An Honest Woman Read online

  So he arrives, Ray does. With Stan, the guy who looks after the cabins in the off-season. The two of them don’t even come to the front door; there goes the hug or handshake. I hear their voices downstairs. I’m rewriting the raunchy section, the one where Leland has her pinned and I’m wondering why I am making this guy use his dick like a weapon. Sure, yeah, sex n’ violence R us, but still. I mean, Leland’s not such a bad guy, not really. He’s an ordinary guy.

  My brother’s an ordinary guy too. And when he started to become a stranger to me, when we were in our early teens, I used to go rummage around in his room sometimes when he was out, looking for clues. Trying to figure him out. And once I found some drawings he’d made, in pencil. One of them, very lifelike, very well done for a fourteen-year-old, was of a naked woman, lying spread-eagled on her back. A wooden spike was driven deep between her legs. The most shocking thing, really, about this discovery was that I was not shocked. Not then, at age twelve. And not now. It was as if the drawing showed something I suspected anyway, something I’d known all along.

  I hear the men working downstairs. Get up from the desk. Rinse my mouth with Scope. Check my hair. Half an hour ago, the daily hello to myself was, oddly enough, a failure. That heat, my constant companion. But today, gone.

  I go downstairs to the basement and look at the two men. No acknowledgement. And when I speak? A nice warm greeting from Ray. And then awkwardness. So I say something stupid: “Well I think I’ll let you geniuses sort this one out.” They both look so insulted. And rightly so. Oh god, there’s the rub, the wretched horrid yawning gulf, chasm, between what we imagine and what we actually do. What we actually say. What we hope for and what happens. Dear God. I’m not getting anywhere near Ray today. Stan wasn’t in the script, what the hell do I do now?

  Well, when the two men come upstairs to announce that they’ve fixed the water system, I invite Ray to come back for tea, after he drops Stan off at his place. And he does. We talk about kids and music and this festival he went to. Would he like to stay for a beer? For cocktail hour, I call it. And he would. We talk of jobs and travels and friendships.

  And after a while, I say, “I’ve got some chicken I was going to throw on the barbecue. Would you like to stay for dinner?” And he says yes. We eat together, then sit in the living room and he is lovely. He doesn’t say anything ignorant or boring the whole evening. We have a few laughs. He stays ’til eleven. Then I walk him out to his car. We look at the stars; he turns to thank me and I rest my hand on the side of his face, kiss his cheek. “I hope I see you again.” And again, he says he’s around this area a lot. And he jokes that maybe next time I should take a hammer to the water system.

  But he never says my name. He doesn’t ask me any questions. He isn’t particularly curious about me, really. I touch him a couple of times — brush his arm when we sit out on the dock, put an arm around his shoulders when he’s doing the dishes. But he is absolutely rigorous about not touching me.

  After Ray drives away, I feel like a damn fool. Remove the black underwear, lie in bed stunned. But do sleep, eventually, after two Tylenol. Now I’m awake. Wide awake. It’s pitch black out, drizzling as it has all weekend. I listen to my new favourite REM song, “The Great Beyond.” The hug went by so fast I can barely remember it, can’t even remember what it felt like.

  Damn fool.

  After he drove off, I wanted to call his cell. come back. come back. come back.

  But the truth is, as we sat there in the living room, that last hour at least, I could feel my dream slip away; I was tired, I was scared, I didn’t think I could do it, I didn’t think I could cross that line. This is real. He is a real person. Every gesture, every scenario, every line of dialogue that had played so well in my head just seemed, I don’t know, crass. Desperate. Laughable. How do people cross that line? I used to know how to do it, but I guess I’ve forgotten or the rules have changed or something.

  And I didn’t come on to him at all either, not really. Well, I touched him, used his name, made some comments (okay guarded ones) to the effect that I thought he was cool. But no. I was way too cautious. I wish I could have told him how beautiful he is.

