The House of Reproach

The House of Reproach

Suddenly it has become a dark and dismal place. A place that tugs at memories, both fresh and old. A place of rebuke. Where is he? You have left him somewhere, abandoned him. This is a place that was shared. It cannot conceive itself with only you . You understand that the house is in mourning, but you also know that you cannot comfort the house. You are yourself beyond thinking or feeling of anything. Your loss is a huge abyss, and your grief inconsolable. So how can you possibly comfort the bereft house?

It will have to manage on its own.

But it hugely resents your lack of concern over its well-being. It refuses to offer you haven. As it should. As it is expected to do. It is, after all, the serene and private place that you both conceived of, worked to achieve and then revelled in. Your place of refuge and comfort, happily shared, and the world firmly shut out.

You could try informing the house that this is all a dreadful mistake. This is a nightmare from which you, and it, will both eventually awake. This nightmare will leave with the ghoulish pain of having imagined something impossible-yet-possible which you, and it will do your best to store in the deep chasm of fearful anticipation, of an event that has not yet occurred. It cannot have. Death simply cannot have so suddenly decided to make its dread visit.

There had been no calling card, no premonition, not the merest, slightest whiff of possibility.

Death, she knew, had a deserved reputation of resolute implacability, but she was also aware that there were those who managed to evade those grasping, bony fingers, to elude their determination to squeeze the unwilling soul from the unready body.

People had, after undergoing those frighteningly mystical experiences, described them. He would have defied Death. He would have informed Death that he had no intention whatever of departing. Of fleeing from her. Of deserting her. For he very well knew he must not. His powers of persuasion would have prevailed. Death would have exacted some measure of penalty, but she knew he would have prevailed.

That being so, it was impossible, not merely inconceivable, but absolutely impossible that he was gone. This was a sinister prank that some higher order was playing on her and she did not appreciate it.

Who could she call for comfort? Not her children, they were scattered all over the globe. Her children. Not quite biological offspring that most people count upon for solace. Her children were alive and well - or not alive and not at all well, but part of biographical families that she had created. They lived in the literature that she had created through her fervid and fearsome imagination. They were published works of living art. Which had been translated into more languages than she could recall. Copies of those books had been distributed world-wide. She was an author of world renown.

A friendless, nonetheless, famous author. Her friends and her family inhabited her books, and her thoughts and resulted from her need to fill in all those frustratingly awkward blank spaces.

The house emitted a bellicose roar, interrupting her thoughts. It wanted to know, have her tell it, why she had arrived back home alone. She had left earlier for the distinct purpose of bringing her husband’s notes and portfolios - the ones he had carefully instructed her to look for at his university office - back home. So they might be there, at his home study, awaiting his return. He was to be discharged in the morning. The hospital's ministrations to his sudden bout of pneumonia successfully concluded. He was scheduled to leave, released from the hospital. To her care.

Whose else? They were all to one another, there was no one else. He was the sun about which she revolved. But when she’d arrived at the hospital the front doors were locked.

En route to the university to retrieve his notebooks and the very specific portfolios that this professor emeritus had been working with, she’d received a call. From someone at the hospital. Name? Well, she could not recall. Did it matter? The voice, urgent, informing her to come to the hospital as soon as she humanly could.

But the doors were closed, they were locked and she was denied entry. She knocked frantically. Even after hours there should be someone in the lobby, but there seemed to be no one. She ran around the perimeter of the building, trying to find alternate entrances. At one she found a custodian, smoking outside the entry and asked if he could allow her in.

“Nope”, his unconcerned response. And then she explained, she had to see her husband, it was urgent, her presence was required. And the man’s face creased with uncertainty, then he leaned over and opened the door wide for her entry.

Where to go?

“Upstairs, Ma’am, you’ll see the firedoor, just push it and you’ll find yourself on the main floor.”

And then, not that long after, the nurse looking at her, looking at her, looking at her. “No one with you?”, she asked as though she couldn’t quite believe her eyes.

“No one.”

“Got anyone you can call?”

“Not really”

“Well, look, you should go home. There’s nothing more you can do here.”

Go home? There’s no one at home. He’s here. Here’s where she should stay. With him.

“You’ll come back in the morning”, the night nurse said. “Your husband’s body won’t be moved. It’ll be prepared for when the funeral home comes to pick it up.”

It? What it is that? Ralph has become an it? What on Earth is it this woman is saying?

“You do have a funeral home to call, don’t you?”

Funeral home? “No", she stumbled, "no I don’t have one. Can you recommend one?”

“I don’t know“, the nurse said morosely. “You can look in the Yellow Pages. They’re all in there. Go home, you look exhausted. Get some rest. Call a funeral home in the morning. Make your arrangements in the morning. You sure you don’t have anyone who can give you a hand?”

“No. No, no one.”

This duty nurse who appeared to be the only one around had allowed her to remain beside him in the isolated room. It was the hospital’s policy to allow this. As though special dispensation was required to permit a wife of 47 years to sit beside her dead husband’s hospital bed, quietly contemplating the years that had gone by, the bleakness of the future that stretched ahead without his presence.

No, no doctors were available, she had said. All gone for the day. It was late, they needed a break. They had done their best. It was totally unexpected. No one ever imagined…

Yet, if it was, as she quietly described, a deadly bacteria, a hospital-borne infection, how could they not be aware of the potential, and have an ameliorative protocol at hand? This is the 21st Century, medical science has advanced to an amazing degree. A bacterial infection so morbidly certain of itself that there was no prescriptive challenge to its pact with death?

A half-century of intimate companionship, her shield from the world, her protector, her lover, her friend, gone. Half-century; that’s quite the time-span. If you say 47 years together, that’s considerable, it’s long enough to elicit respect and amazement, that two people could find such comfort and companionship, along with the ardour of early-years’ physical magnetism in one another. The infinite details, the ineluctable joy and pleasure - just memories.

Were they real, did they really happen, or was this the instinct of a writer, making up her life as time progressed?

Gone, everything gone, now. She had no interest in dredging up memories. Without him they were worthless. Without him to recall with her and assess the magnitude of their profound influence on her state of mind, they meant nothing. She was unable to distinguish between what she imagined to be reality and what truth actually represented. Did it matter? Yes, it did, to her.

