That Sporting Life

She knew how to drive, but chose not to. That hardly diminished her value and her abilities in his estimation. That was fine with him. He didn’t at all mind timing his day to suit the hours she chose. They hadn’t any children, had no intention of ever starting a family. They were just fine, the two of them, able to spontaneously do as they wished, enjoy all the recreational and travel pursuits that appealed to them.

Working at a bank, but pursuing a university degree, attending after-hour classes several times a week kept her busy enough. Her studies took up enough of her time. And he was inordinately proud of her, of her determination to gain her degree. He encouraged her, spoke boastfully to any of his colleagues who knew her about how well she was doing. His intelligent capabilities quite rivalled his. They were quite the pair.

The days she attended after-hour classes he tended to while away the working hours by actually postponing attending to his work. Instead, he embarked on a circuit of rounds, dropping off to see various of his colleagues on other floors, other sections, intent on maintaining his workplace social network. And just to exercise his sheer love of banter, of departmental gossip, of discussions with respect to new opportunities. He loved to network, to socialize, to gather new people into his sphere of acquaintance. And you never knew who might turn out to be useful or influential at any time.

Late in the afternoon he would drift back to his desk, begin to attend to his own work. After the building had emptied almost at an eye-blink rate - everyone but him anxious to leave, get home to their families, look to their leisure pursuits - he was still there, working industriously away, clearing up his files. He worked overtime. And all that overtime added up, for him. The additional time-and-a-half, even though he knew perfectly well it was generally frowned upon, became addictive. Even if his superior had to defend his inflated pay in response to the deputy minister’s pointed observations. The department had been asked to cut its operating budget especially with respect to overtime.

But he knew he was a valuable asset to his section. He knew he would be protected. Austerity needn’t affect him. (He had received a bit of a scare when his superior’s secretary who had access to her boss’s email account, had emailed a chastising warning about all the overtime he was accumulating, saying he wouldn’t be able to cover for him indefinitely, and recommending that he cease and desist. He’d noted, belatedly, that those whom he himself supervised had gathered around his cubicle, and, noting his expressing on reading the email had burst out laughing. Which was when it was revealed to him that this had been a bit of a practical joke.)

He laughed with them. It was no secret, and he had never attempted particularly to hide what he was doing. And no one in a supervisory role over him seemed to be sufficiently concerned to discuss it with him, so he felt more than justified in continuing his little practise. He would leave the building just as the evening cleaning staff arrived. Responding to his own clockwork, picking his wife up at the corner entrance of the university quadrangle beside the business administration building.

It wasn’t all work for them, by no means. They were both avid sports buffs. For him, more than for her. His was a fascination with extreme sports, actually. He loved motorcycles, and drove one. A sidecar for her. They both enjoyed mountain biking. And they became bored with the mountain biking trails set aside for bikers, separate from those meant for hikers, and couldn’t care less when irate hikers, sometimes with startled and wildly barking companion animals, would berate them as they sped past after having come up unexpectedly, silently behind the hikers, on trails they knew held signage warning bikers to avoid. Trouble was, those just happened to be the trails that were most spectacularly exciting to someone on a bike. And the park wardens did little to patrol the area and to apprehend those that flouted the rules.

He enjoyed and relished the rush he felt hearing the (patent-protected) roar of his Harley-Davidson, which his wife had affectionately named ‘the beast’. They rarely missed an opportunity to enjoy Motorcycle Week by ripping down the interstate highways to Laconia in New Hampshire, where the adventure-gregarious couple loved to mingle with the motorcycle crowd. Meeting up with enthusiasts from all over North America, and as far as Venezuela (where the Venezuelan bikers complained about non-government-subsidized gas pumps) and they got to see exotic, unorthodox, anti-establishment, but happily civil, counterparts in an atmosphere of friendly rivalry.

They, unlike many that arrived in their thousands, thundering down the highways in scattered groups, rain or shine, were properly suited up with leathers and impact-saving helmets, in a state that had no highway safety laws insisting on such, and where buckling up 'because it’s the law', was meant for minors only; the state whose motor-vehicle license plate logo “live free or die” more than adequately expressed their mass credo. Fact was, there wasn't a year that went by that some poor dude driving along the White Mountain highways didn't get to meet his maker when he lost control of his bike on rain-soaked roads, waterplaining beyond control.

