Unnatural Selection

In another era they were called row houses. When they looked at the new tract housing in a new subdivision, driving from Montreal to Ottawa for that very purpose, the houses were advertised as “executive” town homes. They were a decent price for what they represented. Further up the quiet street bordering a green wooded ravine, there were single-family homes and they were quite a bit pricier.

They never regretted buying their two-story town home. It had quite remarkable features, among which was the full wall of windows looking out the back onto their sloped little garden, which they made much of, as soon as the opportunity presented itself. For they were among the first to move onto the new street, and lived there while construction commenced around them.

It was noisy, it was dirty, but they loved it. For one thing, when most of the construction was going on they were away, in any event, out at work. By the time they were preparing to return to their new home, the construction crews were knocking off for the day. And it wasn’t as though the entire area was under construction; it was most definitely not. This was a well built-up area, a fairly short drive from the downtown. It was just that their street was newly carved-out of what had once been a farmer’s fields, and which had been lying fallow for quite some time.

It had waited for the right builder to come along, a builder who wasn’t fazed by having to design his new street and the houses that would sit on it, around the perimeter of a deeply wooded ravined area. Now that was the draw, wasn’t it? For them, it most certainly was. To move away from crowded Montreal with its nagging memories and gridlock to a quiet oasis a veritable short and pleasurable drive from the nation’s capital where their new jobs awaited them.

It struck him now and again how unbelievable it was that he would have chosen a woman like Lilly. What the hell had been the matter with him? To end up with a vituperative fishwife whom nothing he did could ever mollify, how could he do that? His mother, seeing a soul-mate in her, revelled in the fact that her son had chosen someone so like herself. Validating her view that regardless of the misery of their boyhood, her two sons loved her and one of them at least, found life might be inconsolable without a woman so like his mother. He must have been blind and dumb and out of his mind with the thought of owning that luscious body, nothing else.

And his father, well, his father was pleased. Because his son had chosen a Jew. And his son’s sons, therefore, would be Jews. His father, forever cringing before his wife, had regretted that his own children, born of a non-Jewish woman, were not regarded by Jewish tradition as Jews. His father was prepared to overlook anything, any slight character blight - for he recognized what his son had not - to have his grandchildren considered Jews.

Of his father he always thought kindly, he was a gentle man, a good enough father whose only true failing in that department was his inability to counter anything his wife did, said or demanded, even with the knowledge that her tirades fell as heavily on their sons as they did on him. She was just - he sighed to his boys when they were older and able to understand - born one of those people unhappy with life and determined to make life unhappy for everyone around her.

And he, fool that he was, ended up with a woman just like his mother. Nothing could bring back all those years of misery as a child sharing whipping-boy status with his older brother when their father wasn’t around. In those days there were still jobs that kept people on the road, and his father had been a successful travelling salesman. One of those people, in fact, who sold aluminum doors, storm windows and screens at atrocious cost, but they were at that time the latest craze among home-owners and he made a more than decent living. He even had his own business cards, and you didn’t too often see people with their own business cards, back then.

That was then. Now his parents were both long gone, and his brother lived in New York. He too had moved from Montreal as soon as such a transfer with his employer could be arranged. His visits with his brother and his brother’s trips to visit with him were now lost in time, but they kept in touch. He’d prided himself not all that long ago in being one of the first people of his acquaintances who knew what the Internet was, who had an email account, and he’d persuaded his brother to do the same. That’s how they corresponded for the most part. But now instead they’ve reverted to talking on the telephone. Of necessity. His brother representing all he had left of his family.

Well, his sons, his twin boys. In Montreal, with their mother. Not with her exactly, but living in that city. Ironically enough he’d moved to Ottawa to begin with because his sons were attending university there. But they transferred after their first two years back to Montreal and continued their education there. But that was long after their mutual decision to part ways. He was left with the certainty they had no use for him whatever, encouraged his interest in them only to extract what they could from him. Reflections of their mother.

When he and Martine moved into their town house the age differential between them was apparent to anyone. Twenty-five years, after all, separated them. She used to kid around with him, remind him she was the same age as his sons. That wasn’t his choice, though, it was hers. She was young, pretty, and smitten with him. And that did great things for his self-esteem. Not that he didn’t love her, too. And it certainly didn’t take much persuading to encourage him to finally make the break he’d long dreamed of. Living with Lilly had fractured his ego, just about broken him. Long afterward, long after they’d moved to their townhouse he had nightmares about Lilly.

He hardly knew whom he most loathed; her or his mother. It was a toss-up. Took some thinking to arrive at a conclusion over who had done the most harm to him between them. He still wasn’t completely certain. His mother had blemished his growing years beyond redemption. His wife had tarnished his married life to the extent that he felt a haunted man. Until he was rescued, and he would be forever grateful to Martine for that.