Her bulwark against the hostile world had vanished. Had been vanquished by Death. She would not, could not believe that he had allowed that to happen. She meant him, not some fantasy of a human construct of an omniscient spirit benignly and alternately viciously, looking down over its creation.

She did leave the hospital. Left him lying there on that bed, still inexplicably hooked up with those electrodes all over his chest under that dishevelled gown. The mask that had covered his face had been hurriedly removed, left lying beside him. His face, so strangely grey, with deeper creases alongside his cheeks than could be considered normal for him. His hair tousled. That would bother him, He is an immaculate man.

Why was he left like that? It was an affront to his dignity.

And the remorseless pain and anguish that rose within her chest threatened to burst it asunder. The very notion of something like that happening to her was soothing, however, it would solve many problems.

Through her grief she reached over and began methodically detaching the electrodes, pulling the sticky roundels off his naked chest, then re-arranging the gown. He would be cold if she didn’t adequately cover him with that thin hospital blanket. He would catch his death of a cold…

Those slovens in their offensively cartooned scrubs seem to have laid aside their professionalism and compassion along with the traditional white scrubs.

Finally, back at home, palpably aware of the simmering resentment of the house, brooding at the prospect of hosting only her, she reasoned to herself that she must leave. This reproachful house which was their treasured home no longer exuded the care and comfort that their conceit had conceived of it.

She would leave. She would leave it to its own devices, to make another life for itself with other occupants who would not know nor care of its history.

And then reason gave her pause. What if he decided to return? Where would he look for her? Did she not have an obligation to maintain everything that he valued intact? His books, his clothing, his writing tools? Above all, his research papers, completed, not yet completed, published, unpublished. Yes, that was true, he would need them all.

And her. He most certainly needed her to be there. To welcome him back home. To throw her arms around him, and feel the quickness of his breath, the electricity passing between them, his beating heart.

She would stay, wait things out, this temporary aberration in their lives together. This … inexplicable interregnum.

Her first instinct, the knowledge that he would never abandon her had been the right one. He would find a way to return. And she would be there, in the place he was most familiar with, waiting for him.

She could feel the house relax its tension.

Illusions, Delusions, Allusions

Illusions, Delusions, Allusions

He had a habit of never wanting to pay the full freight for his reading material. So his large and growing library of books are mostly of second-hand vintage. Not that he isn't particular about the shape they're in. He will buy second-hand books only if they're in fairly pristine shape. He does have his standards. He has been known to relent, however, if he comes across a publication he recognizes as hard to come by, one that has been well leafed, but that he decides he must have.

The copy of Inshallah, the novel by Oriana Fallaci, was in prime shape. Clearly, whoever originally owned it took good care of it. That is a presumption that might of course not be the case. It might have been bought with the thoughtful intention of reading it, but placed on a shelf somewhere and forgotten, until someone got tired of looking at it, dusting it, and gave it up to a second-hand book shop. It might have represented a gift that was unappreciated; the giftee having no intention of reading it, and that might have preserved its appearance.

Whatever the case he was intrigued by the very concept of Oriana Fallaci having written novels. He 'knew' her only by reputation, as a bold, enterprisingly fearless news interviewer. She would undertake to strive for interviews with dictators, tyrants, champions of justice, prisoners, activists, royalty, to question them audaciously and report in her own inimitable way on the results of those interviews. Her formidable reputation for honesty and clarity won her a large following.

She was granted interviews with reclusive personalities not given to permitting themselves to be interrogated and reported upon by others of her profession. Iran's revolutionary Ayatollah Khomeini, for example. She was given exclusive rights to publishing details that were withheld from others. She had always captured his imagination, a woman in her prime and beyond, once beautiful, obviously aware of her beauty and its effect on people, but utterly devoted to her craft of revealing the truth to her readers.

He thought he knew as much as there was to know about Lebanon, that once-proud country with its fabulous landscape and multifarious populations. As much as anyone living in the West might, acquainted through the electronic media with expatriate Lebanese whose unquestioned mastery of comedy or drama or literature gave them a wide audience. Of whom his parents were so proud.

And the sinister, dark side of the country with warring sectarian violence and brutal abductions and assassinations. Reading Fallaci's novel, was a revelation, an introduction to Gehenna-on-Earth. Little wonder, he thought, his parents refused to discuss the country. He was not more than one-quarter of the way through the novel, yet. Its bleak, dark message of failed humanity should not have bothered him as much as it did, but it did.

And odd thing to happen, he couldn't understand why, when he'd originally leafed through the book carefully before committing to its purchase and he hadn't come across what had been inserted in it, until the packet fell out, last night. A kind of booklet, (Pictures to-day ... treasures to-morrow - Available at all Tamblyn Drug Stores: Tel-Vision Prints) as it were, with photographs fastened within it.

The pictures were old. He could see that immediately; black-and-white; hairstyles and clothing divulging their agedness. Reminding him of the old photographs in the family albums his parents had collected of people he had never met and never wanted to meet, but meaning something to his parents, obviously.

When he turned them over, the dates were there, place-names and peoples' names. Taken in 1952, at an RCAF base in Chatham, New Brunswick. And among the names of people, there, incredibly, was his own name, scrawled alongside the others. He quickly turned the photo over to more closely scrutinize the faces of three men standing, two women and two children in the foreground, kneeling.

He had no idea who they were, although there was a sense of familiarity, looking at them which he ascribed entirely to similar photos he'd seen in his parents' albums with war-time base housing in the background, and civilian personnel in the foreground. And there, labelling one of the middle-aged men, was his name.

Who were the photos representative of? How peculiar that an uncommon name like his was present in such an unlikely place. Related, he wondered...? Not likely, none of his people had ever been there to his knowledge, nor with the RCAF. He turned to the novel flyleaf, but the presumed name of the original owner had been too carefully blacked out.


Lebanon Photo: Beirut at dusk

 

The Sullen Day

The morning woke in a sullen
fog of darkness, the hungover
legacy of a night devoted to drenching
the landscape, stirring the wind to
dash sodden leaves against windows
and highways, tree trunks and
garden beds. Lurching from
ill temper to outright hostility
fierce gusts grappled with
gnarled old limbs in the forest
humbling them to the ground
there to stay and to rot. There
was little indulgence to civility
pending in the day's itinerary
glutted with atmospheric rage
streaming rain and cold persuading
a timid sun to find haven from
its persecutors, shivering and pale
held captive behind dark clouds.

