An Honest Woman Read online

  “Squat?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m going to need a dictionary.”

  “I didn’t understand anything about art at that point. Actually I still don’t, but anyway, I knew that these . . . things he painted, he called them masks, these twisted tortured, splattered human faces leaking off the edge of his canvases, I knew I felt these images in my chest. Does that make sense?”

  “Bacon’s paintings did that to me from the first look,” Leland says.

  “Yes, I know him, the screaming popes. So Theo. Well, that night I could hear him ki-aying outside, but I drifted off, and then before I knew it he’s in my room. He forgets his English when he’s drunk, so he stumbles in babbling in Dutch and just collapses on the bed beside me and passes right out. He has this dog, Boris, a big snarly Shepherd, very protective and scary, who grunts down at the foot of the bed. I realize I have to pee but I know if I set foot on the floor, Boris will take my leg off, so I cross my legs and go back to sleep. And in the morning, there’s all this drama. Irene — the woman Theo is having an affair with, the wife of the guy who runs the encounter groups — she comes into the room. I open my eyes and she’s just standing there at the foot of the bed, staring. Says not one word. Of course, Boris doesn’t growl at her. I don’t actually know whether Theo has taken his clothes off. I always slept naked then. But Theo’s still out cold — ”

  “Your virtue, such as it was, remained intact?”

  “Yes, definitely. Bit of a snuggle perhaps, but what I’m trying to get to is the sleep. With Theo beside me, I had the most amazing dreams I can ever remember. Colours I couldn’t have even imagined, swirling faces, everything liquid and shimmering, sparkling. Another world, or a glimpse of it.”

  He regards her in silence, sipping his tea. “Ah. And?”

  “And. Last night was like that. Not colours but . . . I can’t describe it. I mean, here I am in bed with somebody Really Bloody Famous, not to mention a serious hunk, and I fall asleep. And when I did there were these . . . not colours, though.”

  “Not reams of bloody print, I hope?”

  “No. Stories. Adventures. Around every corner, something amazing, wonderful. But way more important was, you know how in dreams you’re always trying to say, trying to tell, and either you can’t get the words out or there’s just this soundless scream?”

  “Yes, I know it well. I dream it all the time,” he says.

  “But last night, Leland, not that you were there in the dream, but . . . I don’t know. I just knew I had someone to tell. I just felt it. What did you dream?”

  He takes his time. Too long. But she waits.

  “A dream I often have,” he says slowly. “Watching a girl walk through a field. Saunter, actually. She has a dog with her. I dream it again and again. I don’t know why. The place seems familiar, but I know I have never actually been there, I’m sure of that.” He falls silent, rubs his eyes.

  Jay takes a deep breath, asks, “How was the phone interview?”

  “Fine,” he says. Warily.

  “And I expect you also had to make some calls.”

  “Yes,” he breathes.

  She sips, hesitates, then asks, very softly, “Who did you call?”

  “My agent.”

  “And?”

  “ . . . Home.”

  “Coward.”

  “My wife, then.”

  “Ah,” she says, “of course.”

  Silence.

  He shifts in his chair. Sets down his cup. “I dreamt, also, about a house in the country. It looks Georgian — sweeping grand double staircase up to a landing, where a woman waits for me. Welcoming me. She’s holding back a dog, by the collar. Sometimes I’m walking up to the staircase, sometimes I get out of my car. Last night I remember getting out of my car. It’s late, the woman is in her nightdress, but she welcomes me anyway. We do not know each other well, but I have asked to come to her and she has agreed. My call woke her up but now she’s waiting for me at the top of the stairs, holding back her dog. I go up the left side of the staircase, and she introduces me to the dog, gentles it, and then invites me inside.”

  “And?”

  “I never see what happens after I cross the threshold.”

  She does not speak.

  “You must have known, Jay. Don’t play the wounded innocent.”

