I didn't used to come here with Jon. He would have sneered, then, at the upholstered period chairs, the looped drapes, the men and women cut from a glossy whisky ad. It was Josef I came with, Josef whose hand I touched, across the surface of the table. Not Jon's, as now.
It's only the ends of the fingers, only lightly. This time we don't say much: there's none of the verbal prodding there was at lunch. There's a shared vocabulary, of monosyllable and silence; we know why we're here. Going down in the elevator, I look into the smoked-mirror wall and see my face in the dark glass obscured by time, as a stone overgrown. I could be any age.
We take a taxi back to the warehouse, our hands resting side by side on the seat. We go up the stairs to the studio, slowly, so we won't get out of breath: neither one of us wants to be caught out by the other in a middle-aged wheeze. Jon's hand is on my waist. It's familiar there; it's like knowing where the light switch is, in a house you once lived in but haven't been back to for years. When we reach the door, before we go in, he pats me on the shoulder, a gesture of encouragement, and of wistful resignation.
"Don't turn on the light," I say.
Jon puts his arms around me, his face in the angle of my neck. It's a gesture less of desire than of fatigue.
The studio is the purplish gray of autumn twilight. The plaster casts of arms and legs glimmer whitely, like broken statues in a ruin. There's a scatter of my clothes in the corner, empty cups dotted here and there, on the work counter, by the window, marking my daily trails, claiming space. This room seems like mine now, as if I've been living here all along, no matter where else I've been or what else I've been doing. It's Jon who has been away, and has returned at last.
We undress each other, as we used to do at first; but more shyly. I don't want to be awkward. I'm glad it's dusk; I'm nervous about the backs of my thighs, the wrinkling above my knees, the soft fold across my stomach, not fatness exactly but a pleat. The hair on his chest is gray, a shock. I avoid looking at the small beer belly that's grown on him, though I'm aware of it, of the changes in his body, as he must be of mine.
When we kiss, it's with a gravity we lacked before. Before we were avid, and selfish.
We make love for the comfort of it. I recognize him, I could recognize him in total darkness. Every man has his own rhythm, which remains the same. In this there is the relief of greeting.
I don't feel I'm being disloyal to Ben, only loyal to something else; which predates him, which has nothing to do with him. An old score.
Also I know it's something I'll never do again. It's the last look, before turning away, at some once-visited, once-extravagant place you know you won't go back to. An evening view, of Niagara Falls.
We lie together under the duvet, arms around each other. It's hard to remember what we used to fight about. The former anger is gone, and with it that edgy, jealous lust we used to have for each other. What's left is fondness, and regret. A diminuendo.
"Come to the opening?" I say. "I'd like you to."
"No," he says. "I don't want to."
"Why not?"
"I'd feel bad," he says. "I wouldn't want to see you that way."
"What way?" I say.
"With all those people, slobbering over you."
What he means is that he doesn't want to be merely an onlooker, that there's no room for him in all that, and he's right. He doesn't want to be just my ex-husband. He would be dispossessed, of me and of himself. I realize I don't want it either, I don't really want him to be there. I need him to be, but I don't want it.
I turn, lean on my elbow, kiss him again, on the cheek this time. The hair down low, behind his ears, is already turning white. I think, we did that just in time. It was almost too late.
65
With Jon it's like failing downstairs. Up until now there have been preliminary stumblings, recoveries, a clutching for handholds. But now all balance is lost and we plunge down headlong, both of us, noisily and without grace, gathering momentum and abrasions as we go.
I enter sleep angry and dread waking up, and when I do wake I lie beside the sleeping body of Jon, in our bed, listening to the rhythm of his breathing and resenting him for the oblivion he still controls.
For weeks he has been more silent than usual, and home less. Home less, that is, when I am home. When I'm away at work he is there all right, even when Sarah's in preschool. I've begun to find signs, tiny clues left in my way like breadcrumbs dropped on a trail: a cigarette with a pink mouthmark on it, two used glasses in the sink, a hairpin that is not mine, beneath a pillow that is. I clean up and say nothing, hoarding these things for times of greater need.
"Someone named Monica called you," I tell him.
It's morning, and there's a whole day to get through. A day of evasion, suppressed anger, false calm. We are well beyond throwing things, by now.
He's reading the paper. "Oh?" he says. "What did she want?"
"She said to tell you Monica called," I say.
He comes back late at night and I'm in bed, feigning sleep, my head churning. I think of subterfuges: examining his shirts for perfume, tailing him along the street, hiding in the closet and jumping out, red-hot with discovery. I think of other things I could do. I could leave, go somewhere unspecified, with Sarah. Or I could demand that we talk things through. Or I could pretend nothing is happening, continue on with our lives as usual. This would have been the advice offered in women's magazines, of a decade ago: wait it out.
I see these things as scenarios, to be played through and discarded, perhaps simultaneously. None of them precludes the others.
