In the Language of Love Page 39
She will paste that ecru lace camisole right beside that breastbone. Gordon wants to know if she’s hungry, will she have lunch with them too?
No.
No.
No.
She will paste that purple high heel right beside that ankle bone if it kills her. Why can’t they just leave her alone?
Samuel comes to the doorway again, tiptoeing this time, whispering, telling her that he is going to be quiet and leave her alone now, forever and ever.
Which of course is not what she wants either.
94. GREEN
THE COLOUR OF THE BACK STEP of your parents’ house, a back step big enough for a tea party with all your dolls, a circus of stuffed animals, or a whole farm with a dozen plastic cows and thirteen white rabbits, a back step for long hot summer afternoons with a can of water and a fat paintbrush and you paint it for hours, the clear water making the faded green shiny just like new again, but you can never keep up with the sun, and by the time you are done painting one board the last one has gone dry again, drab, the way rocks sparkling in the streambed have turned back grey by the time you get them home in your hot little hands, so you give up painting and practise instead with your Hula hoop which is also green around your skinny waist.
The colour of the back step of your parents’ house, a back step big enough for sulking on through long adolescent August afternoons spent sitting on the verge of tears over Doctor Zhivago spread open on your lap, so full of snow and sadness that you feel closer to Lara trekking through the tundra for love than you do to anyone you have ever met in your real life and you are memorizing Zhivago’s poems until you remember with disgust that your life is as stupid and meaningless as this back step in suburbia and you will never have anyone to recite poetry to anyway, so you lean your head against the green railing, but even weeping is not as romantic as it should be and your face is all covered with hot tears and green snot.
The colour of the tender new leaves on the mock orange bush in front of your kitchen window which you stare at every morning in May with the seven o’clock sun on them and every morning they are a bit bigger, a bit greener, and by June the white flowers will have bloomed, filling the kitchen with their lush sweet fragrance coming in through the screens on a leisurely breeze. Sometimes when you look at the green leaves, you are poured full of the pleasure and promise of spring, new life, new chances, hope, happiness, all of that. But other times you are overcome by a curdling green despair (green, the colour of envy, poison, monsters, death, and gangrene) so paralysing that you imagine you will never again be able to raise your body from this sturdy brown chair. Last night you planted a dozen oxalis bulbs around the base of the bush but you have no faith in them, those shrivelled brown blobs buried now in the warm black earth and your son is helping, darting around with his plastic watering can and the glossy seed catalogue, trying to imagine what they will look like. He is skeptical too, asking, “But how does it work?” When you say, “I’m not very good at this sort of thing, they’ll probably never grow,” he says, “Don’t worry, Mommy, of course they’ll grow. Look, they’re magic, they’re growing already!” You know this cannot possibly be true but still you get down on your hands and knees and peer fiercely at the wet black dirt, praying for green. By this morning, of course, he has forgotten all about them but you are still praying, silently, suddenly, unbearably brimming with stubborn green faith and tender green fear.
95. SALT
MUCH AS JOANNA CANNOT always make up her mind about God, she frequently believes in the story of Lot’s wife. Belief, she figures, is like memory: selective, apocryphal, juggled and jury-rigged to meet the current circumstance. This could be perhaps construed as cynicism. She is no cynic but she knows that as far as the truth goes, there is no bottom line. Truth is not like the Gold Standard or Greenwich Mean Time: there is no absolute against which all elsecan be accurately measured. She has never held a gold bar in her hand. She has never been to Greenwich, nor even thought of going. And if she knew the truth, surely she would tell it.
She recalls the story of Lot’s wife from Sunday School. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had become so wicked that God decided to destroy them. Lot lived in Sodom and did not want to leave. But when the fire and brimstone began to fall, he fled, along with his wife and their two daughters. Joanna imagines that brimstone must be something like lava. Despite being warned not to, Lot’s wife turned to look back upon the burning cities. She was then turned into a pillar of salt.
salt n. 1. sodium chloride, NaCl, a white, crystalline mineral with a characteristic taste, found in seawater, natural beds, etc., and used for preserving and seasoning food. 2. a chemical compound derived from an acid by replacing hydrogen, wholly or partly, with a metallic element or an electropositive radical. 3. that which lends liveliness or piquancy to something; pungent humour or wit.