The Fury of the Season

That ferociously icy wind blasted
through the woods and the trees
wept their cargo of foliage,
releasing them copiously to the 
fury of the season, spiralling them
through the transparency of the
atmosphere, making no secret of
fall.  A small, green-striped snake
snuggled into the leafy coverlet
as above a raven's black wings
spread wide below clouds bruising
the sky.  A grove of maples
defiantly allowed their yellow 
crowns to cling as though
separated from their host they
feared the wind's intent; yet
they too will fall victim to the
inevitable cleansing of the old
for their replacements.  Squalls
alternated from a rainy deluge to a
windfall of russet and gold leaves,
cushioning the forest floor,
preparing the woods for its
inexorable winter freeze.

Loving Dotage

We've come a long way together.
Though memory helpfully
dredges up reminiscences of
our early times together as a
youthful adventure of attraction
and the discovery of companionship
the years have taken us from the
intimacy of a pair of independent
psyches to the reality of integral
dependency. Still individuals
but the mortar of matrimony
experience and children now long
grown has resulted in each
presenting a mirror image of
the other. That reflection
recognizes the features of the
originals still resident in the
personage of the present, as 
though time and the space allotted
slid us into an arcane time-warp
taking us from there to here. The
ongoing declarations of love
coursing through our days and nights
only slightly altered by the prompts
each gives the other lest immediate
memory fails, even as authentic
remembrance pulsates with life.

Persona

It was an impulse stifled
by uncertainty. Should I tell her
how beautiful she appeared to
me, a grandmother who believes
in frank assessment and 
compliments where they are due?
The hesitation lies in perception
the fear of appearing patronizing
to this young woman who appears
sixteen but is thirty, her face
an exquisite surveyed map of
femininity, her hair and garb
pure Butch. Her open smile
invites calm and conversation.
Clearly, she is comfortable with
herself, and with me as well.
And I should be, also. She is
in the military for the long haul
far from her rural home
carrying her identity with ease
pleasant and firm, her large
brindle hound at her feet
obedient to her commands
issued with patience and affection
and my voice is stilled, the
compliment unstated, though my
admiration remains unstifled.

 

The Reversible Drama

The garden looks forlorn
and lost, nothing remains but the
memory of what it was. It has
lost its lustre and its reason
leaving us pensively viewing
its sad and sullen transformation
from transcendent beauty in
form and colour, exciting our
pleasure, to its newly grim
grey dessication. From oasis
of fresh green and the impetuous
appearance of exotic floral 
displays to monochromatic
desert, all too abruptly, as
though time and nature had
failed to better prepare us for 
this reversible seasonal drama. 
The tiny flying creatures of the
garden are in mourning, themselves
preparing for the inevitable.
Overhead the sky conveys
southward-beating wings to
their migratory escape, leaving
native species to forage among
scarce offerings once the landscape
has succumbed to winter white.

Season of Mourning

Season of Mourning

It is an unspoken covenant between
grandmother and granddaughter, the
daily after-school call, born no doubt of
their intimate history when in the first
decade of her young life it was grandma's
arms that enveloped her after school.
Distance has made the invisible silken
strand of connection - tender yet strong
as a spider's skein - no less compelling.

Watcha doing? elicits the identical
quotidian refrain: not much. But it is
intensely cold, windy, damp and so did
you wear your winter boots and jacket?
represents another facet of the formula
of this relationship. Nope, the laconic,
expected response. And the vital news of
the post-school snack emerges: a pomegranate.

That mysterious Eastern fruit, its amazing
structured, celled interior surfeit with
faceted ruby jewels like those in a treasure
chest discovered in the fabled caves of
Ali Baba. These glistening sweet jewels to
be consumed, not worn in brilliant splendour,
arrayed upon the white, swan-like necks of
beautiful Harem girls. Careful you don't
squirt your eye, grandmother urges.

Damn! granddaughter informs, just squirted
my eye. Language, chides grandmother.
Then in the silence asks do you know the
Greek legend of the pomegranate? Have you
met Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and
her daughter Persephone? Do you know where
the seasons come from? Have you studied
Greek mythology in your school curricula?

To the last query: yes, some, in drama class.
To the previous: no clue, as they claim in
teen vernacular. But you can ask about
vampires, we know about them, grandma.

Grandma sets about enlightening her child
in the delights of tragedy and mystery, grandeur
and petulance, power, esteem and comedy, all
residing in the arcane minutiae of a folk
panoply of gods, their overweening pride,
bumptiously covert antics, vain jealousies and
curiously oppressive sexual adventures.

How an abduction of a beloved daughter
led to a grieving mother and a deadly chilled
season of mourning, when no flowers bloomed,
no crops grew, dark wailing veils hung from
trees and the brows of mothers alike, and all
life was suspended in unappeasable grief. The
redemption of compassion that would bring
spring back to the world, and the single seed
of a pomegranate that consigned a daughter to
dark Hades and a coldly possessive yet loved
husband to satisfy both life and death.

Boredom's a Bastard

Boredom's a Bastard

She was bored. Achingly, mind-numbingly bored. Boredom had been her companion in place of any other. Boredom greeted her as casually as her husband once did, as she rose from her bed in the morning. It had its coffee companionably with her, followed her to work, and came back home with her at night. The most faithful companion she could ever imagine. It never lied to her, encouraged her, disparaged her, or evaded her.

But it did drive her to the same kind of despair she had experienced when she'd had her affair - once she realized her husband was doing the same. That despair over the unfairness of it all. Him leaving her in utter contempt, simply for doing what he had.

Her boredom is all-encompassing. However, she does not live alone with her boredom. Her 15-year-old daughter, busy with high school, her friends, and everything that entertains and inspires and brings delight to the morose mind of a teen-age girl, lives with her. Unlike her younger brother, she has never forgiven her father for leaving them. Mostly because, as she said, her mother’s incessant moody fatigues and lectures about the untrustworthiness of men drove both her and her brother to distraction. It was not exactly fun for them, living with their mother. Still, she refused to even see her father, acknowledge his existence. Her mother had succeeded in at least instilling that level of defiance and anger in her daughter.