  Here’s the end of the story: I got up Sunday morning well before the slightest hint of dawn and walked out onto the deck. The lake and sky were black and silent. I was alone on the planet, and felt so. Couldn’t go back to sleep, realized that I hadn’t left a key out for the boys for when they come home from their dad’s. I didn’t want Matt to get home from hockey practice and wreck another window screen trying to break in. So shortly after five on a morning when I could have slept in, I started to pack. Partway through the packing, I let myself cry. A good, redemptive wail out on the deck. (Last night, I told Ray, “I hated it when my boys stopped crying. I’m a great promoter of crying. I think it’s good for you,” and Ray said, “Oh, they’re young yet. Once they get interested in girls, they’ll start crying again.”) Then I finished packing. Got away around seven. Still dark, but the world beginning to awaken.

  Last night, Ray said, “You know a lot of Buddhists say that most of us walk through life asleep.” He was talking about the festival where he’d blissfully danced with a completely naked young woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty.

  Soon as I drove over the creek, onto the secondary road, the fantasies welled up: there’ll be a call when I get home, an email. And I had to stop, tell myself no way, forget it, this is nonsense. Give it up.

  What I want to know is, where’s this shit coming from? I mean, for years now, fantasy didn’t exist for me. Sometimes I’d lie there at night, trying to summon some sweet dream like the ones that comforted me when I was younger: rapturous scenes of passion, renunciation, romance, heroism, lust, devotion. But the best I could come up with through my forties involved paid bills, decent report cards, maybe the ironing all done and put away. Now I’m overwhelmed by fantasy. It’s real life that seems improbable, ridiculous, an irritating distraction. Oh hell, this is mere hormone holocaust, that’s the explanation. Last gasp, the insistence of biology. One final blast of estrogen. Or more than that? What then? Does it have something to do with surrender?

  That’s why I had to revise the rough trade scene at Kensington Suites. Couldn’t stand Jay in that first draft — so smug, such a fucking mother hen. She pissed me off. What the hell does she know about what Leland needs, about anything?

  Nearly at the highway, it occurred to me that I could call him. Ray.

  I remembered his cell number. By heart.

  This past spring, just before this weird surge of lust, I had become forgetful, vague. People were irritated and worried. Darce questioned me about it, and I explained that it was just parts of my brain were fuzzy; for example, I was finishing the daily Scrabblegram in the paper but couldn’t add the scores correctly. My daughter said, “Oh okay, I get the analogy. No worries then.” Actually, I hadn’t been speaking figuratively, but one of the things I love about this kid is that she speaks fluent metaphor. Anyway, the fuzziness passed; not only has desire awakened but also memory. Once again I can look at a phone number once and remember it for days.

  By the turnoff onto the main highway, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. At the north end of the canyon, I pulled over at a viewpoint. Checked my wallet, and lo! the note he’d left was in there. And yes, I’d remembered the number correctly. Took several deep breaths. Caved. Said to myself, You can do this. Trembled, inside and out. Punched the numbers in but didn’t press send. Thought, This is too hard. I’ve already been incredibly brave, why should I have to be even braver? I’ve already phoned him. And invited him for tea. And invited him to stay for a beer. And dinner. I gave him a hug. And a kiss, on the cheek. It’s not fair that I have to do this too.

  But it was the only way to end this foolishness. The clock was on 7:40. I made a deal with myself to press send when it flipped to 7:41.

  I was rehearsed, expected his voicemail because it was still so early. But he answered. I said, “I
was remembering what you said to that cop on the way to that festival. ‘Well, if I don’t go for it now, I may never get another chance.’ So what I’d like to say to you is: I think you are just the most wonderful man, and I wish I had asked you to stay.”

  A part (a big part) of me hoped that this would make him relieved, and glad. But the truth is, he sounded merely surprised. Surprised, and possibly flattered. Cornered hadn’t occurred to me, until he paused and said, “Well. Thank you. That’s really nice of you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now go back to sleep.” Gawd. Such a mom. Like before he left to drive back to town last night and I’d asked whether he needed to use the bathroom first. God help me, I really did say that.

  “Okay,” he said. “Well, thanks. I hope I see you again. And you know where to find me.”

  “Sure. Take it easy.”