Joanna can understand Lot’s wife. Most people think she was just being greedy, not wanting to lose her house, her barn, her animals, all the luxuries of life in the big city. But Joanna can understand the need to look back. How else to catch sight of the future without first making peace with the past? How else to be saved without knowing full well what you are being saved from?
Perhaps Lot’s wife was just an ordinary woman, middle-aged, slightly overweight, greying hair trimmed and curled, an apron tied around her waist, a damp dishtowel draped over her shoulder. Perhaps she was simply loath to abandon all she had accumulated, unwilling to walk obediently away from her nice kitchen, her crockery, curtains, knick-knacks, and a pot of red geraniums in the window. Perhaps Lot’s wife, like most people, was simply afraid of change.
Joanna feels sorry for Lot’s wife, the poor woman gone all white and grainy for one simple mistake, the mistake perhaps that everyone makes, the mistake of nostalgia, the way memory will always make the best or the worst of it and knows no middle ground. Thepoor woman is not even known by her name, only remembered as Lot’s wife, as if she had no mind, no dreams, no life of her own.
Most people know the story of Lot’s wife but they are wrong to think it ended there, with that legendary pillar of salt. They don’t know the story’s epilogue which, generally speaking, was not discussed in Sunday School. After Lot got away and got settled in a cave with his two daughters, they proceeded to get him drunk on wine and sleep with him on consecutive nights. They did this because there were no other available men. Their time had come to reproduce. Their biological clocks were booming. They assumed that the task of continuing the human race had fallen squarely to them. They both became pregnant. The oldest daughter gave birth to Moab who became father of the Moabites. The younger daughter bore Benammi, father of the Ammonites. These daughters, like their mother but unlike their progeny, shall remain forever nameless.
Is this a reversal of the practice of changing the names to protect the innocent? In this case, have the names been eliminated in an attempt to protect the guilty? Are these three women, Lot’s greedy or nostalgic wife and his incestuous or altruistic daughters, guilty or innocent? Are they nameless because their lives were too trivial to commemorate or because their crimes were too horrible to contemplate? This is like the photos in True Detective magazine where the eyes of the criminals and victims alike are blocked out by a solid black bar so you can never know who they really are, can barely even tell them apart, could not recognize them even if you met them on the street.
Perhaps Lot’s wife was the original salt of the earth, that pillar having been dissolved in a warm rain and then leached silently into the fertile black soil. Or perhaps that pillar was a nasty reminder to all women, an obelisk to all their imaginary crimes and the punishments they have endured, to the fact that they are best known for who they have attached themselves to: daughter, wife, mother (preferably of sons who will go on to make a name for themselves), a memorial monument to all the nameless women recognized in retrospect only by the men who have come into or out of them. Perhaps the story of Lot’s wife is another subtle way of rubbing salt
into the wounds of women, all women, ordinary women everywhere.
96. STREET
JOANNA AND SAMUEL ARE STANDING at the intersection of James and Lawrence Streets downtown. It is three o’clock on an icy pre-Christmas Saturday afternoon. They are standing on the northwest corner in front of the Bank of Montreal. On the southeast corner is the usual weekend market, pared down now to its winter incarnation: five or six stalls at irregular intervals along the sidewalk, the bundled-up vendors huddled behind tables of apples mostly, also homemade cider, bread, cheese, hand-knit sweaters, mittens, toques, and skating socks in all sizes. The vendors are frost-bitten but cheerful, bagging purchases and making change, their breath on the winter air like fleeting white clouds or those speech balloons which come out of comic-strip characters’ mouths.