She herself never sees him. She hasn’t ever once confronted him, looked him in the face, spoken with him over the last seven years that saw them first separated, then finally divorced. If he calls, to speak with their son, she listens mutely, puts down the receiver and calls her son to the telephone. She never says “it’s your father calling”, she says instead “someone wants to speak with you”.

Her son, now that he’s thirteen, spends week-ends with his father. Her family tells her that’s the best thing, that he needs to be around his father, pattern himself after a man, have a man’s influence in his life, to grow up normally. Although she bitterly resents this, she is resigned to it.

She tries not to dwell on the thought of her son accepting his father’s second wife, her replacement. Although she wasn’t certain, she felt her ex-husband’s new wife was likely one of those easily-laid women he’d been with while married to her. Her son says not so much of a word about either his father or his step-mother. He knows his mother has no wish to hear anything unless it is to condemn either of them, and that he would not do. He had said, at first, that his father’s new wife was OK, didn’t bug him. Obviously then, her ex-husband wasn’t bored. She really, truly resented that, the bastard.

He didn’t have to leave her. He could have said to her that he understood how it was, how his philandering had led her to do precisely what he was doing. But he wouldn’t admit it. He refused, adamantly, to say he had started it, that it was his sleeping around with other women that initiated her into the possibility of sticking it to him by doing the same.

“You’ve no proof” he said. “What you have is a dirty little mind, accusing me of sleeping around.”

“Right! I’ve got the dirty little mind, have I? You’re not nearly as clever as you think, mister. I’ve had reports back from mutual friends that you’ve been seen in pretty compromising situations.”

“Gossip? You depend on gossip about me to take it as proof positive that I’ve done those things?”

“Damn right, bud. I have it on the best authority. Augmented, I should add, by little clues I’ve picked up on my very own.”

“Clues? Madam Holmes, you picked up clues?”

“You’ve been too sloppy with some of your credit card charges. I’ve seen them. I can put two and two together. I never received any gifts from you from the places on that detailed listing.”

“That’s it? That’s the extent of your ‘proof’?”

“No, no it isn’t. Don’t you think even from a male perspective that it’s odd a man chooses not to have sex with his wife over a period of months at a time? Am I supposed to think that’s normal? Or might I somehow deduce that it’s normal for someone who’s getting off somewhere else?”

“Yes, you do have a mind in the gutter. I don’t have to explain, and I won’t. If you wondered you could have come directly to me to discuss any concerns you might have had. You might have been surprised at the answers.”

She was no fool, and she knew what she knew. It was indisputable. He didn’t have the kind of job that required working late nights, nor week-end trips. And suddenly there it was, his professional life requiring both those elements, with nothing but the most casual explanation from him.

In the end everything worked out to favour him, not her. They’d split everything, the proceeds from the sale of the house, the furnishings, everything. She might have looked for another house, but she decided to rent an apartment, instead. She did, though, move as far from their old neighbourhood as possible. No wish to see their old neighbours, suffer their pitying looks; try to overlook the awkwardness. Anyway, she never did like that neighbourhood, it was his choice, not hers.

And then to discover, once she was settled with the kids in their new home that he had decided to rent nearby as well. It was infuriating. She always feared, going out, that she would run into him. Worse, coming across his new wife, even not knowing who she was, what she looked like. She would have the advantage on her; likely recognizing her from a family photograph. It was too much to bear. She hated him with a grinding passion.

Which did nothing whatever to relieve her constant state of boredom. And the two companion emotions, depression and loneliness. She deserved better. The man she’d had that affair with thought so too. He had offered to pay for her apartment. Of course that came with a price. He would also have a key. And that was just too awkward, even if the kids were seven years younger, back then. Unlike her husband he had no intention of leaving his wife. He no longer loved her, he said, but he felt responsible for her, felt pity for her, for her compromised health condition.

“You said you love me” she wheedled him.

“It’s true, I said it, I meant it” he retorted, after one of their many heated discussions, when she had tried to patch the hole in her life by convincing him that he should leave his wife and marry her.

“You love me”, she said scathingly, “but not quite enough to want to live with me. Instead you’re happy living with a woman whom you no longer love, and you won’t commit to me. That’s your idea of love?”

“No, no it isn’t, but you’ve got to understand, she has no one else, she needs to be cared for, and I have that responsibility.”

“What about me?” she'd wailed, despairingly, when he would not be moved to her argument. “What about me? I’ve lost my husband because of you, and now I have nothing.”

“You can still have me” he said quietly.

“I won’t agree to those terms” she said sharply. “I won’t be a kept woman, living in an apartment you pay for, worrying about my kids getting screwed up, seeing some guy they don’t know hanging around, waiting for his intimate opportunities as soon as their heads hit the pillow. How long could people keep up that kind of relationship anyway?”

“You’re right” he finally allowed. Said he was sorry. Sorry about everything. About both of them succumbing to the relationship they had developed, each of them covertly and deliberately enjoying the thrill of illicit sex and misleading their spouses. It was no way to live. And she was right about that. Still, he would not leave his wife. And that left only one alternative.

And so they parted. It was far easier for her to part with him than with her husband. It was the idea of it; one relationship carnal and infused with the excitement of the forbidden, the other comforting in its implied social and relational security, infuriating though her husband’s stealthy forays for sex outside their home was. It seemed important at the time, and far less so as time widened the distance between the reality of her discovery and her resultant rage, and what she now experienced, a great yawning distance of boredom.

She’d given a lot of thought to the barrenness of her social life, her lack of intimacy with anyone. Confided in one of the women she worked most closely with that she had decided to start an Internet-based dating service. Her friend observed that there seemed to be a lot of those around; why did she think she might be successful in starting up yet another one?

It was, she responded, her experience with being single, with being deprived of a life-mate, of a partner in life, that made her perfect for such an enterprise. She would bring to it a deep understanding of the trauma that people suffer after relationship separations. She knew from her very own experience how difficult it was to initiate new relationships, to discover others who shared similar interests, had like values, desperately wanted to find a companion. She could easily be a leader, someone to whom others could confide their disappointments and look to for guidance. Her explanation sounded entirely rational and impressed her friend no end.

