The Antigonish Review 44

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

That Special Day

Because she knew she would be hurried and harried all the next day, she carefully tried to plan exactly what she would do each minute of the morning. Make the most of her time. She was fortunate to have even that much time, and still manage to hold down her job. She managed, she always did, to rush about the house after Barry left for the office and the children for school. Hardly children; they were semi-adults. Both would be going to university in the next two years. But they were still children, her children.

Tomorrow, Monday, was his birthday. So she had to plan a special dinner. Most Mondays were usually a pseudo Chinese concoction of quick-stirred beef and chopped vegetables cooked in the wok. But for the coming Monday she planned for a steak-and-mushroom pie enveloped in a rich crust; a marinated vegetable salad. A cake, his birthday cake. It would be a frosted marble cake, she had it all planned down to the last detail.

Her daughter would take up the slack, finish off any ironing from the morning's wash that Rose couldn't manage. She would decorate the cake after work, write Happy Birthday Old Boy on it. In dark brown icing. the 'Old Boy' her idea of a joke. Provocative though, since it was his forty-third birthday and she could still remember how maudlin he'd gotten on wine, on the occasion of his fortieth birthday. How the children had squirmed, threatened to leave the table, while he performed, tears in his eyes, telling them all how 'time flew' and he felt old, and he wanted things to remain as they were, didn't want them to grow any older.

She hardly sympathized. She was, after all, the same age. Older, in fact, by six months. What's in a birthday anyway? she had challenged him. She didn't feel old. Felt as young as the children, so why did he feel so badly about it? He was no more aged than she was, she had told him, why take it so badly?

Why? Well, he didn't know why. It was just so overwhelming, he said lamely, the passage of time, and where had it all gone? Gone? she replied ...it'd gone in living. Living and loving and learning; her weary little litany. That had earned her no more than a wry acknowledgement. He was immune to her philosophizing. He wanted her sympathy.

No sympathy, though. And he had adjusted to his middle years, after all. No holding back time. No returning to the 'what was'. All eyes straight ahead, focused on the future. This year's celebration would though, be a little diffused, a little subdued for a reason other than simply growing older. It would be a family celebration without their oldest child. That was hard to take, for both of them. But then, he'd be coming home for a ten-day visit in several weeks' time, when the university was closed for Reading Week. Then they'd have another, double celebration.

The next day Rose managed. She did all the things she'd planned to and caught her bus on time. With her, her briefcase, stuffed with things to attend to, in this quiet time on the bus. In that three-quarters of an hour on the bus she caught up with her correspondence, read through magazines she subscribed to, and thought of the various things she had to do in the office, to keep it functioning smoothly.

She kept up a voluminous correspondence. It just grew, like topsy. So many of the people who wrote to her she hardly had much in common with and their desultory correspondence, the lack of interest she felt in them, made her feel a desperate kind of annoyance. Why couldn't she just break it off? She had so damn little time for anything! But she didn't, she never could manage to. They all seemed to need something of her, those people. All of them were aspiring writers, had read her own work in various little journals and had written to her. And she'd replied. She was stuck with them. Possessed of the amateur writer's frail sensibilities herself, yet she was called upon to shore up the insecurities of all these others.

Among those letters though, was one that burned its way through her briefcase, insisting on being noticed, forcing her to read its message. He thought of himself as her secret, frantic lover. He loved her. Their letters flew back and forth almost daily. There was this compulsion - what was it really? She craved those letters and threw herself into answering them. He put himself into each letter of the alphabet he laboriously hand-wrote in pages-long explanations of his life, his expectations, his exuberance at having found her, at last.

Found who? Her? She was never there, out there, waiting to be found. She had been found, long ago. She did indeed have a lover. But secret he was not. Somewhat unorthodox he was, in this age when one's lover could be anyone other than one's lawful husband. Yet it was her husband for whom her love, her lust, her craving reached out. Between them there existed a helpless symbiosis. She could not, would not exist without him. He was all she had ever known, ever wanted. Their feelings for one another bothered people, she knew that. It made people uneasy, embarrassed. Marriages such as theirs just didn't exist. It was unhealthy, nothing less. Earnestly, people had told her that. "What would you do if there was a separation, if he died, if he left you for another woman?" She would smile serenely. But that was external, for public consumption. Inside, she was consumed with terror, refused to think of it.