And sail-boarding, they both loved that. Loved the choppy water on a windy lake. To get out there, regardless of the weather, and challenge nature with their skills in handling their sailboards. Manoeuvring them close to upset for that extra heart-thumping excitement of danger, and then skilfully turning them around just when it seemed a collision would be inevitable. But area lakes were tame. And they loved to go out to Cape Hatteras several times a year - spring and fall - to challenge nature at her most merciless. Extreme weather warnings, approaching storms did nothing to cool their - particularly his - ardour for meeting the danger that nature meted out to the unwary and the unexperienced. He needed that challenge. To feel fully alive, to feel his veins bursting with the effort of controlling his sailboard in the face of huge, tossing, frothing waves hitting the far shores, and the puny board and sail, and the human intent on controlling both. His wildly beating heart, even the headache that would overtake him as he challenged weather and lake conditions exhilarated him beyond belief. Later, he would be flooded with a great wash of supreme satisfaction, of accomplishment, of pride in his own arrogance that he had faced the worst that nature could throw around and had handily survived.

He brought back lots of videos to show to his colleagues at work. He felt challenged to do that too, in light of the fact that another of his colleagues boasted about his mountain climbing prowess, and always brought in too many photos and videos of clambering well above the tree line in some pretty inaccessible places, where mountain peaks marched in lock-step one against the other, accessed by his determined colleague. Who faced off some fairly intimidating weather conditions in ascending some of those peaks, but nothing really in comparison, he felt, to what he managed to do, in the open, raging waters tossed around on his sailboard and coming out the other end of peril through sheer, heady adventure.

In some ways he was a traditionalist, however. He owned an SUV, the biggest, most expensive that General Motors produced. And prided himself on servicing it himself. Light mechanical maintenance (despite the cautions in the warranty). He didn’t sweat the small stuff, like changing oil, that kind of thing. He’d always done it, always would. Just as he looked after ‘the beast‘ pretty much on his own.

He’d been thinking about getting a sport car, too. Plenty of room in that double garage. Sitting beside the new house they recently bought. The houses spaced fairly far apart, in a part of the far-flung reaches of the city newly amalgamated to include the suburbs and beyond. Beyond was where they bought their new home. Situated on their own one-and-a-half acres. The house, built of solid brick, with a turret no less, and a grand, sweeping staircase. Built 40 years ago, on a prestigious piece of real estate, named Forest Pine Heights. The house had needed some refurbishing, and they’d get around to it all, eventually. It had been a steal, actually. They’d been hunting around for a while, were glad to sell their much smaller tract house in a near suburb, to take possession of this beauty.

One thing she did that he didn’t, was run. In the evenings, when they got home from work, she’d go out for a short run in the neighbourhood. One good way of getting to know your way around. She became a familiar sight, pumping her arms and legs, running without stop for an hour, before slumping back home again. On the week-ends, after a leisurely late breakfast, she’d go out for an hour’s run. He’d be busy puttering around with something, usually in the garage.

On this occasion he was changing the oil in the SUV.

When she returned from her run, she wondered why he hadn’t yet finished, wasn’t in the house. So she looked into the garage, and there he was, still in there.

The big vehicle had slid off the ramps he had run the two front wheels up on. Something he had done countless times before. Not just with this vehicle, but all the predecessor-vehicles they'd owned over the years. He knew what he was doing, he always felt confident that he was functionally capable and careful. And he was, most certainly.

It was just that times time something went awry. Unexpectedly. He had no time to react. The vehicle had somehow managed to slide off the ramps. The SUV slammed backward. And it had backed him into the closed garage door. Seeing him crushed, half-slumped, the vehicle pinning him, she slowly, casually turned back into the house and numbly dialled 911.
It seemed to her as though she was a disaffected onlooker to some peculiar event, as though she was watching a film, something on television. Everything looked strange. She felt dazed, recognized nothing familiar, even though this was her own house, and that was her husband out there in the garage of the new house they were so proud of.