Who offered a name for such a dating service. “Call it Lilith Garden”, she said. She had considered something like “Adam and Eve”, but then discovered that name had been taken. There were other possibilities, names including the word “Paradise”, that kind of thing, but when she did her Googling homework she always discovered those names had been taken. No one had co-opted Lilith, and she decided that made sense. She had someone help her with the artwork, and putting together a Web page, and couldn’t believe the number of people who responded, emailed her, eager to join her new group. The charge, she thought, was fairly modest; she had done her homework.

It was amazing how it lifted her spirits, brought her out of herself, to communicate with all these people. Lonely, like her, desperately looking for a companion, tired of looking in places where no one ever turned up but losers. Like themselves, though they never said that. She was generous in giving out advice, and people were eager to know what she had to say, they sought out her opinion. After all, she was running this greet-and-date operation, she had to know things that eluded them. She began matching people up according to their stated values, their tastes, their interests, their backgrounds. And encouraged them, when initial impressions didn’t match their anticipated longings, to be patient, give it a try, dig a little deeper into themselves to find a more co-operative spirit. In the short few months since she had launched her little enterprise she became a different person.

She felt alive again, fascinated by what she had begun, happy to act as a social chaperone, introducing people, encouraging them. She more than earned that money she extracted from her clients, she felt. They needed her, and she was happy to accommodate that need. She was less than thrilled when, on a few occasions, disgruntled clients blamed her for a series of unfortunate couplings when things most certainly did not turn out they way they even modestly hoped for. But that, she emphasized to them, sagely, was what life was like, wasn’t it? You had to take some chances, and your lumps along with them, to find in the end what you really wanted. And guess what? She archly said to them, it works, you’ll find the one you’re aching for, they’re there, you just have to keep on trying.

After another month or so she became acutely discouraged. It just seemed to flood over her all at once, as it were. One day she was alert and enthusiastic and everyone’s mentor, the next she was completely deflated, demoralized again, wondering what on earth she was doing. Finally admitting to herself she really had no idea what she was doing, playing around with peoples’ lives, encouraging them, pushing them toward a future that had no guarantees and, admittedly, most often no promise of success in discovering that coveted pot of gold at the end of their desperate social lives devoid of contact, of meaning.

Because, in fact, that was precisely where she was stuck. Mired in a life without satisfaction to her, without meaningful contact, a relationship with another person to whom she could devote herself, and who, in the end, would find her enchanting, desirable, who would cherish her.

She had lapsed back to the beginning of her intolerable, prolonged courtship with misery. And it was eating her up with anger, bitterness and utter dejection. Her children had no idea why their mother became once again that harridan that kept plaguing them with her objections to whatever it was they wanted to do.

Her friend at work hinted that perhaps she’d bit off more than she could manage, with her dating service. It was dragging on her, convulsing her own emotions with its incessant demands.

She agreed. She felt she could no longer continue the sham. She sent out a long emailed message to all of her subscribers, admitting that she simply wasn’t fit for the task of guiding them any longer. She realized, she said, that she was disappointing them all, but she emphasized that she was as greatly disappointed in her surrender to this defeat, as they would be. She had appreciated that they needed someone to lean on, and she thought she was strong enough to help them all, because she really, really cared about them. And, she said, she was prepared, to fully reimburse to any who were interested in making such a claim, that portion of their unused monthly dues that fell into the time-frame of the suspension of Lilith’s Garden's dating service.

People upbraided her through a series of emails, accused her of trifling with their lives, told her they detested her, that she was an egotistical user of people. It wasn’t the money, they argued, it was the trust they had placed in her, and she had never had the slightest intention of honouring that trust. They would never forgive her. Some threatened to take her to court, and she worried immensely about that, but it never did materialize. She emptied her bank account, grown so nicely over that six-month period, in reimbursing all the people who demanded their money back. Surrendering those funds did nothing to ingratiate her with those who now considered her a pariah, a social monster who took pleasure in manipulating other peoples’ tender emotions.

Finally, in worse emotional shape than ever, there was a telephone call. The voice sounded familiar but her mind was completely blank. It’s me, he said. Me? Who the hell was me? Frank. Frank?

“How are you?”

“Fine, I was just wondering how you are. I’ve missed you. You’ve no idea how much.”

“Really? How good to hear from you. I hardly recognized your voice, it’s been so long.”

“Yes, it has been. But you know, I thought of you constantly through the years. I haven’t been able to put you out of my mind. I recall all those good times we had together. I’d like to see you.”

“You would? Well, I suppose that could be arranged….”

She felt ecstatic, suddenly her boredom dissipated, she felt anticipatory, gloriously happy. Unaccountably happy, in fact, since this was a call from someone she'd scarcely given much thought to, over the years. Now, hearing his voice, she too thought back to the times they’d had. She contrived to recall those times as exciting, pleasurable, meaningful. Pushing back another memory of demeaningly covert meetings, guilt, and in the end, a bitter parting.

At work next day she told her friend all about the call, about the invitation, the yearning both had to see one another again. She knew, she confided, that if she agreed to meet, they would end having sex. She wondered, she threw out casually at her friend, if it would be worth it. She was dying to see the guy, he’d been really good-looking, skilled at love-making, said all the right things, bought her wonderful gifts, made her feel really special.

Well, responded her friend carefully, what’ve you got to lose? This, from a woman who actually felt scandalized by these revelations, who would never herself ever consider such an assignation. Of course this woman was sturdily, safely married, she could afford to spurn an opportunity for a little imaginative fun. She wasn’t lonely, bored, bitter. These thoughts running through her mind, she upbraided herself for thinking of her standards, not her friend's obvious need to be encouraged, to go ahead with what she most obviously wanted to do. It just puzzled her that her advice would be sought, under the circumstances. So she simply repeated, why not, what had she got to lose?

So, it was done. They met, they had sex, they parted. Meeting one another after that seven-year gap was interesting. Amazing how seven years could alter someone’s physical appearance. He wasn’t so handsome, after all. Sexy, well not so much, why did she remember him like that? But he did relay to her some interesting information. His wife had died. Of natural causes, due to her medical condition, and he was now single. After relaying that information there was an awkward pause; neither had much to add, other than her “sorry to hear that”.