One block further east, Lawrence Street ends at the lake where the Bruce Island Ferry labours through the shifting open channel in the ice. Joanna and Samuel, in their winter coats with their hoods up, are holding hands and stamping their feet, waiting for the light to turn green, waiting to cross the street to Gordon who is standing with his hands deep in the pockets of his down-filled parka on the other side of the intersection in front of Canada Trust. They are all going to Morrison’s for hot chocolate with marshmallows. They will share a huge plate of fresh-cut french fries and then Samuel will have a dish of vanilla ice cream for dessert. He likes ice cream best in the winter because, he says, it tastes the way snow looks.
The light changes. They walk across the street waving. Samuel strains away from Joanna’s firm hand but she holds on tight. When they reach Gordon, he tugs his bare hands from his pockets and hugs Samuel to him. He kisses Joanna on both rosy cheeks and brushes back the stray curls which have sprung out of her hood. They turn and walk up James Street with Samuel between them, his left hand tucked warmly into Gordon’s parka pocket, his right into Joanna’s.
Coming sideways towards them down Lawrence Street are Lewis and Wanda. They look like any ordinary unhappy couple. When Lewis sees Joanna and her family, he deflates even further with a longsigh and grits his perfect teeth with, Joanna imagines, miserable envy and the full force of seven years’ worth of regret.
The first thing that makes Joanna realize this is a dream is the fact that, despite the heavy Saturday traffic, the amiable crowds of Christmas shoppers with many excited children in tow, and the cluster of carollers assembled on the northeast corner of the intersection, this scene takes place in utter silence.
The second thing that makes Joanna realize this is a dream is the fact that, although she does not actually see Lewis and Wanda, she knows they are there. It is as though she is simultaneously in her body walking down that street and also a hovering entity having an out-of-body experience which enables her to observe the whole scene from above. She is both character in and omniscient narrator of this moment.
This dream becomes a recurring well-rehearsed waking fantasy from which Joanna invariably derives great comfort. She plays it out in her mind over and over again, slow motion, fast forward, rewind, pause, making minute climatic adjustments, tiny but crucial scene and costume changes. She puts this fantasy through an infinite number of precise permutations in the pursuit of its perfection.
It is clear and cold. It is snowing. It is snowing lightly. It is snowing heavily.
Carollers stand on the corner with their songbooks open. A Salvation Army soldier stands on the corner with a bell and a clear plastic bubble filling up with money. Santa Claus himself stands on the corner with a big sack of presents from which he pulls candy canes for all the wide-eyed children.
She has her hood up against the cold wind. She has her hood down and her hair blows beautifully in the wind. She has on a blue beret with matching scarf and mittens.
Gordon hugs Samuel. Gordon lifts Samuel off his delighted feet and holds him high in the air. Gordon lifts Samuel off his delighted feet and plops him square on his shoulders for a piggyback ride.
Gordon kisses her left cheek. Gordon kisses her right cheek, her forehead, her chin, her mittened hand. Gordon kisses her full on the mouth, tongue and all.
The street is crowded with shoppers and traffic. The street is empty with silence and expectation. The street is suddenly somewhere she has never been before.
97. KING
JOANNA DID NOT UNDERSTAND why they had a Queen with no King. There was Philip, of course, but he was only a Prince. Most of what she knew about Princes came from fairy tales and fables: The Frog Prince, The Prince and the Pauper, Prince Charming, Robin Hood: The Prince of Thieves. Most of what she knew about Kings came from the story of King Edward VIII who had abdicated his throne after only eleven months to marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson, a fashionable American divorcée. This took place in 1936, eighteen years before Joanna was born. But over time and often told, this story had lost none of its love-conquers-all lustre. Compared to this true royal romance, the fabled escapades of Prince Charming and the others were soon enough revealed to be unrealistic and unsatisfying.