  “I read your work, dipstick, not the literary gossip in the Times. We don’t get the Times out in the colonies, you know.” “You read author bios. You know damn well. Come on, it’s the first thing anyone ever looks at. The blurbs, the synopsis, then the bio, the dedication.”

  “Yes, of course. Because it does matter who is speaking. Okay, I’m a coward. I knew. Not as a fact, mind you, but as a supposition, and I chose not to ask. I’ll tell you something, though: it’s a truly classy man who can show interest in a woman and at the same time let her know he’s married. I met a man like that, once.”

  “Another man? For a celibate, you really — ”

  “He was a roofer, dammit. About ten years ago. I was freshly abandoned with two kids and no money. I had put my house on the market, but every time it rained, the roof leaked, water in puddles all over the place during the Open House. Desperate is too mild a word to describe me at that point. Beleaguered, hopeless. And this kind blue-eyed roofer came to fix the skylight. He noticed some loose shingles while he was up there, so he offered to come back the next day, a Saturday, at no extra charge, but I didn’t believe it for a moment. And then Saturday morning comes, I’m in bed reading the paper while the kids watch cartoons, and I hear this truck pull up, the clank of a ladder outside my window, open the shade in time to see his shins moving up out of view. By the time he comes down, I’m dressed and about as presentable as I can get at that stage of my life, which isn’t very, and we sit out on my front porch with coffee and a smoke. Did I say he had blue eyes? Oh yes. And a kind smile and slim hips in his torn jeans, longish hair. And only minutes into our conversation, he mentions his wife. Lovingly, respectfully. As a given, a pleasant fact of his life: ‘My wife says’ and ‘my wife does the books,’ that sort of thing. So there he is, with me, for me, doing me a practical kindness as well as the intangible kindness of noticing that I am a woman, somewhat attractive. Or at least with a reasonable shot at being attractive again some day. He knew I was alone, I knew he was married, and we just sat together peacefully on the porch for a while. A mutual salute. I thanked him, and he said, ‘You’re welcome,’ and he drove away in his truck and I never saw him again.”

  Leland looks distracted, obviously thinking it over, then asks the question: “Who will you tell?”

  She is momentarily confused, then gets it. “About this?”

  “Yes. About this.”

  “Who will you tell?”

  “No one.”

  “Why should I be any different?”

  “You told me about the roofer, didn’t you? And the painter, and the man with the prune. Do you think the roofer told his wife, by the way?”

  “No idea. But he might have. No. Probably not. But he could have. Are you thinking I’m going to broadcast a famous fuck or something?”

  “I have no idea. Are you?”

  “If you have to ask that question, you don’t know me at all.”

  “How well do I know you, Jay? In situations like this, I can’t predict.”

  “Situations. Plural.”

  He takes a breath. “I’m in a difficult position. I’ve been threatened, blackmailed, extorted — the tabloids in Britain are scum, absolutely vicious, and it seems that almost everyone has a price, if not the woman herself, then some acquaintance. It’s just so fraught, this — ”

  “This meaning every time you fuck some woman at a festival?” The coffee cup misses his temple by a millimeter, but the contents splatter in his hair, drip down his glasses. “I assure you, dickhead, that I am not one of your fucking situations!” The saucer follows, but she bobbles it like a Frisbee, and it barely clips his shoulder
before ricocheting into the dresser. “I am not a this. I’m not women either. You got that?”

  He removes his glasses, wiping off the cold coffee. “I intended no repartee. It was a blunder!”

  Furious, she throws her hands in the air, hisses, “So you can quote Bronte in extremis, fuck you anyhow!” and moves to the door, but stops there and turns back. “Listen. About the same time as the roofer, I happened to walk past the television one night, on my way to tuck the kids in. You were being interviewed on the evening news. The sound was off, and there was no lettering along the bottom of the screen saying your name. And I saw your face on the screen and I stopped dead still. My breath caught and my heart fluttered and I thought, oh. Oh, he’s lovely. Just you, not the author, not . . . anything. Just you. No doubt you don’t believe this story and, frankly, I don’t give a flying fuck whether you do or not, you dumb prick. There, that’s my salute. Take that back to London with you.”