So, Rose, tell me, if that is how you feel about Barry, what is it, what is this thing you have going with that unnamed letter-writer? Rose cannot answer. No one has actually asked her that question. Unless it is herself. She looks inside herself and twists that question around until it does double contortions and she rationalizes and convinces herself that it is nothing, this fascination with the writer of those letters.

"Everyone", she had written, "loves to be loved. I am no different than anyone else. And so, when you say you love me, I will accept it. But you, my friend, will also have to accept that I love no one, in the strictest sense of the word, but my husband. He is the air I breathe. You must understand that." Yes, he writes. He understands that. He wants nothing of her. Only her compassion. She is to view what they have, this intense letter-writing, this constant outpouring of written emotion, as an addition, a 'besides', to whatever she has in her family, her normal life.

Her panic subsides. She accepts what he has written. He can expect nothing from her, nothing. So she deigns to accept his homage. His profound admiration of her. Her understanding of his life. And she, in her turn, expresses admiration for him. For his many and varied abilities. Which don't, after all, strike her as all that unusual, since she had told him, months ago, when he'd first asked her about Barry that: "My husband is the last of the Renaissance men". True, it was true.

Finally, she arrives at her destination. Goes to the post office first, to mail a number of manuscript submissions, and letters. Daily letters to their son, in Toronto. And to her admirer, also in a nearby city. Then on to the bank, to make her usual deposit for the Association. From there, to drop in to the office where their treasurer works, to pick up some cheques from him. For the rent for her office, for her own pay cheque, a few days late, as usual. But what can you expect when you're the sole employee of a non-profit, basically volunteer organization, with certified charitable status?

The treasurer is a physically minuscule man with a kind of hooked nose that one subliminally associates with cruel-minded people. He is the husband of the Association's president. They are basically good people, but there are elemental flaws in both their characters which Rose finds personally repulsive. He sits behind his chartered accountant's desk and explains minutely to her his activities of the week-end. Rose bends her dark head to him, with feigned interest. She would not, for the world, hurt anyone and must needs listen and offer the appropriate comment at the appropriate time ... and hope for an early release from this particular kind of torture; part of her 'job'. He has what he mistakenly discerns to be an appreciative audience now, and takes full advantage of it, to Rose's temporary sorrow. She knows what his home life is like, living with a woman who has a mouth as big and as loud as a Mack truck; good soul that she is, nonetheless. Rose watches, fascinated, as the little man's mobile face turns narrow and mean as he discusses a secretary who has decided to leave, given a mere two days' notice after I trained her, the ingrate. She's gone to work for a lawyer. I've got connections. I'll find out who she's working for. Then I'll tell him, I hope she does to you what she did to me." He concludes with satisfaction, waiting for her approval. Rose is a coward, she does not say what she is thinking, that he is a vindictive little nit; instead she clucks sympathetically. Tut-tut, now he has to train another 'girl'.

She's overheated from having to stay so long in his office and doesn't bother putting her gloves on, when she reaches the outdoors. Walks quickly and efficiently down to her own building, three city blocks down Bank Street. There is the same wino with the horribly ruined face in the lobby. He makes as though to approach her, but she is familiar now, with his tactics and she deftly steps into the elevator, side-stepping his approach, ignoring his half-open mouth with the strangled plea for a handout. His is not the type of charity that she is amenable to. On the seventh floor, Rose takes her keys out and unlocks the office door, flicks on the light-switch and scoops up the morning's mail from the floor where the postman has shoved it, under the door. Anything bulkier is always delivered to the office down the hall which employs physically handicapped people.

She winds and sets the unreliable clock that she'd retrieved from the trash one garbage-collection morning, and goes down the hall to the women's washroom for water to water the plants, then starts her day at the office, answering telephone calls, making referrals, renewing membership applications, replying to her mail.

A large woman walks in to the office, smiles tentatively and unzips a ski jacket, hanging it on the rack; seats herself, willing to wait until Rose is able to look after her, once she is off the telephone. This is a persistent caller, arguing about her membership renewal, which she is certain she had already paid. Rose is patiently explaining that no, the records indicate that this caller has not yet renewed her membership for the 1980 year. Well, the caller persists, what is this receipt I have, for? A quick check indicates that the receipt is for a donation received earlier in the year. The caller promises after a moment's silence, to mail in her membership fee for the year, along with the renewal slip that Rose had mailed out to her. Rose sighs, places the receiver in the cradle and thinks to herself that if the membership fee were $30 instead of the $3 which it was, people would likely pay more promptly and without fuss. Human nature being what it is, it always appeared to her that when people had to pay extravagant amounts for services or goods they were always somehow convinced that the value of the services or goods was commensurately higher ... people quibbled when they were required to pay a merely nominal fee - value became diminished.