His colleagues were shocked to hear on the local news that evening that someone they were so familiar with had made the news. His tragic death left his widow with a large house to rattle around in. She would have to become accustomed to driving herself around.

And people reading about the misadventure in the next day’s newspaper silently told themselves - those who still did their own oil-changes - that it might be a good idea to consider having it done at the dealer’s or the corner garage.

Grandchild

There she is, the lone
grandchild, basking in
the adoration of grandparents
hailing the exquisite
existence of one of
life's true miracles.

The child lingers on the
cusp of adolescence
venturing awkward steps
into adulthood, flashes
of the child still readily
apparent and exhibited.

Her adoring grandparents
see physical perfection,
applaud her lyrical grace
and pithy observations.

They delight in the presence
of this chimera whose
every emotion they clearly
read and exult in,
perfection incarnate.

Was it not ever so?

The Crystalized Wood

y






























































The Sky has rained frozen tears
for days, mourning the passage
of yet another year, bringing
us closer to old agedness.
How peculiar its empathy, for
we feel no such sorrow.

As we move through the woods
they too weep, but their grief
expresses their loss of twigs,
branches, limbs brought to
the snow-cushioned ground
with weight of snow and ice.

Tree trunks are glassed with ice
swaddling. The day mild enough
so droplets of melt move under
the ice sheathing like dark bugs
crawling down the trunk.

Finger-thick ice has brought
green boughs to utter decline
littering the forest floor. Above,
silently cruises the dark form
of a lonely crow. No wind, but
damp air and vanishing ice fog.

The sky, a bright pewter awning
has relented, halted its freezing
assault, and presents slivers of blue,
and there, the struggling sun. The
weeks-long frozen creek has
won its reprieve, runs free, burbling.

A World Of Ice

Overnight our world has been
transformed, the sound of rain
tinkling our doors and windows
when the ambient temperature
should result in soft, billowy
clouds of white snow crystals.

Through bedroom windows a
soft apricot glow spread interior
light where darkness should yet
have reigned, reflecting not snow
but the mysterious light of the
cosmos glancing off evanescent
and bright crystals of ice.

The upper atmosphere has
played its little end-of-year prank
and what has streamed earthward
from the vast winter sky helmeting
the ground below has gradually
inexorably sheathed everything below.

Every tree trunk, limb and branch
has been limned in silver-white
the weight bringing down pine
and cedar boughs to cling to their
trunks sturdily now encased in ice.

Rooftops formerly sugared high
with snow now bear brittle frozen
sheets of sheer ice thickening as
daylight brings night to its close.
No birds will fly this day, nor
furred creatures venture outward.

Few living creatures take delight
in this gleaming beauty of the night
nor the later increase of the bright
and fabulous landscape. Fantastical
traceries of laced embroideries
etched on windows newly glazed
reminiscent of finest Belgian lace.

The treachery of broken boughs
hydro lines breached in the urban
landscape, and roads and highways
rendered dangerous pays homage to
nature's affect. Boundless beauty on
the one hand, cruel danger on the other.

Brownies, Anyone?

She was on her best behaviour. She really, really didn’t want anything to go wrong this morning. Last night she had laid out her wardrobe for the coming day. A ritual she had long accustomed herself to. A bit of a time-saver. Learned that from her mother who was always in a great big hurry. Doing that she hadn’t to worry what she’d put together in the morning, and with the time saved she could take a more leisurely shower. Even so, she would almost miss her bus, half the time.

Of course there were other things she had to do, like grab some breakfast, throw a few items together for lunch. Sometimes she’d get so interested in a novel, she’d sneak peeks at it before leaving the house, and just kind of forget the time. Her mother got kind of miserable about having to remind her. At her age, her mother said, she should have a keener sense of personal responsibility. Yeah, sure, Mom.

