in my life. Re-align my priorities."

"Sure", Marilyn nodded. "I can see that. Besides, I know how you felt about him, the idiotic sot. It must be painful for you to be in those same places that hold memories. See our crowd with everyone wanting to know what happened. And Evelyn's big mouth doesn't help matters any."

"No, that's not it at all", she protested. "You make it sound as though I am running away. I'm not! I just wanted to make a break, start a different turn in the road. I'm sick of the .... Oh, maybe you're right", she finally admitted. They hugged and Geneva had another good cry. She had convinced herself she was done weeping and wailing.

*************************************************************************
She was startled by a loud reverberation and felt momentarily fearful until she realized it was the wrought-iron knocker in the shape of a leering gargoyle on the massive front door. Ran down the stairs to see the handy-man she'd met when she had been negotiating with the former owners. "Hello Miss", he shuffled awkwardly, impatient to be gone and turning the ring of keys she'd earlier given him. "I'm about to go out back in the shed, start on some re-finishing. That O.K.?"

He wasn't gone a minute when there was another knock, more tentative this time. She opened to see a bespectacled little woman, holding out a potted plant, a welcoming smile on her lips. "I'm Leonora Webster", handing the plant to Geneva. "Your nearest neighbour. thought I'd introduce myself. Brought you a plant. I don't bake."

And I detest plants, Geneva thought, hastily depositing the plant, a scurrilous looking thing, on a ladder-back chair. Invited the woman inside, who while chattering all the while, glanced curiously about, vetting everything, noting changes. Better get used to it, Geneva told herself. You're the latest curiosity in this little place and they're probably all like her; busybodies; nice little old busybodies. You've jumped one social hurdle to land in another one.

She eventually fielded innumerable questions from other neighbours who "just felt like dropping by", and accepted thoughtful little gifts to "make you feel at home here, my dear". She became more thoroughly acquainted with her inventory. Made a few changes with Tom's help, and she was ready for her opening.

The first thing she sold on Saturday morning was a two-tiered double-glazed buffet, and after that a pine six-board chest. By the time the afternoon was half over, she felt euphoric with success. The knocker clanged incessantly. People came trooping through the shop, some with children who banged about raucously, often with an ice cream cone in hand, bought at the village store. She refused to put the sign up that she'd earlier removed - No Children Please.

By the time six-o'clock rolled around she was anxious to see the last customer out the door, wanted to bolt it and fall into bed. But just as she was sliding the bolt there was another clang and she opened the door about to say "sorry". There, with an engaging smile on his boyish face was a tall sandy-haired man, extending his hand. Geneva opened the door fully and began to make apologies. Despite herself took his hand, wondering what she was doing. "I'm Bradford Cummings", he explained, following her into the vestibule. "I know you're probably closing up now, but I thought I'd drop over ...."

"And introduce yourself", Geneva finished for him, smiling wanly, ready to collapse. "Did you say Cummings?" she asked, a light dawning.

"Yes", he affirmed. "You bought this place from my parents. And I happen to be a neighbour; live just over the hill and down the road. I'm a free-lance writer. Thought I'd just come on over and see how you're making out."

"Oh", she groaned. "Fine, just fine. I'm absolutely beat! Thank heavens this place is only open for business on the week-ends. I'll need all week to recuperate."

"Hey, we can't have you collapsing", he laughed. Guiding her solicitously into the tiny kitchenette, so obviously at home. "Do you like cheese in your omelettes?" he asked, depositing her on a chair. Peering into the refrigerator and pulling out ingredients.

"Oh no", she protested. "Don't bother, please." As though she were a guest in his house.

She sat watching him moving around her kitchen, cracking eggs into a bowl, slicing mushrooms, dipping her teaball into the Darjeeling, talking quietly to her all the while as though they were old friends. His parents, he told her, had removed to British Columbia, but he felt like staying on where he was. Enjoying the salubrious surroundings, where his literary reputation was established ... and did she want lemon, or milk?

He finally left at ten. Geneva had lost track of time. Found herself engrossed in conversation, casual and interesting. Someone with whom she felt a strangely connecting repose. As though they'd known each other always. She watched his expressive hands, moving to accentuate something he'd said. Inclining his head toward her, grey eyes gently probing, waiting for her reply as though it mattered. He left finally, not because she wanted him to, but because, as he said, she had a busy day ahead tomorrow. Should get some sleep.