  9.

  Jay walks along the quay for a long time. She tries not to hope that he is out looking for her, tries not to think that he might have filled her room with flowers and abject notes. She walks for nearly three hours. She knows his plane is at two, so she figures he’ll have to leave for the airport no later than noon. Oh, wouldn’t it be romantic if he missed his plane for her, wrapped her in his arms in tearful apology, swearing his love, their new life together beginning right at this moment . . . so shameful, these hopes of hers.

  12:45. No messages at the front desk. 12:50. No voice mail, no flowers. No notes. She’s a damn fool.

  She undresses, lies motionless and dry-eyed on the rumpled sheets for another hour, then another. When she is certain that British Airways has departed for London (she goes online to check), only then does she allow herself to cry. By four, she rises, makes herself presentable and takes a cab to her cousin’s. The evening passes in a noisy daze; the cousin’s polite questions about the festival quickly give way to the din of the children’s demands, and the truly startling news that another child is on the way, due in late spring.

  She calls another cab as soon as she decently can, but it’s nearly ten before she makes her escape. As the taxi approaches the hotel, she is rummaging for her wallet, with one eye on the meter, but then the façade of the bar — their bar, hers and Leland’s — catches her eye.

  “Stop here, please!” she says, and pays the driver and walks back the long block. She is beyond hope, beyond caring whether it’s acceptable for a woman her age to walk into a bar alone on a Saturday night. Their table is occupied by a group of Asian teenagers in wifebeaters and blond-streaked hair, but the one behind it —

  “Hello.” Leland acknowledges her curtly, and without surprise. He signals the waitress, who brings Jay’s white wine and his whiskey as he speaks: “My wife’s name is Christa. She’s German, a ceramic artist. We have our son, now ten, and her daughter, fifteen. My two older kids visit on school holidays. Christa is ten years younger than me. We met at a gallery opening of a mutual friend. She is a fine woman. Kind, attractive.”

  Jay takes a moment to absorb this information, then says, “She doesn’t compete with you.”

  “She is supportive but not ambitious. Not for the same things, at least. Are you just coming from that dinner at your, was it a cousin? Tell me one hilarious thing that happened to you today.”

  “This has been a day singularly devoid of hilarity,” she says. “You go first, then maybe I’ll think of something.”

  “Right then. So there I was thinking ‘she’s gone, that was a blunder indeed,’ and trying to rinse the coffee out of my hair, and arrange it to conceal the bruise on my temple, when I get a call from a producer who’s in town from Montreal and wants to ‘talk some serious rights’ on my work. I say the usual, ‘Sounds interesting but I have a flight to catch, get in touch with my agent,’ but this guy, his name is Larry, absolutely insists, saying, ‘I gotcha covahed, don’t sweat it.’ So I have spent the day with this funny little gnome of a man. In a limo and he’s throwing wads of cash around — metaphorical cash but the numbers are big huge ones, the kind that make a modest Englishman positively blush. One expression of his I just loved was ‘Ya got DAT right, pal!’ I miss my plane, but he arranges a spot on his company Learjet, leaving tonight, just before curfew at Pearson.” Leland glances at his watch. “So I’ve got about ten more minutes.”

  “Did you sign anything?”

  “God no. But it gave me this chance. I thought you might come back here, tonight.”

  They watch each other, now. Closely.

  Jay takes a breath and begins: “I lied. Too. I will tell one person. My closest friend. But I will swear her to secrecy. We’ve been keeping each other’s secrets for nearly thirty years.”

  He slides out of the booth and opens his arms. “Come here.”

  Jay scrambles out of her seat and nestles against him. “We should be careful. We’re in public.”

  “Fuck the public,” he mutters, nuzzling her neck ’til she pulls away.