At her age. Well, she was in her teens, her teeny-teens, half-way through thirteen. She had chosen a white shirt with black jeans, and a crystal pendant, pink crystal in the shape of a heart that she really liked. Then she had changed her mind, because she’d already worn a white tee-shirt the day before. So she kind of reversed things, a black tee-shirt, with brown jeans, and the crystal pendant would be just fine. Even better, come to think of it, on a black shirt. Maybe a little of that blue eye-shadow? That’s another thing; putting on a little make-up took time, to do properly.

A little make-up. She definitely wasn’t interested in slathering herself with the stuff. Nothing on her skin. No lipstick, ugh. Just a bit of colour around her eyes. One of her better features. Her grandmother said she had wonderful hair, but she hated it. Her grandmother was critical of her wearing any makeup. But that’s what grandmothers are like, she consoled herself. When she mentioned this to her grandmother, she had laughed and said “that’s because grandmothers are old”. “No!” she’d responded, without thinking it through, “you’re not old, you’re Grandma.” Eliciting another indulgent laugh from her grandma.

She could get away with anything with her. Not so with her mother. Her mother thinks she knows everything about her, but she doesn’t. She thinks she can look clear through her, read everything in her mind. Whereas her grandmother is always surprised by things she says. Her grandmother always says kids these days are incredibly well taught in schools, they know so much, she can hardly believe it. Her mother says kids these days are incredibly egotistical, just think about themselves, think they know everything, and they’re rude, as well. So what’re you going to do about it? Life, it’s just life.

When she mentions these things to her grandmother, she sighs, and says it’s another world altogether. She just can’t keep up with things. It’s confusing, too fast-paced, and too invested in things that don’t really matter. Peoples’ values are confused and lacking. Who, she says, rolling her eyes skyward, can even understand this generation?

She’s got something there, who can? She still can’t puzzle out herself, why her best friend sometimes seems like a stranger to her. If they’re such good friends - and they’ve known one another for as long as she could remember - how come she still seems like she has some kind of secret agenda that she reserves for herself only. And how is it that she herself doesn’t feel comfortable enough to confide in her when there are things that truly puzzle her? It’s like when she’s at an impasse with some of her math homework and she knows she could call another friend who’se a wiz at math, but she doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to admit to anyone that she could use some help. Instead, she tackles it, determined to work it through for herself.

Christmas lunch at school today. Following hard on last night's musical-dance performance for parents. A school tradition, just like the pot luck lunch they were having today, open yet again to any parents who wanted to attend. Her mother, of course, wouldn't be there, had to work. Hadn't come last night either, too bushed from everything she had to attend to; single parent, full-time job in the workforce, and another at home.

As for her, contemplating all the goodies laid out on two long tables, she chose to spurn the casseroles and pigged out on the desserts. Like the brownies that looked so luscious. And they were, they were just right, heavenly. With that deep, dark chocolate flavour and moist interior, just the way she likes them. Just the way she sometimes bakes them herself. This time, though, she’d baked a big batch of chocolate chip cookies. She’d take brownies over chocolate chip cookies any day, but she thought the cookies would go further.

She was still smarting over Morgan yesterday snarling at her to ‘shut up!’ when she’d been complaining about Miss McCullough. As though Morgan never does that. As though Morgan isn’t the one who is really the very one person who they could all count on to moan about Miss McCullough and her ranting hysterics, treating them all to those unbelievable melt-downs.

What kind of a teacher is that who can’t even get her act together? And expecting them to, after she screams at them that they’re impossibly stupid. She’s the retarded one, not them. Obviously. So she’d said to Morgan that she could just shut up herself. God, she was so tired of all that snipping and snapping back and forth. Why couldn’t they all just get along? Well, they do, most of the time, but sometimes something just seems to go kind of funny, and everyone acts truly weird.

She was glad to see that today everyone seemed in a pretty good mood. Maybe it was that everyone was looking forward to the open house. A Christmas special, an annual event at the school, where parents who had nothing better to do in the middle of the day would come out and be entertained by their coached kids, and eat all the food that they’d themselves brought over for the group pot-luck.