  And even after that, even after that humiliatingly diffident call, I don’t know, I tried, but I just couldn’t fight it down. Hope welled up, these silly girlish dreams. How strange for reproductive life to end in the same white heat as it began. Only my girlhood dreams were pure romance, rated G. The love theme from Elvira Madigan. Rock Hudson and Doris Day, pajama-clad, in twin beds. I did not develop the details, I did not know what’s possible.

  Jane Campion begins to capture it in Portrait of a Lady. Isabel’s feverish fantasy on the bed, after Goodwood has touched her face and she has sent him away. (I kept wanting to scream, Woman, are you out of your fucking mind? That’s Viggo Mortensen, for Christ’s sake!) Alone in the room, Isabel replays the moment, but she does not have the physical vocabulary. She dreams caresses, a fully clothed sensual orgy-lite with delicate attentions to her neck and cheeks and waist from all three suitors. She wants passion without really understanding what it is.

  So all the way back to the city, scenarios bubbled up, the hope of an unexpected knee trembler on the front porch of my house, but as the evening wore on, I began to let it go, to make peace with it. I’d spent last evening with a lovely, lovely man. I hadn’t expected to like him so much. I hadn’t really thought about who he was at all. Last night, he made some remark about intuition. I said, joking, “Ah, men don’t have intuition, do they?” He argued, said he believed they do, though it’s overlooked, disregarded, even dismissed. He said, “I don’t want to be a woman. I like being a man.”

  At eleven, I walked him out to the gate. The sky had cleared a bit, and we looked at the stars. He mentioned sleeping out under the stars just last week, on a camping trip with his daughter. The moment of goodbye came. I touched his face, kissed his cheek. He did not return the embrace.

  He is not thinking of me. At all. Whatever possessed me to think he ever was?

  Restless that night, woke to cramps, so rare and so random these days that I’d almost forgotten what they signify. Stumbled down the hall, a hot cramp twisting in my low back, a familiar muscular caress. The cramp delivered up dark rich clots at first, a crimson so deep it looked black. And then a gush. A fiery orange gush of blood, a rich bright swirl of colour that mesmerized me, filled me with obscure pride as I stood there, hand poised to flush. It reminded me of a Dabstract, those paint spatter canvasses we made at the Calgary Stampede when I was a kid. I wish I could have saved that blood mandala, put it in a cardboard frame and displayed it on the dresser. I made this.

  Me.

  (first draft of)

  FINAL DRAFT

  The Arts Tonight, CBC Radio

  Host: And can you tell me, Leland Mackenzie, how you and Jay McNair first met?

  Leland: I was coming in from the airport and heard her voice on the radio, reading from Richdale, doing publicity for her appearance at the festival that night. And I thought, “Gawd, that woman writes like a runaway lorry.” And the work was so tough, so strong, that of course I pictured this very chunky muscular creature with short-cropped hair and hiking boots.

  That night then, there was a reception prior to the reading and I was being herded about and glimpsed this nice little bit of crumpet across the room, thought I might want to chat her up. Never got close, though. So then the reading begins, and my gawd, it’s her. She’s the lorry. This wee thing —

  Host: And you, Jay McNair?

  Jay: Leland’s company delights me. He is never boring. Ever. To have Leland for my companion on the home stretch seems like the most incredible stroke of good luck.

  Host: On the home stretch?

  Jay: The latter part of life, maybe even the last third. And the delight of it is that our characters are now fully formed, we’ve each become who we were meant to be. And yet, still there’s this . . . conversation between us.

  Leland: And I’m pleased to say that I am well on my way to establishing myself as a Canadian. Not only can I order a large double double, I can even peel back the little tab so that it latches securely onto the lid. I’ve learned to remove my shoes at the door, and to say, at the correct moments, “Nice drop pass,” and “Through the five-hole.”

  (Laughter)

  Entertainment Canada, CTV: two shot, Jay and Leland.

  Interviewer (off camera): So Jay, can you tell us what it was that first drew you to Leland?

  Jay: His work, of course. And the fact that he has a really really big . . . vocabulary.

  Leland: (squeezes her shoulder, says in a stage whisper so that’s what we’re callin’ it these days, is it luv? then turns back to the interviewer) And, of course, what bowled me over about Jay was her nice tight little . . . paragraphs.