  “Wait! I just thought of one funny thing. I called home from my cousin’s place, just to check in. I’ve got my son Ben, who’s seventeen, looking after his little brother Danny this weekend. And so Ben picks up the phone, says hello, and I hear what sounds like a very large party in the background, and clear as a bell, a voice right next to the phone yells, ‘Ask ’er if she wants ta suck my cock!’ It’s Ben’s best friend. And my very rebellious and normally articulate son gets all huffy and embarrassed and hisses, ‘It’s my mom!’

  “It took every ounce of self control I had not to laugh, to pretend I hadn’t heard. And I swear, the next time I see that buddy of his slouching through our front door and we do the usual chitchat — how’s school? any luck with that part time job? — all I will be hearing in my head is Hey how’d ya like to suck my cock?”

  It’s a chilly night in October when Jay and Leland say goodbye, laughing together, for what they both believe is the last time.

  10.

  From: [email protected]

  To: “Jay McNair” [email protected]

  Sent: November 12, 12:10AM

  Subject: query

  How’d ya like to suck my cock?

  Reply:

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Sent: November 13, 8:00AM

  Subject: dream on

  See subject heading

  p.s. how did you get my email address?

  Reply:

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Sent: November 13, 12:10AM

  Subject: next question

  Are you sure?

  p.s. got my agent to call your publisher, saying I’d read your work and wanted to congratulate you. They supplied said address with shameful alacrity.

  Reply:

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Sent: November 14, 8:15AM

  Subject: get over yourself, you arrogant prick

  Positive.

  p.s. did you read that piece in the Guardian about Harold Pinter’s cancer diagnosis? How sad.

  It was Jay who asked for the first phone call, frustrated with trying to discuss the latest act of atrocious stupidity of George Bush in writing, so he called, and then he called again, the time change a bit awkward, but her supper hour in Calgary on Wednesday nights when the kids were with their dad coincided quite well with Leland’s mid-morning tea in London.

  And Jay began to live for those calls. Until one day, in the midst of a heated debate about the lapse of powers evident in the latest Atwood, he said, “Oh. Hold on a moment, will you?” And she heard a woman’s voice. And then Leland’s voice responding. In a kindly and reassuring tone, yet also a little impatient, a little dismissive. She heard a door close, then the rustle of the phone held against his chest as he listened (probably) for his wife’s retreating footsteps. He seemed to listen for a long time.

  “Sor
ry, a literary luncheon in the works, but plenty of time, really. So what were you saying about the scene in the garden?”

  “Leland.” She is humiliated. “Oh. I can’t do this.”

  She hears his sigh. No words.

  She says, “I have to go. Bye.”

  “I understand,” is all he says.

  A month passes before he emails again; she reads his cautious but deliberately provocative comments on the recent Byatt/Drabble scuffle, and her reply to his closing question forms in her mind the moment she stops reading. But no. It’s a trap. She hits the reply button, then send. Shoots him a blank. He will know that she has received his message, but that she chooses to be silent. And it ends. All of it.

  Part Two Six

  Months Later: Literary Gathering at the Savoy in London

  11.

  Jay, stunned and terrified, is being shepherded through the crowd, introduced to shockingly famous people by her handler, Shin Joy, a stunning and unterrified young woman with a tuft of vertical maroon hair.

  Sheer vertiginous dread — is he here? Even deeper is the dread that he isn’t.

  She stands to one side of the stage as she is introduced. She has never, in her life, been so scared. She has never felt so small. Over the years, she has learned to master this terror — the shallow breathing, the shaking hands, the pounding heart and red flush to the face. She has learned not to resist it or be scared of it, but just to let it come in the hours and minutes leading up to the performance, and then to let a sense of surrender take over. People have told her that she seems completely calm and relaxed on stage. She just smiles.

  “It is my great pleasure to introduce — ”

  Applause. Her legs feel rubbery, knees won’t bend. She gulps for air, her mouth so dry that her lips stick to her gums. A good trick is to admit the nervousness, publicly confess it and thus make it human, but words desert her completely. She’s not going to make it, she can’t do this —