And the sex, well it wasn’t anything, in fact. She had shopped beforehand, bought slinky black underwear, imagined the sensuous delight of allowing him to undress her, fondle her, speak of his urgency. That was what had happened years ago, wasn’t it? So much a part of his appeal to her? Well, all that happened, and big deal. She could tell he felt as awkward as she did, throughout the evening they spent together. Dinner was nice, the flowers he brought along very nice, but what the hell was she supposed to do with them?

Checking into the hotel was not very nice. She didn’t enjoy that. It had lost its appeal, that mysterious, mischievous frisson of pleasure mixed with social guilt that had shot through her when they’d done that, repeatedly, years ago. It had heightened the pleasure they both extracted from their furtive meetings; their frantic, exuberant, sex.

She was glad when the evening was finally over, when they parted, each awkwardly promising to keep in touch. Neither had any such intention.

Remarkably, afterward, she no longer felt bored, restless, miserable. She felt … all right.

Tightrope Walker

As light as a proverbial
feather, he is a will o' the wisp;
here, there, everywhere least
expected, no call required, he
just appears, a small black
ghost of a predecessor still
mourned, possessed of her
grace and fierce independence
yet loving and bright to a 
fault. His bones, like those of
birds, must be hollow for
how else to explain his 
bounding, weightless grace.
He may not take flight
as birds do, but he leaps
lightly with magnificent
aplomb, heights and distances
unimaginable; our very own
tightrope-walker. Moving with
the lithe tempo of a ballerina
his tiny feet outward bound,
he seems to float with an
ease of movement as 
inexplicable as his devotion
to we of clumsy gait.

Greg Said It Would Be Fine

Greg Said It Would Be Fine

Greg said it would be fine. The place was perfect for us. We would be sharing it - co-tenanting, he called it - with people we know. He knows them, anyway. They weren’t exactly friends. More like casual acquaintances. But they were nice. Older than her, but then Greg’s a whole lot older than her, too. Oh, not a whole lot, but older. Let’s see: he’s eight years older than her. That’s kind of a lot, at the age they are. But she likes it that he’s older. He’s had experiences she has never had. Wouldn’t ever, anyway, since they’re mostly guy experiences. But she really didn’t like the guys around her age. They were like kids, juvenile delinquents for the most part, that’s how she thought of them.

When she first met Greg she could hardly believe he would be interested in her. But he was. A little like a big brother at first. He kidded around a lot. But there was something about him, something that told her that he felt there was more to her, for him, than that kind of relationship. It took long enough to get going, but it did. She happened to see a lot of him because she happened to be over at her friend Yvonne’s place a lot.

So when Greg said that the house was perfect for them, it was. They had the ground floor, Edith and Robert had the top floor. He would help her start a nice garden, he said. When she felt she had the time. Not just yet. He knew how involved she was, just getting used to having a baby. It was as though he could understand how she felt, as though her life had been ambushed by events that just seemed to happen before she even realized they were happening.

She felt swept along by everything, as though she was somewhere else, not in her body, like those out-of-body experiences she had read about, when people died, and their spirits floated above their body and they observed what was happening, with people mourning their dead body. And then something happened and the spirit slipped back into the body and they were somehow saved from death. They saw a blinding light, something like that. They were given another opportunity to live.

She wasn’t sure she believed anything like that. That it could happen like that. But she could imagine it, in a way. And it’s possible that thinking of that made her feel as though something similar had happened with her. As though somehow her life had taken a turn and she was unable to do anything about it, just accept what was happening. As long as she had Greg, really, she didn’t mind. He makes her happy. And he knows that. He told her time and again how much she means to him.

She depends on him, on his judgement. He knows so much that she has no inkling about. Just living with him is an experience in educating herself about so many things. He always seems to know the right thing to do, somehow. And she respects that in him. She always waits for his advice, to hear from him how he thinks about things before she makes up her mind. He’s always telling her she should have more confidence in herself, in her ability to work things out for herself. She’s intelligent in her own right, and she should recognize that in herself, he says. There’s nothing whatever wrong in her ability to discern things.

Well, when she had been cautious around the two dogs from upstairs he had gently taken her in hand, shown her how quiet and non-threatening they were. Two huskies. You’d think with two dogs Edith and Robert would prefer to live downstairs, not up on the second floor. Easier access to the outside with the dogs, that kind of thing. They really doted on those dogs. And, she learned, it was true, they were quiet dogs, never bothered anyone. She would often be startled though, feeling that someone was in the room with her - the kitchen, for example - and she would turn around and there they would be, looking in at her from the doorway, watching her, their alternate blue-green eyes focused on her as though they were interested in what she was doing.

She never wanted to encourage them. So she would turn her back and ignore them, and they would quietly pad away, back upstairs. They weren’t supposed to come down to their part of the house. They sometimes did, anyway, when Edith or Robert were careless, not aware of where their dogs were. Greg said not to mind, just to think of them as kind of phantom presences. They made little sound, no bother to them.

And they were used to us, to seeing us around all the time, in any event. We often invited Edith and Robert to dinner, and they reciprocated. Sometimes we’d have a barbecue and invite other neighbours over, too. It’s a nice street, with nice houses and nice people. Lots of small kids around, too.

There’s an elementary school only a street away. It’s where we plan to send our own kids, when we have them, and when they are old enough. And that might be a good time for me to return to school, to do a little catch-up. Because I would like to finish my Grade 12. Greg thinks I should, he says it’s a good idea. Just to have the paperwork because, he says, I’m smart enough and know enough and can pick up enough on my own. He says I should consider life itself an ongoing education. He’s that smart. It works for him, although he’s got a university degree.

“You keep selling yourself short”, he keeps telling me. “You’re a whole lot more intelligent than you think you are, and I should know”, he says.

“If you say so”, I tell him.

“I do!” he always says, hugging me. I love it when he does that. Not telling me I’m smart, but when he’s so impulsive, when he grabs me, and hugs me, and kisses me, and holds me close. I just adore it when he does that. He cherishes me, he says. Imagine that, being cherished. I told my mother that once, what he says to me. And she laughed.