Things changed after that. He no longer felt so helplessly emasculated. He felt empowered, a man again. Martine adored him. That was resuscitating in a way he could never have imagined. She freed his spirit, he felt liberated, able to contemplate doing things he had just shut away in his mind. And it felt good to feel free to cast his eye around, reminiscent of his younger days before he had been straitened into a steel jacket that would not permit him to venture anything that might spring his wife’s vicious slap-downs.

He became a bon vivant again, a ladies’ man, was able to freely indulge in his cosmopolitan airs that had so delighted him before the misery that had overtaken him when he’d married - how could he have been so utterly, stupidly unaware - Lilly. Whom he’d imagined at that time, in a state of sex-induced delirium, would be the light of his life. Instead, she had clamped a lid on the light that illuminated him, and sent him into the cellar of dark despair.

From loving her he had speedily descended into a state of querulous confusion, quickly overtaken by a quiet desperation, ending in fear, dejection, misery that he felt helpless to do anything about. All the more so when she had so quickly become pregnant, and he was a father of two little boys. Trapped. Wasn’t that the conventional wisdom among men? Wasn’t he a living example of a trudging male subservient to an entitled female? Wasn’t he a living cliché?

Nothing he did, clumsily, hopefully, served to placate her burning sense of resentment. She shrieked at him incessantly that she would not submit to the status of a ‘kept’ woman, subservient to a man who provided the wherewithal for her and their children. Children? They were a curse, she said, steely-eyed, shrivelling him with their piercing animosity. Because of them, she was dependent on him to a higher degree, and she felt trapped like a frail animal caught within the iron jaws of tradition.

But what about him? Why blame him? He didn’t create the social mores she had been so ready to accept, batting those long eyelashes of feminine longing at him before he’d finally succumbed. Wasn’t he a victim, if that was how she interpreted the covenant of marriage, just as much as she?

He’d studiously, obediently read all the feminist tracts she had thrust scornfully at him, to prove her hysterical rants were a reality. A glimmer of understanding arose in his consciousness. But why blame him, still? He tried, he went out of his way in a manner he’d never seen his friends attempt, to mollify her incandescent rage.

He changed diapers, fed the boys in their highchairs, walked with them at night to still their nightmares, to help them over feverish childish ailments, allowing her to sleep, while he went in to work the next morning, exhausted, his resources utterly drained. He’d done his best, what more could he possibly have done? It was as though she was on a track and would see nothing on either side that might ameliorate her angst, and he was the object directly before her on that track, requiring annihilation before she might find the peace she was seeking.

He tried to school himself to think, to reason as he imagined a woman might. He tried to anticipate things, to head them off, to protect himself, and yes, her too, from the constant eruptions that threw the lava of hate so lavishly over everything they had achieved together before she had succumbed to this pathological drive to diminish him.

Martine had been an amazing surprise, nothing he might have foreseen. She simply materialized into a life-saving mirage that turned out, in the final analysis, to be his rescue from a life of subdued misery, hopeless self-abnegation and burning resentment. He hadn’t taken her seriously at first; she was just a kid. He was 45 and she only 19. What had attracted her to him would always be a mystery, but it was self-affirming, and then a brilliant rescue from the torment he lived. Unnecessarily, he later assured himself, as he made the final break, leaving his wife to fume and fulminate and weep on his mother’s bosom. They were both, it was clear, more than satisfied to disown him, and he, he just did not gave a damn. That too was a rescue.

If his father had still been alive, it would have been different. He’d hated to disappoint the old man. He’d loved him deeply for what he was, everything that his mother was not. Decent, kindly, supportive, loving.

What was that word? Manumission? That’s how he felt, delivered from a state of slavery. And he had Martine to thank for that. And he thanked her in the only way that made real sense to him. When divorce became a reality, they were married. Of course they’d been living together for years before that happened, but it was as though, finally, a dark curtain of failure had been lifted from his soul.

For a quiet young woman from the far reaches of the province Martine seemed to know a lot about sex. With her it was more like fornication and he delighted in that. She was so natural about it all, so assured, so undemanding, but ready to try anything, imbued with an innocent sense of sexual audacity. He loved it. And it was clear enough she did, as well. He felt proud standing beside her, she was so young, so pretty, so pliable, amenable, so in love with him.

It wasn’t as though he meant to take advantage of her. He was more than a little aware of the syndrome he exemplified, an older man grasping the freshness of a young woman. He’d tried, earnestly, to persuade her that she needed a young man, someone her own age, but she laughed him off. He went out of his way to persuade her that theirs was a union of unequal age, that she might regret it at some future time. And she became angry with him, as though he were disputing the clarity and authenticity of her love for him.