"No worry about that", she laughed. "I don't know when I've felt so bushed. If you hadn't come by I wouldn't have bothered getting anything to eat, I'd have just sat here. Dragged myself off to sleep eventually." He smiled.

"I thought I knew something about antiques; well I do. But not to the extent that I could easily answer all those questions thrown at me today. I felt so inadequate", she said.

"I have quite a few books around the house ... and magazines, as well as auction house catalogues. I'll bring them over", he said quietly. "You'll have plenty of time to learn."

"And tomorrow", she sighed, "I suppose it'll be somewhat like today? From your experience, Brad, is Sunday as bad ... I mean as busy, as Saturdays? Isn't that silly of me!"

"Not at all", he said reassuringly. Taking his leave at the door. "Any new venture is bound to cause doubts and concerns. And yes, Sunday is generally a peak day. More people out for Sunday drives ... you know. There's a lot of impulse-buying then."

"Oh", she said, hanging on to the door. "The first time I came up here ... to look around, you know ... there was a busload of people. They'd come, as I understood it, as a senior citizens' outing. It was bedlam. Does that happen often?"

"Often enough", he grinned. The heartless monster, she thought. "By the way", he said, turning at the end of the pathway, just as she was shifting the door closed "I'll be by around nine-thirty. I've got the day to kill anyway. Give you a hand."

As good as his word, and better. No busloads of people browsing through the shop, but there were, as he'd said, countless families out for a drive who stopped by. Sauntered in and asked questions, double-checked prices and occasionally committed themselves. Some knowledgeable enough so they felt comfortable in haggling for a substantial price reduction. Before she knew it, the day was over and she was drained of energy again. But at least he'd been there to share the work. Was there to share the silence of the shop after the last customer left.

This time she felt less enervated, and prepared dinner. And was sorry to see him go immediately after. She felt bereft of some gift. Realized she had been anticipating another quiet evening of conversation like the one before. But he left. And then everything was still and whenever things were like that, she began to think about Glen.

**********************************************************************************
The girls came over on Wednesday evening and they had a good look around. They'd bought her a gift; the complete Bach Brandenburg concertos and a few best-selling novels. To match, they said, her rarefied atmosphere there. "We figured you'd need some company out here. Thought the books and music might help", Evelyn observed. "Since you felt anyway that you wanted to get away from it all. All of us."

"No", Geneva corrected. "Not getting away. Just a change in lifestyle."

"And you look really fine", Marilyn stepped in hastily. Anxious to avert a scene. Evelyn and Marilyn sisters, part of Geneva's long-time circle of friends. But they were worlds apart in temperament and sensibilities. One a sympathetic friend, the other an acerbic critic and sometimes-friend. There was a nucleus of four within a much larger circle and they all; Helen, Evelyn, Marilyn and Geneva, depended on each other. Or they had. Geneva felt it was time for her to be dependent on no one.

The girls looked around. Interested in everything. Intrigued with the old building converted with such style. They loved her living arrangements upstairs. Thought the rough brick-and-pine interior walls showed her things superbly. "Actually", Evelyn said, the one exception: "I think your Aubusson rug looks out-of-place on those maple boards. Couldn't you have picked up a braided rug somewhere?" Marilyn glared at her sister.

But they had their game of Mah Jongg ,chatted about mutual friends. Affairs that were supposed to be covert. Helen and Marilyn talked about their babies. By the time Geneva served coffee and petit fours she was ready for her friends to leave. Somehow, she felt her sense of privacy, newly-acquired and treasured, was being trod upon.

Evelyn had to have one last parting shot. "And Glen's fine, just fine", she said. Studiedly casual, shrugging into her wrap. "I noticed you didn't ask, but I thought you'd like to be brought up-to-date. And speaking of dates, we are. Dating, that is."

Marilyn hung back as the others left, their voices raised in gay good-byes. "Has it been ... all right?" she asked. "I mean, you aren't still feeling ... that way about him, are you?"

For reply, Geneva shrugged. Didn't trust herself to articulate the words, wasn't certain she could get around the lump in her throat anyway. Marilyn answered the unasked question. "Yes, she's been going out with him. She feels you should have compromised. She thinks he'll ask her, now. Says she wouldn't mind terribly if it takes him a while to settle down. She can wait."