“That’s nice”, she said. “We’ll see how long that lasts, before everything gets to feel kind of stale, and you along with it.”

I was really offended. “That’s an awful thing to say!”

“Well, honey-child, awful it may sound to you, but it’s the truth. You’re just a kid, it’s puppy-love.”

“Greg’s no kid. He’s pretty adult, he’s a mature adult, and he loves me and doesn’t mind telling me that.”

“Yes, you’re kind of lucky, that way. It’s always nice to hear. Good for the old ego. But trust me, I’m your mother, I’ve seen a whole lot you couldn’t ever begin to imagine. I’ve had the experiences, I know what it’s like once the bloom of an early marriage loses its appeal. Best to know, better to be prepared, than to have it hit you in the face.”

“Mom! What you’re saying happened to you, it isn’t going to happen to me!”

“You think so? Well, you’re not alone, you’ve got plenty of company. Things always start out sweet and cozy before they begin to deteriorate, and once that happens, the relationship degrades so fast your head will spin.”

“Why are you telling me these things? Why are you speaking about these things to me? My relationship with Greg is on firm ground and nothing is going to change that. I don’t challenge him and berate him and blame him the way you always did with Dad. I don’t make his life a living misery!” I didn’t want to say those things, but I felt I had to, to defend myself, and to defend Greg, too for that matter.

Mom shrugged. Sometimes she knows when she’s gone too far. After that she was non-committal, non-confrontational.

Not long after that my pregnancy was over. In the sense that our baby was born. I could hardly believe it. For that matter, nor could Greg. He didn’t care that we had a baby girl, it was just the same to him. He was thrilled, out-of-his-mind happy. We had agreed I’d stay home for the baby. At least for a while, maybe until she is two or three, he thinks. Longer, if I want to It’s up to me, he says. He would be happy if I wanted to just stay at home, look after the baby for as long as I want to. Our baby.

And, he said, there might be more, more kids if I’d be agreeable. He would like a family of at least a few kids. As for me, I’m not sure. What I want, I mean. I mean, in a sense I’m still just a kid myself. That’s what I meant, when I said I felt as though I’d been ambushed. Ambushed right out of my teen years, is what I meant.

But on the other hand, I guess you could say I went into this with my eyes wide open. I’m no dunce, I know about restraint and contraceptives, all of that. But when I’m with Greg, it’s like that’s all I want out of life. He’s considerate and sensitive to my feelings, and I have complete trust in him. We talked about all of this, beforehand.

So it’s something we both wanted, a baby, a child we would love and share. It’s just that, sometimes, I think it’s too much, too soon. Oh, I know my mom had me when she was 18, so I’m kind of a year and a little more ahead of her. I know, because she has told me so often, that she resented me coming along, as though I had anything to do with it. I will never, ever feel that way about Melody.

It’s true I’m feeling really tired all the time. But what else to expect, she’s only six weeks old. She has needs that I’ve got to tend to, because I am, after all, her mother. But it is tiring, and it’s a lot to get used to. There’s so much to think about, to remember to do, looking after her. Greg is good, he helps whenever he can, when he’s home from work, and on the week-ends. But I don’t like to ask him to do things that I can do, after all he works hard, too.

Anyway, Melody has changed a whole lot of things. There’s no more spontaneity, about anything, anything at all. We’re disciplined now in a way we’ve never had to be. In observation of her schedule. And we worry about her all the time. Any sounds she makes that we’re not familiar with, and try to interpret. If she’s eating all right, and, you know, the other stuff; changing her diaper constantly. Diaper rash, that’s another thing to look out for.

My breasts are swollen, and my nipples are sore. She’s emphatically taken to nursing. I have experienced none of the problems I’ve read so much about. She latched on without much prompting on my part. She can find her own way around the landscape of my upper body. She sucks, and the milk flows.

Her tiny fists clench themselves into hard little balls of determination. Greg adores her. She’s healthy and that’s so important to us. We want her to have every opportunity that life can offer her. She’s such a teeny, tiny thing, yet Greg has talked about university already. He thinks she could be a scientist, a lawyer, anything she wants because she’ll have the brains and we’ll stimulate her to think for herself and be ambitious to achieve anything she aspires to.

I don’t quite know what to do. Everything seems utterly pointless. As though the future has simply evaporated into nothingness. It all seems so black, so bleak, without any hope. And I don’t know how to console Glen. Even though my heart feels as though it’s been torn out of my chest, and my head won’t stop aching, he seems more inconsolable than me. He just sits there. He won’t do anything, nothing at all, won’t move from where he sits, mourning. It was hard enough, the funeral, her little casket, holding whatever was left of her tiny frail body, so dependent on us, on me. We got through that. I’ve no memory of it, actually. People were kind. That dimly penetrated. Hushed, whispered sounds, little else.

I am awfully tired, but I know this is a tight spot I’ve got to get over. It’ll get a whole lot easier as she gets a little older. It’s this first bit of her existence, our little girl, when her mother is still groping around for self-assurance, responding to those demanding needs. The insecurity will pass, I know, partly because Greg encourages me to believe that, and partly because I know it will, and then I’ll be more confident, less stressed, less tired.

Getting up in the early hours of the night and morning is difficult, but that won’t last, either, as she matures and her feedings become a little more regularized, organized, less time-sensitive. I know that, because I’ve read it in some really good baby books. That’s Greg again, anxious for me to be reassured, to have all the information I need. He knows how much of a reader I am, omnivorously reading everything I can get my hands on, just latterly diverted to reading books like this. And barely having the time, now, even for that.

When my mother came over late last week, she fussed a bit over the baby. Actually, it was only the second time she saw Melody. The way she took to her almost made me warm entirely to my own mother. To edge slightly beyond the emotional gulf I’ve always felt that strained our relationship.

She watched while I nursed Melody, and said how old-fashioned I was. I just shrugged, changed her diaper, got her ready for sleep. It’s the best nutrition a baby could have, the most natural, and it beings us both, I know, emotional fulfilment. I can’t say that to my mom, she would just raise her eyebrows as she always does, and express that gruff, cynical laugh of hers. We just don’t think alike, strange as that is.

She picked up her purse and I knew exactly what she planned to do.

“No smoking here, Mom.”