Not that the kids were looking forward to the parental-presence part of it. What kid is thrilled at seeing their mother or father at their school? There’s always that lurking danger that they’ll pull off some really stupid stunt that’ll make their kid look bad. It’s the thought of all that food, just waiting there; tantalizing their noses, and then their taste buds. That's what got them all excited, frantic to get at those tables.

So of course they all over-ate. Everything tasted really scrumptious. Everyone wanted to try a little bit of this and some of that, and hey, look what’s in that casserole over there! Lemmeatit! They were standing around, groaning, holding their bursting stomachs, and kidding one another about all the weight they’d gained, standing sideways so their bursting guts could be evaluated. At least the skinny kids were doing that. The ones with some flesh on them weren’t that eager to get into that particular game.

She thought that was pretty funny, actually. She had half a mind to tease Sydney, but didn’t, remembering what her mother said about the seriousness of some kids’ preoccupation with looking mean and lean. Sydney was all right, not too bright, and too concerned with her silhouette. Which was kind of crazy, since she was one of the few girls in the class who really didn’t have much of a silhouette. She resembled a notional drawing of a girl; straight up and down. So it was puzzling why she was so into her image.

Anyway, Bryanna and Lorna were standing right beside her when they each decided they’d go for another dessert. Actually, most of their lunch, like hers, consisted of ‘dessert’. With a few exceptions, like pizza slices and macaroni-and-cheese casserole, and a couple of samosas. She decided to go for another brownie, and snapped it up. She didn’t realize, because she wasn’t really looking, that the brownies hadn’t been cut right through and there was a companion piece to the one she held securely between her fingers. The extra piece didn’t quite make it, ending up on the floor. She knew that Bryanna and Lorna had seen what’d happened, but they looked the other way.

A dilemma. A few scenarios raced through her mind. Pick it up and put it back on the plate? Eauuu! Then some other kid would pick it up and enjoy it, never realizing it was full of germs. Couldn’t do that. Pick it up and place it in with the waste? What if the person who’d brought the brownies saw that and thought some ingrate felt their hard work was garbage? Embarrassing to both of them.

This weighing of options seemed to take forever in her mind, but of course she realized that wasn’t the case at all. Finally, she decided she would do nothing. Just leave it where it lay, beside the table, visible enough. Someone seeing it there would dispose of it. Knowing they weren’t the one who knocked it off the plate. And sure enough, when she looked back a short while later, it was gone.

Most of the kids in the class had tried to influence Miss McCullough about their performance time. They were really pretty psyched up right then, they told her, ready to give a terrific performance. Couldn’t they do it before lunch? They should’ve known better, understood that in their interactions with their teacher a kind of automatic reversal occurred; whatever they’d recommend she would resist and do the opposite. A little bit of psychology goes a long way she thought sourly; why couldn’t they ever remember?

So, as events unfolded, it was after lunch when she herded them back into their classroom, gave them a few short, sharp reminders about her choreography and pumped them up with endearments like “don’t make a mess of things like you usually do”, and sent them out on the stage to do their best. They did their best, and suffered for it, moving about as gracefully as a herd of rhinos. Their stomachs were full to bursting. She regretted she hadn’t gone to the bathroom, and thought her physical discomfort was well replicated by the others, evidence plain in their grimacing faces, belying the ‘elegance’ of their performance.

Should’ve known things would turn out like that. Don’t they always?

Letter To A Grandchild

Dear Angel(yne)

It was really nice to hear from both you and Mommy about that lovely surprise that Allison treated you with on Sunday. Imagine, waking up, looking out the window and seeing baskets full of chocolate, along with stuffed bears. Sounds more like a nice dream than a waking-up experience to me. Lucky you!

We had a very nice Sunday too, although we had lots of work to do. Zayde decided he would empty one of our composters to spread the compost over the gardens. Which he did manage to do. He was able to get four wheelbarrows-full, and spread two of them on the gardens in the front and the remaining two on the side gardens and the gardens in the back. And believe me, they reek!

You don’t know what the word “reek” means? Guess. How about stinky? Well, what is pure stinky-smelly to us, appears to be more like delicious-let-me-at-it! to Button and Riley. They sniff this stuff and go into pure rapture of discovery – yummy! Let me at it! Is that disgusting or what?