Even Esther (who might have been expected to consider the King an old fool and Mrs. Wallis Simpson a slut) was obscurely pleased by the story. Apparently it proved something which she had suspected all along, although it was never clear exactly what. Perhaps that love was stronger than power. Or perhaps (Joanna will think later, not kindly) that people, men especially, were stupid, divorcées were dangerous, and desire could destroy your life.
Esther was also pleased (more plainly) when people said she looked a lot like the Queen. It was Elizabeth II they meant, who had been crowned the year before Joanna was born. Joanna knew that Elizabeth was Edward VIII’s niece but was completely confused by the complicated royal lineage and did not try to figure out how Elizabeth was descended (or ascended) from Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, the several Georges, the many Edwards, the ancient Williams, Henrys, Charles, and Harolds. The Queen Mother appeared frequently but she did not appear to have a name of her own and what had become of the Queen Father?
Later Joanna will be surprised to learn that Elizabeth, at the time of her coronation, was only twenty-seven years old. Other things had happened that year too. The Korean War ended, Joseph Stalin died, the Rosenbergs were executed, Mount Everest was conquered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier.
However Elizabeth had ended up Queen and whatever had happened before or since, Esther was obviously flattered by the perceived resemblance. Joanna could not imagine why. Every year on Christmas Day they watched the Queen’s Address on television while the turkey sizzled in the kitchen. She was a short pale woman with an old-fashioned hairdo that never changed. Her thin high voice droned on, a shrill tense warble of words which did not seem to change much from year to year either. She did have nice clothes. She looked tired. No wonder.
Every year after her little speech, Esther turned to Joanna and asked, “Do you remember the time you saw the Queen?”
Joanna said, “Yes.” But in fact what she remembered was the crowd, the car, the tiny flag in her hand which she was waving madly while trying to see around the large woman in front of her. She was only five years old. The Queen had passed through their city that summer, having come to Canada to open the St. Lawrence Seaway. Joanna did not remember seeing the Queen’s face at all, even though Esther ever since had insisted that she, Elizabeth, had looked right at them and smiled.
The former King Edward VIII, who had become Duke of Windsor the day after his abdication, died in his Paris home in 1972, ten days after a visit from his niece, the Queen. By this time he was seventy-seven years old and she was forty-six. Joanna was eighteen, in her final year of high school, and far too engrossed in her own stories of love and power to spare much thought to these fabled old figures living out their fates on the other side of the world. They were no more significant now to her life (or to modern life in general, it seemed) than King Midas of the Golden Touch or the Red and White Queens of Alice in Wonderland. They were a
s ancient and irrelevant to her as the poem she had studied in English class earlier that spring: “Myname is Ozymandias, king of kings:/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! “/Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away.
98. CHEESE
“SAY CHEESE!”
Clarence was taking a picture of Esther and Joanna. Actually he was taking a picture of his new car, a 1958 Ford Fairlane, four-door, two-tone brown and white. The film in the camera was black and white so the car will come out looking two-tone grey and white. Esther and Joanna are posing beside it. For some reason Clarence has driven to the parking lot of the paper mill for this photo session. He has parked in the far northwest corner which is deserted. Joanna is sitting on the shiny brown (grey) hood of the car. Esther is standing beside her on the driver’s side, holding her in place, smiling. Esther did not think they needed a new car but her disapproval, his stubbornness, the previous month of debate and disagreement, are not in the picture.
“Say cheese!”
Esther took the next two photographs: Clarence and Joanna in the same pose outside the car, then Clarence sitting inside the car in the driver’s seat, right hand on the steering wheel, left arm angled jauntily out the window. The top of his face is in black shadow. Behind him there is a dark blurry shape which may or may not be Joanna bouncing around in the back seat. They are all dressed up. They have come directly from the car lot. The paper mill is a large dirty complicated building in shades of grey behind them.
“Say cheese!”
Clarence took one more picture: the car empty in the parking lot, its grill like a wide smiling mouth, its double headlights like compound eyes. Even the licence plate number is clear: H91792.