“Aw, forgot. Well, how about we go out to the deck, I can smoke there, can’t I?”

“Sure, Mom, go ahead.”

“Well, c’mon, I want you to come with me. The baby’s been fed, she’s sleeping, and secured. Just leave her there, and come on out with me. So we can talk.”

Talk, I wondered. What about? Anything and nothing. Mom likes to talk. Mostly about herself. I just shrugged, made sure Melody was fastened into her car seat securely, tucked the blanket closer around her, set the car seat on top of the table, leaned over to kiss her moist little forehead, and followed mom out the sliding door. The deck is right alongside the kitchen. I left the glass door slightly ajar.

“I’ve moved back in with Jack again”, Mom announced. “I think he’s learned his lesson. He begged me to come back. I’m easy.”

She’s a great one for teaching high-decibel “lessons”. My childhood years were fraught with the fall-out of those lessons. Directed toward Dave, my dad, and me as well. High-pitched declarations of being fed up with being hard done by. Nothing anyone ever did, around her seemed to satisfy her. She found fault with everything, and her screams would echo throughout the house, deafening us, as we cringed helplessly under one assault after another. I wasn’t sorry to leave home.

“How long is that supposed to last?” I asked, recalling the succession of men she has lived with since the final separation from my dad. I’ve lost count. One relationship after another, all of them collapsed. Emotional investments gone awry.

She shrugged. “As long as it does”, she responded. She liked to talk about how abusive men were, how much she had put up with trying to find the perfect mate, someone who would respect her many endowments, someone she could rely upon. She had no problem netting men. They were always attracted to her good looks, sharp wit, her dramatic flair. And no mistaking her qualities as far as her professional work ethic and capabilities. She always brought home the bacon; her salary level far exceeding that of the men she took up with.

She always said how disappointed she was that I had interrupted my education, that she anticipated more intelligence from me. In a sense, I regret that too, but I do intend to remediate the situation as soon as I can, return to school, and then enrol in college courses. I can do it, I know I can, and I will.

We talked, she smoked her cigarette and I made to return to the kitchen, but she held me back. “Relax” she said, “for God’s sake. Take a break from that routine of yours. The baby is sleeping soundly, just sit there and take it easy.” She had another cigarette.

When, some 20 minutes later we returned from outside it was to find a silent chaotic scene of pure hell. Silence screamed. The dull, heavy thud of my life collapsing fell over me, and I almost evaporated at the sight of evil. The sinister, blood-curdling scene of a dog slinking out of the room, silently padding away, leaving its prey, my baby, half consumed, unrecognizable from the beautiful tiny human that I had left, become an object some lunatic hand had fashioned out of dead clay, with a swirling display of garish bloody guts spilling from its interior; a model for medical science to teach its practitioners the inner mechanism of a human body.

I felt my mother’s arms pulling me, one of her hands open, clasping my eyes so I could no longer see. I heard a horrible keening shrieking sound, and wondered why my mother was screeching so horribly, since no one had done anything wrong. I felt myself fall, while being supported, and then there was nothing more to feel, to hear, to see, to acknowledge.

I read the headlines later, much later. I don't know who had saved them, carefully cut them out, and set them away for, presumably, later scrutiny. They went something like this: "Excellent mother" charged in death"; "Quebec teen found her baby mauled by dogs". I have been arraigned in a youth court on a charge of manslaughter.

Greg is frantic. He got me a lawyer. In court, the lawyer said "She lost her baby yesterday and less than 24 hours later she is arrested and charged. She found her baby dead, devoured by a dog. It's a sight she will surely never forget."

The Crown prosecutor explained to the media that the manslaughter charge stemmed from my failure to provide "the necessities of life" to my baby, resulting in Melody's death.

Seriously

Oh yes, these are serious
working dogs. That they are
also young and very small
inclined to mischief is 
beyond dispute, but also
beyond the point. The point
is they can always be
relied upon to guide us
unerringly on our daily
walk in the woods, concerned
that we not lose our way.
They work hard to alert us
to the presence of interlopers.
When house-cleaning or
gardening chores are underway
there they are, helpfully and
industriously working to
ensure our labours are not
in vain. Whatever in the world
would we do without them?


 

The Youth Vote

Her choices are scrupulously
considered by design on her
journey toward adult maturity.
She chose to spurn social media,
incongruent with her distaste of
empty facade. From a menu of
choices she has chosen university
to expand her cognitive skills
and law to launch a profession.
Much earlier she pondered the
barbarity of consuming animal
flesh, choosing to refrain. Years
back she thrilled when a handsome
young politician honing his
people skills hugged her on a
high school tour, planning to
launch himself in conquest of
high political office. This day
presented her first opportunity
since achieving the age of majority
to cast her vote, a decision for
whom was agonizingly deliberated
and it was not cast in favour of
he who aspired to the youth vote.

Destiny's Child

Blonde, pert and female, the
tiny tot will never in her
future be modest and demurely
look elsewhere than within
herself for authority to act
and never, ever suffer
uncertainty for those
stultifying curtailments of
attitudes toward life are
clearly not included in her
genetic endowment surfeit
as it is in self-confidence
wit and a view of life's
opportunities given to those
capable of and willing to
grasp that golden ring
tantalizing lesser psyches
just beyond their reach. She,
on the other hand, manifests 
her future in shades of beaming
pleasure in firm control of
any situation faced by a fully
competent mind attuned
to her very own destiny.


 

 

Nature's Orders

In a tumult of frenetic early
morning activity doves and
sparrows, cardinals and
chickadees crowd the
birdfeeder. Although the sky
too is crowded, with dark
clouds on this extremely cold
morning, the sun briefly
insists on its turn and the
little scene is warmed by
the bright cast of rays
transforming the ordinary
to a vision of cheerful
expectation of a day
unfolding as it would. It
would, as it happens, continue
its chill devotion to seasonal
change, and before long there
was no more sun, but there
was occasioned flurries of snow
and the grey squirrel that has
featured lately up, around and
at the birdfeeder unceremoniously
scattered the birds, ensconcing
itself at the prime location to
extract what it would to great
advantage, while unnoticed by 
the squirrel, a neighbourhood cat
quietly prowled its way behind
shrubbery awaiting its advantage.