He had tried. And had, in the end, become convinced that they were doing the right thing. For themselves. And wasn’t it past time for him to take something for himself? To grasp this opportunity that had been carelessly thrown his way by fortune? Hadn’t he suffered enough? How many sighs add up to yes? Life has a way of altering things, opportunities arise, one grasps them or regrets their loss forever.

She’d been indifferent to the prospect of marriage. He’d had to persuade her that it would be in her best interests. She’d shrugged noncommittally, but agreed to proceed with a civic marriage. She retained her maiden name. They proceeded as before. And when they moved into their new city, their new home, their new jobs, it seemed that everything had changed, he had been re-born a new man, and she was quietly satisfied - more than that - exquisitely pleased with the trajectory her life had taken. Together they thrived, enjoyed life; what more could anyone ask for?

As others moved in on the new street he, an extrovert, introduced himself, spoke fluently French or English, depending on the language of the newcomers, and welcoming them, offered his help wherever possible should they need information about anything. Everyone knew him. Few got to know her; she was an introvert, shy, given to holding herself at a distance from others, but sweetly welcoming in her own way.

Which was just as he saw her, too, and what he most appreciated; that she gave herself to him entirely, unreservedly; no one else mattered.

They did so many things together. Took their favourite holidays, went out for dinner whenever they felt like it. Often, that is. Matter of fact, it was he who turned out the family chef, although they shopped together. He did most of the house work too, and really didn’t mind one iota. After all, when he retired she was still working.

And he had Delilah’s company during the day. He had named her that because of her long, blonde hair and because she too had committed herself to him. Delilah went for long morning and late afternoon walks with him every day, across the road from their house, into the ravine. She ran after squirrels, socialized with other peoples’ dogs, and was a loyal companion. When at age nine she developed hip dysplasia, there was no question they’d get surgery done for her. Martine was as attached to that big dog as he was. Everyone on the street knew Delilah, and the kids ambling home from school would stop, throw her ball for her, pet her, and Delilah loved all the attention.

But Delilah died, even though she had a very long life for a large dog. And they decided once was enough; it was just too painful, they wouldn’t replace her. She was, in any event, irreplaceable. And perhaps it was for the best, because his health too began to reflect his age. In his mid-70s he was struggling with high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. About the same time he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. That operation went well enough, but he never felt quite the same, afterward.

Their holiday times, mostly in Vermont and New Hampshire, because they both loved the mountains and hiking, became fewer and fewer. Martine joined a women’s group of hikers and went off on the week-ends with her new adventure buddies, and he was proud of her. She was in good health and had no plans to let herself go; she was determined to keep fit. She looked as young and pretty as ever, he kept telling her.

When he had his double-heart bypass operation which he had insisted on putting off time after time until his doctor and the heart surgeon cornered him to let him know he was placing himself in an awfully risky situation, that without an operation to repair his faulty heart valve, he’d soon be in big trouble, he grudgingly agreed to undergo the procedure. Post-operatively he felt worse than ever before; his chest just as tight, his breath hard to come by, tiring easily, and on top of all that, a blazing headache that just never seemed to leave him.

Martine was a good scout. She stuck around for as long as she could, until wanderlust got to her again. She’d joined another group, a women’s adventure club, and with them went to South America and all over Europe. She’d seen the pyramids at Giza, climbed in the Andes, gone to marvel at Machu Picchu, seen the Great Wall of China.

And finally, when he reached 80, one of his eyes went kaput. He had to use one eye to do the work of both, and it was tiring. So he was cut off from reading, from the Internet - other than sporadic excursions in both.

And he’d needed another small surgery which was a real pain in the … arse … because he had decided to accompany Martine to Portugal. She decided she had no intention of spending another winter in the ‘coldest, snowiest capital city in the world’ and had rented an apartment in Portugal - the Algarve. But the surgery intervened, and off she went, and here he was, sitting alone, at home.

Oh, he loved their house, and he loved their street and their neighbours, but how many people do you see in the winter, particularly when you’re mostly house-bound yourself?

Martine telephones regularly now, rather than sending emails as she had been doing previously from all over the world in her travels before returning home to him. Another three weeks and she’ll be home again. The weather is fine in the Algarve, she told him, and she loves it there. Thinking of actually buying a little place there. He’ll love it, she tells him.

And by the way, she said last time they spoke, she was planning to take another little trip to Arizona, maybe stay there a few weeks, look around. She’d heard it was quite beautiful, the geological features outstanding, and the weather nice and dry.