Marilyn frowned, fiddled with the car keys. "She's my sister, but she's a fool. And Geneva, forget him. He isn't worth it. You deserve better." Geneva nodded, grateful Marilyn didn't expect a response. "Call you tomorrow", Marilyn called back as she slid into the driver's seat.

Well, Geneva thought, that's that now, isn't it? How stupid can you get, my girl. thinking he'd miss you. Change his mind and decide it's you, only you he really wants. And why, why are you crying Geneva? Marilyn is right, he isn't worth it.

**********************************************************************
In the weeks that followed, a pattern established itself. As autumn became a fact and the trees began to turn brilliant colours, Brad insisted on Geneva going out hiking with him, and he showed her around what he called 'the neighbourhood'. The neighbourhood consisted of hardwood stands interspersed with ravines, rivulets, and the occasional time they went further afield, they'd walked into a coniferous forest a few miles distant from the town.

Brad was an enthusiastic amateur naturalist, delighted in discovering peculiar fungal formations, malformed tree trunks, and began to teach her how to identify trees by their growing shape, their leaves and their bark. Geneva found herself going right along, becoming truly interested in the various birds they spotted, trying to recall their names.

"Brad", she laughed, throwing herself down on a grassy slope above a stream. "Being with you is like being a kid all over again. I don't know when I've had so much fun. You're like the brother I never had."

"Am I?" he replied pensively, throwing pebbles into the swiftly running water, disturbing some frogs. He shifted the knapsack off his back, and Geneva doled out the sandwiches and fruit. They ate in a companionable silence punctuated by the occasional slap as Brad hit another mosquito. They laughed unrestrainedly at the antics of a squirrel duo frolicking high in the branches above.

The squirrels, two impudent black bundles, leapt impossible chasms from one branch to another, swinging determinedly on the ends of branches, while Geneva was certain with each leap that it would be the last for the little acrobats. After each successful leap, the leader would scramble to the safety of the inner branches and there, switch its tail in a provocative challenge to the other, hanging back. Brad watched her, touched and amused by her concern.

"Don't worry", he said, leaning over, touching her upper arm, making her jump with the thrill of his electricity. "They know what they're doing. It's their element, after all, and they know their limitations."

They sat on, Geneva feeling drowsy, the trill of nearby cardinals a delicate counterpoint to the quiet of their surroundings. She felt she wanted to stay there forever. Stretch out on the grass and just drift along. Brad beside her. Finally, he stretched, gathered the debris of their lunch, and rose.

"It's been four weeks now, Geneva", he said, pulling her to her feet as they prepared to continue their walk. "Think you're getting a handle on the business now?"

"Why, yes", she said, turning to him in surprise. It was the first time he'd mentioned the shop on any of their excursions. Usually he was boyish and carefree, kept up a running commentary on their surroundings, forever explaining the various elements that made up the whole of their bucolic environment. Now, she noted for the first time that he had a serious side to his personality. Was, in fact, regarding her intently. In a manner that momentarily flustered her.

He brought his hands up to her shoulders, moved her closer toward him and spoke her name. She might have known, she should have known. But she wasn't ready, not yet. Heaven knew, he was no Glen with his startlingly good looks, his air of forceful masculinity, his domineering attitude - all to his favour.

She was certain her eyes said no, but he drew her closer, finally folded his arms around her, then dipped his face to hers, and kissed her. An unbrotherly kiss. It did not distress her as she thought it might. He wasn't, after all, her brother. She felt puzzled ... if she loved Glen as she was convinced she still did, then why did she feel that pulse, that quickening in Brad's arms? She pulled away, turned from him.

"Geneva? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Brad. There's nothing wrong. Can we start back?"

They walked back in silence, Geneva slightly lagging Brad's effortless stride over the narrow passageway through the woods. She studied his wide shoulders, his well-formed head, appreciated his competence, his oh-so-obvious interest. What was wrong with her? Glen was all in the past ... wasn't he? Was she so completely wedded to his memory that the possibility of a future involvement was removed from her? Why that overwhelming sense of guilt? Above all, the conflict of Brad's physical pull and her heretofore perception of him as a companion ... what, a brother?

By the time they reached town she had made her decision. It's not fair to you, Brad. There's just no point."

"That kiss?" he said dismissively. "Forget it, it didn't mean anything."

He called on Friday to let her know he couldn't make it as usual on Sunday, to help out. Suggested she let Tom, her handyman, help out. "Tom's quite able", he said, his voice distant, crackling on the poor line. "He often helped out when my parents had the shop."