  Freeze two shot, zoom out to interviewer at news desk, barely suppressing a smile: By all accounts, Ms. McNair, age fifty-four, does have very nice tight little paragraphs. However, the question of Mr. Mackenzie’s . . . vocabulary remains a matter of —

  Hmm. Maybe not. A bit cutesy. What about this instead . . . ?

  FINAL DRAFT

  A Novel

  by

  Janet Mair

  She should not think that she was now free. With one exception, and that was that she was free not to love him any longer, and to leave him immediately. But if she did love him, then she was in no wise free.

  The Story of O, Pauline Reage

  Part One

  Toronto Literary Festival

  1.

  Oh my god, it’s him, thinks Jay, at the precise moment that her handler, Laurel, squeals, “Oh my god, is that who I think it is? Let’s go introduce you!” and grabs her by the arm.

  “No way.”

  “C’mon, it’ll be fun!” Laurel is surprisingly strong for someone who wears size zero.

  Jay struggles, protests, “I can’t, I’m too — no! Don’t you dare, I won’t know what the hell to — oh. Hello.”

  Laurel beams, says, “Leland? Hi, welcome to the festival! I’m from Great North Publishing, we distribute your work here. May I present Jay McNair? Jay is one of our newest writers and we’re very proud of her. I’m sure you know her novel Richdale?”

  He is tall, thin, sort of craggy. Dark hair worn a little too long, rimless glasses, thin face. She didn’t think he’d be so tall. He looks harassed yet wretchedly bored, slightly glazed and desperate, but he shakes her hand and says, “So pleased for you. I look forward to reading your work.”

  “Oh. And I am so . . . I am a serious ad — I’m uh . . . a huge fan.”

  “Thanks so much. You’re very kind.”

  Jay is now struck dumb. Here she is with one of the most celebrated living authors in the English language and she cannot come up with a single sentence. Well, I love you comes most immediately to mind, but somewhere in what’s left of her brain a tiny voice whispers not now.

  He’s used to this, obviously. He glances around the room, seeking deliverance from what James Joyce would have called her “confused adoration,” but can’t seem to find another familiar face. He takes a sip of his drink. He has beautiful hands. Too terrified to continue looking at his face, she decides to follow his hands. The moment stretches into eternity. She looks for Laurel, but she has flitted away.
She wants to cry.

  “So. Is this your first festival?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes it is. It’s quite . . . ” She gestures, a limp wave of her arm.

  He smiles, though. “Overwhelming? Yes, it is.” Nods at someone, takes a step back. “Well, I must — ” His voice! No doubt he has already forgotten her name. One more second and he’ll be gone.

  “You know,” she says, “one of my favourite scenes in your work, and I know it’s not a major thematic or dramatic scene, of course, but you know how some moments from a novel just really stick? It’s the moment in The Dark when the central character, the man, is in a little café in a French village, and he’s watching a family, and the father begins to mistreat the child — do you know the scene I mean?”

  “Yes, I believe I do.”

  “And the man tries to intervene but his French isn’t very good and he goes over to the father and ends up saying something like ‘if you touch that child again, I will knock my block off!’”

  Leland smiles very slightly. “Yes. How good of you to remember it.” Well, what the hell else can he say?

  He’s turning away, he has seen someone famous and important and not stupid — no, not even that, just someone who isn’t her. But then he stops, asks, “Why do you think you remember it?”

  “I’ve never really understood why that is, but I wonder about it sometimes, why we — ”

  A flurry of bangles and forest green silk and: “Leland! You must meet — oh hello so nice to see you — I’m afraid I must steal him just for a moment.”

  And he is gone. And she has made an ass of herself. And where the hell is Laurel?

  Jay heads for the bar. All around her in the lineup, people are shouting into each other’s faces with a noisy social hunger that makes the word carnivorous swim into her brain. No one knows her, though. She’s a nobody, thank god. She waits in line, and just before her turn comes, a voice behind her, right in her ear, says, “Those moments of transcendence, the felicitous coupling of authorial vision with readerly largesse of spirit, it mystifies me still, how that happens, how that chasm is breached, whether — ”