There was, she realized, as she turned to the waiting room, a palpable odour of fear and worry in her small office. A kind of perspiring fretfulness emanated from the broad-faced woman mouthing inanities about the weather, in a heavily accented voice. "He no tak-a his insulin", the woman finally explained, "since from January". Quietly, Rose asks the woman questions and ascertains that the man, her husband, has arbitrarily decided that he is 'normal' and refuses to be dependent upon the strict ritual of insulin injections to keep his body metabolism operating as close to normal as possible for an insulin-dependent adult. She can't, though, seem to get through to the woman how dangerous this refusal to face reality is. "He'll kill himself", Rose finally tells the woman, reluctantly, grimly. The woman appears interested, but personally uninvolved. "You'll have to persuade him", Rose presses. Then asks the woman about her husband's physical appearance, his activity level. From the woman's stolid, grudging description, Rose knows that the man is in an acute condition. She dials the office number of the doctor whom the woman says has been treating her husband. After the call is vetted by the receptionist and she speaks with the doctor, Rose places the receiver in the woman's hand, tells her to talk to the doctor. And while she half-listens to the woman talking apologetically to the doctor, she plays back in her mind what the doctor had said to her: "Yes, I know the man, he's been in and out of mental institutions for twenty years. He's a bad patient, won't follow instructions". From the tone of his voice it almost appeared that the doctor wanted to terminate the conversation, was annoyed with her for intervening in something that was of little concern to her, but she'd snapped: "Doctor, the man's in a state of ketoacidosis. I want you to speak with his wife and make arrangements for the man's care."

Between them, the doctor and the halting-voiced woman, a ruse was arranged. The woman feared her husband; it would have to be kept from him, the fact that she had come to the office and had talked with the doctor. The doctor's nurse would call the man immediately and summon him to the doctor's office and from there they would take him to the hospital. At the termination of the call, the woman turns tear-filled eyes to Rose. "I'm-a afraid! I got-a two children and he yell alla time and he no work for two-three year and I got to work and I'm-a afraid when-a the kids come home from school and I not there!" she wailed. And went on to detail the man's irrational and brutal behaviour. So Rose took a deep breath and told the woman to insist that the man be re-admitted to the psychiatric ward of the hospital for further treatment once his physical condition became stabilized. She did, she emphasized with that woman, with the dreadful facts of her life. She listened while the woman detailed the vicious cycle of her husband's inability to hold a job since his untreated diabetes sapped his strength and made him unreliable and conversely, because he was unable to keep a job his self-image plummeted and he further abused himself, refusing to treat his diabetic condition. It was a wonder, Rose felt, that the man hadn't by now gone into a diabetic coma. It was a wonder he wasn't dead. She looked at the woman's swollen, self-pitying face and told herself it would have been a blessing for the woman, for her two children whom she feared to leave with this crazy and sick man whom she had married, years ago.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. That marriage, her marriage.

She saw the woman out, told her to come back, or call, if she needed any more help. Told her to be absolutely certain that her husband, once his physical condition was seen to, had his mental state taken care of. Under no circumstances, she told the woman, should she, or any other woman, live under those dreadful conditions. The woman smiled gratefully, pumped her hand, zipped her ski jacket back on over her bulky frame, enveloping that dreadful animal stench, and departed.

Back to the telephone, to the paperwork. Head bent, teeth chewing lips, losing herself in the routine of the office. As the afternoon wore on, the sun blazed through the large window, the venetian blind half up. It was hot, she could get up and let the blind down all the way, but didn't. To the typewriter, the electric I.B.M. - a letter to head office - but the carbon ribbon ran out and halfway through the letter she'd had to replace the ribbon, cursing softly as she fumbled with it, wishing she had a more secure mechanical sense.

Almost finished, when a familiar face carrying a familiar voice entered and she knew she could write off the rest of the afternoon. A youngish man, slight, wearing the seeming affectation of dark glasses on this winter day, making himself at home, hanging up his jacket, his toque, his scarf beside hers, on the rack.