Next thing you know, we’ll have to take them over to the veterinarian to have their stomach pumped out. Gah! What this means is that as long as the compost smells like that we’ll have to accompany them outside to make certain they don’t gobble the stuff up! What fun.

What did the big chimney say to the little chimney? Answer: You’re too young to smoke!

That was a nice, neat little pencil cartoon you did in that last letter that I just received. And to which I’m responding. Zayde opened it and read it out loud to me while I was doing some baking. Then I read it afterward, when I was sitting down to read the newspapers, relaxing. We both enjoyed your letter. And guess what? I’m laughing! So there!

Now you know, after going to work with your mother that not only does she do a lot of work related to thinking and planning and working alongside other people, but her work also involves a lot of getting about and walking around, so both her brain and her body are getting a good work-out. Right?

I’ve got to give you some advice: next time you try to write the word “dum” you should remember that it sounds just the way you spelled it, but you left out the silent letter which forms the correct spelling of the word. It is not DUM, but rather the correct spelling is: DUMB. Got it?

Having said which, I shall now relate a story about a dumb little doggy. All right, maybe she’s not dumb, it’s quite possible and I’m entirely willing to concede that it’s her owners that deserve the description. Here’s the story: Three days ago Zayde emptied one of our composters. The one that we’re no longer putting kitchen waste in, because we wanted to give the composter the opportunity to work it’s magic and turn all that kitchen waste consisting of grapefruit rinds, corn cobs, avocado skins and pits, lettuce, red pepper cores, cantaloupe rinds, and all the other stuff we toss into it – into nice decomposed compost. Well, Zayde took all that newly-produced compost (I shouldn’t say “newly-produced” exactly, because it takes a year to get compost out of all the kitchen waste) and filled up four wheelbarrows-full of it, and then went around to all the gardens, front and back of the house, sprinkling it liberally over the garden beds. That’s important when you want to enrich the soil, because of all the nutrients the decomposed waste contains. The garden uses it all to produce strong and healthy plants. Which is just what we want. Your mother could tell you all about that.

Well, guess what? Good compost isn’t supposed to smell. But guess what? Our finished compost always does. It literally reeks. Which means it smells awfully bad. Stinky, really stinky. But, just like the aged dog poop in the ravine that Button thinks it’s fun to roll it and Jordy loves to gobble up (Stevie too, I think) it smells tantalizingly good to dogs. Every chance Button gets now she heads straight for the garden beds, the sneaky little poop-head! She tries to gobble up as much of that muck as she can, before we can call her away.

Riley did a little bit of it too, but he soon lost interest, sensible little dog that he is (even if he is kind of stupid). But Button is a different story. She’s determined, despite that she knows it makes us angry with her, to get as much of that decomposed foodstuff into her belly as she can. Ugh! No kidding!

Furthermore, as happens every spring, we’ve got to keep a sharp eye on her when we’re walking through the ravine. Why, you might ask? Your mother knows why. When all the snow and ice melts it uncovers nasty stuff which is sitting on the forest floor happily deteriorating. We can’t really smell the stuff, whatever it is (often decomposing poop) but the dogs can and they love it. They make a beeline right for it, and then happily roll in it, or eat it. Button, it seems, has got over the eating part, and just enjoys rolling in it.

There’s a certain spot on the trail which we discovered much to our dismay, that it just one of those spots. Two days ago we forgot to watch her and then realized she had rolled in something fairly disgusting. All the detritus had to be brushed out of her hair when we got home, and then we had to scrub her with soapy water. Instead of remembering and trying to head her off on our Wednesday walk in the ravine, darned if it didn’t happen again.

So she got a good scolding, and no treat. It just so happens that the miserable spot she loves to roll in is located very close to where we always stop to give them treats, halfway through the walk. Two days in a row she has been denied her treat, the sneaky little devil. On Thursday we’ll take greater care.

We’re thinking of wrapping them both up and giving them as gifts to unsuspecting cat, er dog lovers.

Ta-ta for now! And Cheerio!

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.