"Yes, yes of course", she responded dully. What, after all, had she expected?

Meeting him later in the little store, he was his old self, bright and chivalrous. And they talked briefly about her business, his writing assignments. She invited him over for dinner and he turned wary, distracted, begged off. Leonora Webster was there, with her sharp nose sniffing the air, wanting to know what was going on. After Brad left the store and Geneva began placing her order, Miss Webster enquired: "Had a falling out with our Mr. Cummings?" It was just too much, Geneva thought, making her excuses and stumbling up the road to home. There was no privacy anywhere.

***********************************************************************
"I'll be leaving early this evening", Evelyn announced. Everyone looked at her in surprise. Marilyn slapped her cards down on the table. "I'm not prepared to drive back before the rest of us are good and ready to go", Marilyn said.

"Don't get all excited", her sister responded loftily. "I'm not driving back with you", Evelyn said, a ghost of a smile on her face. She addressed Geneva directly: "Glen's coming by to pick me up. Said he owed you a visit anyway, wanted to look the place over."

There was silence as the others sat embarrassed, their eyes glued to Geneva's face, gone white. There would be no running now. He'd be here, and she would have to see him. Come to terms with herself finally. He was coming to pick Evelyn up, and secondarily to see her. There would be no great moment, as she had fantasized; Glen driving out here expressly for the purpose of seeing her, announcing his intention to devote himself entirely to Geneva, to their love.

When he did arrive, and she answered the door, she was newly surprised. No, taken aback at his effusiveness, his obvious pleasure in seeing her again. He swooped down on her, lifted her at the elbows to twirl around with her, finally planted a kiss on her lips, then stood back to inspect her. "Heey! This country living really agrees with you Geneva. You look great!"

His handsome face beamed down at her, that black lock of hair she used to twirl around her index finger hung as it always did, over his forehead and ... why was he so delighted to see her? And me, she asked herself, what do I feel. Nothing.

Nothing! She laughed aloud, felt like hugging herself for joy. She'd been in love with a mirage, not a man!

"Glen", she said coolly, permitting a smile to flit over her lips, suppressing the triumphant laughter she felt. "How good to see you! Evelyn is upstairs with the rest of the girls. Come in and have a look around. Or, are you anxious to be off? I understand you have a previous engagement for the evening; you and Evelyn."

"No hurry", he said, moving toward her again, hands outstretched. She neatly sidestepped his intent and began to talk, to explain about her shop, what it was like, living there.

"You mean you like it here?" he asked, disbelievingly. "This is no act, playing hard-to-get?"

"I adore it", she said, laughing now at the quizzical expression on his face, his all-too-obvious disappointment.

*********************************************************************
The following day, Thursday, she telephoned Brad's house but there was no answer. She felt upset, wanted to see him as soon as possible. To try to re-establish trust, an understanding; various scenarios running through her head, as potential openings. Well rehearsed during a night of fitful sleep. She needed to make amends for her earlier stupidity. Most of all, she wanted to be near him, to feel his reassuring presence, to know he really did care.

Perhaps, she thought, he was away on an assignment somewhere. She desperately raked her mind, tried to recall if he'd mentioned that he'd be going away somewhere, briefly, in the near future.

Finally, feeling restless, hoping to recapture some of the happiness she had felt on her long walks with him, she started off in the direction their hikes generally took them; passed the trees steadily losing leaves. A flock of chickadees called, teasing her for her blindness.

Oddly, the beauty of her surroundings seemed lost on her, she wasn't able to appreciate anything, felt depressed and wondered why she was bothering, why she just didn't go back to the shop and do some work there. But she walked on, finally stopping at the very place where they'd shared lunch on their last hike. Sank to the grass, and began to weep.

She heard a harsh sound and looked up to see a blue blurr through her tears; knew a bluejay was winging through the treetops. Then another sound impinged ... someone calling ... her name! She turned, saw Brad striding toward her, his face creased in a welcoming smile.

Geneva pushed herself up from the grass, then stood there, feeling foolish, wiping the wet from her cheeks. She didn't want him to see her like that, wouldn't be able to explain. He was approaching closer, began to run toward her and for a moment she was transfixed, couldn't move. Something built up inside her. She called his name and ran toward him, arms outstretched, just as he lifted his arms to receive her.

Finally, Geneva realized, finally I've run toward life.