"How are you, Ian?" she asked, knowing he would tell her, fulsomely. He had, he told her, climbed the seven floors up the stairwell since he couldn't tell where, in the elevator, the seventh-floor button was. The old building wasn't accessible-compatible for the handicapped. He always climbed the stairs, he assured her. He wasn't even breathing heavily. "Wearing glasses again because of the glare", he tells her. "My eyes are hemorrhaging again." He was particularly vulnerable, he explained, because after the operation any kind of exertion could bring on another hemorrhage. "So after the big snow last week, remember? I took the baby out in his sled, he loves it, and we walked quite far. I suppose it was too much of a strain. By the time we got back home I felt a lot of pain. Dr. Sharp told me the veins were swollen to three times their normal size." He's so young, it's just not fair. The baby is only eighteen months old, and very precocious. He's so proud of that tiny boy. Tells Rose how the baby terrorizes the cat and the cat sits there patiently, while the child tears lumps of fur out of it. Then the child scampers away and hides in crepuscular corners, knowing his father can't see him there.

The monthly Newsletter arrives from the printer's. She's glad she prepared the envelopes on Friday, ran them through the Scriptomatic machine. Rose stuffs envelopes with the Newsletter, while Ian talks, telling her that he's looking forward to his re-training with the C.N.I.B. "It's gonna be tough for Lucy and for me too, but I'm hopeful. At least it's something. I can look forward to being able to doing something when I come back. It's only six weeks, we'll manage. She'll come down the first week-end and I'll bus back, a few times on the week-ends." He's going to Toronto, will be in residence on Bayview Avenue at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Some future he has, to look forward to. But he's a stoic, has come to terms with his frailty, is anticipating the future. "It was hard at first", he says, when she mentions this, his stoicism. "I was so angry, so hurt. I didn't see why it had to happen. I had to learn to deal with it. I had to work the rage out of my system. Now, I'm all right. Without my family, without Lucy and little Davie I never would have done it. Couldn't have."

Rose is interested in him and wants to give him all the support she can. Apart from the fact that she sees this as part of her job, she is genuinely interested in him and wants him to be certain of that. Everyone needs to be needed, to be loved. In whatever capacity, to whatever extent.

After he leaves, the telephone is mercifully silent and she is able to finish her correspondence, then continue stuffing for another short while. She's watching the clock. She wants to leave on time, today. Get home to assemble the meat pie, put the finishing touches on dinner. Above all, decorate Barry's birthday cake.

Just as Rose is drawing on her boots, zipping up the sides, the telephone rings. It is his voice and she laughs, so does he, and they simultaneously ask one another, soft-voiced, "how are you?" Well, what can they say to one another that they don't say, through the letters? There is a soft constraint through their telephone conversation. There is not that much to say, just a reiteration of what has already been said in the letters. They discuss some minor points of mild contention; he tells her that she was wrong, it wasn't Aristotle but Socrates she had quoted in an earlier letter. She tells him he was wrong; it wasn't some woman named Locusta who poisoned Claudius I, the first-century Roman Emperor ... and refers him to a Robert Graves translation from the original Latin for a more reliable version of the episode. Neither one of them wants to relinquish the thread, give up the conversation, hang up the telephone.

On the way home, on the bus, she reads a literary magazine that a friend in California has sent to her. Her correspondent-friends send her every issue of any literary journal in which their work appears. It keeps her busy, reading the magazines, but she knows she is expected to, and expected also to report back, favourably. For the most part, she does.

Strange, she is thinking, looking about her, there's a different bus driver. it seems darker than usual, but she had attributed that to the fact that the sky had become heavily overcast and was threatening to snow, as she left the office. She looks uneasily about her at the passengers; no one she recognizes. And hopes she's on the right bus.

When she walks in the front door, there he is, the light of her life. It's impossible, she panics, how could he be home already. "Were you ill?" she asks, worriedly. "Did you leave the office early? What's wrong?"

But Barry brushes her questions aside, demands to know where she's been, all this time. "You're late", he says, his tone that of an inquisitor.
"Late! How could I be? I left

early

." she tells him, her voice, in spite of herself, stricken with guilt.
She glances quickly at her wristwatch and it's an hour and ten minutes out from his. So then, she'd set the office clock wrong, too. Completely absent-minded. Oh, how could she? On this, of all possible days! He's annoyed, he's angry with her. His face turned away from her, closed in upon itself. His birthday.

Rose, you idiot, if you love this man so desperately much, why weren't you there, preparing things for this special day, offering a tangible kind of demonstration of the way you feel for him?

Rose, what in God's name is the matter with you?