In real life, the days go on as usual, darkening to winter and heavy with the unspoken.
"You had a thing with Uncle Joe, didn't you?" Jon says casually. It's a Saturday, and we're making a stab at normality by taking Sarah to Grange Park, to play in the snow.
"Who?" I say.
"You know. Josef what's-his-name. The old stick man."
"Oh, him," I say. Sarah is over by the swings with some other kids. We're sitting on a bench, having cleared the snow. I think I should be making a snowman, or doing some other thing good mothers are supposed to do. But I'm too tired.
"But you did, didn't you?" Jon says. "At the same time as me."
"Where did you get that idea?" I say. I know when I'm being accused. I run over my own ammunition: the hairpins, the lipstick, the phone calls, the glasses in the sink.
"I'm not a moron, you know. I figured it out."
He has jealousies of his own then, wounds of his own to lick. Things I have inflicted. I should lie, deny everything. But I don't want to. Josef, at the moment, gives me a little pride.
"That was years ago," I say. "Thousands of years ago. It wasn't important."
"Like shit," he says. I once thought he would ridicule me, if he found out about Josef. The surprise is that he takes him seriously.
That night we make love, if that is any longer the term for it. It's not shaped like love, not colored like it, but harsh, war-colored, metallic. Things are being proved. Or repudiated.
In the morning he says, "Who else has there been?" Out of nowhere. "How do I know you weren't hopping into the sack with every old fart around?"
I sigh. "Jon," I say. "Grow up."
"How about Mr. Beanie Weenie?" he keeps on.
"Oh, come on," I say. "You were hardly the angel. Your place was crawling with all those skinny girls. You didn't want strings, remember?"
Sarah is still in her crib asleep. We are safe, we can get down to it, this telling of bad truths which are not entirely true. Once you start, it's difficult to stop. There is even a certain relish in it.
"At least I was open about it," he says. "I didn't sneak around. I didn't pretend to be so goddamn pure and faithful, the way you did."
"Maybe I loved you," I say. I notice the past tense. So does he.
"You wouldn't know love if you fell over it," he says.
"Not like Monica?" I say. "You're not being very open right now. I've
found those hairpins, in my own bed. You could at least have the decency to do it somewhere else."
"How about you?" he says. "You're always going out, you get around."
"Me?" I say. "I don't have the time. I don't have time to think, I don't have time to paint, I barely have time to shit. I'm too busy paying the goddamn rent."
I've said the worst thing, I've gone too far. "That's it," says Jon. "It's always you, what you contribute, what you put up with. It's never me." He hunts for his jacket, heads for the door.
"Going to see Monica?" I say, with as much venom as I can dredge up. I hate it, this schoolyard bickering. I want embraces, tears, forgiveness. I want them to arrive by themselves, with no effort on my part, like rainbows.
"Trisha," he says. "Monica is just a friend."
It's winter. The heat goes off, comes on again, goes off, at random. Sarah has a cold. She coughs at night and I get up for her, feeding her spoonfuls of cough syrup, bringing her drinks of water. In the daytime we are both exhausted.
I am sick a lot myself this winter. I get her colds. I lie in bed on weekend mornings, looking up at the ceiling, my head clogged and cottony. I want glasses of ginger ale, squeezed orange juice, the sound of distant radios. But these things are gone forever, nothing arrives on a tray. If I want ginger ale I'll have to go to the store or the kitchen, buy it or pour it myself. In the main room Sarah watches cartoons.
I don't paint at all any more. I can't think about painting. Although I've received a junior grant from a government arts program, I can't organize myself enough to lift a brush. I push myself through time, to work, to the bank to get money, to the supermarket to buy food. Sometimes I watch daytime soaps on television, where there are more crises and better clothes than in real life. I tend to Sarah.
I don't do anything else. I no longer go to the meetings of women, because they make me feel worse. Jody phones and says we should get together, but I put her off. She would jolly me along, make bracing and positive suggestions I know I can't live up to. Then I would only feel more like a failure.
I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.
One night Jon does not come back. This is not usual, it isn't our silent agreement: even when he stays out late he is always in by midnight. We haven't had a fight this day; we've hardly spoken. He hasn't phoned to say where he is. His intention is clear: he has left me behind, in the cold.
I crouch in the bedroom, in the dark, wrapped in Jon's old sleeping bag, listening to the wheezing sound of Sarah breathing and the whisper of sleet against the window. Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you've made.
My body is inert, without will. I think I should keep moving, to circulate my blood, as you are supposed to do in a snowstorm so you won't freeze to death. I force myself to stand up. I will go to the kitchen and make tea.
Outside the house a car slides by, through the mushy snow, a muffled rushing. The main room is dark, except for the light coming in from the lampposts on the street, through the window. The things on Jon's work table glint in this half-light: the flat blade of a chisel, the head of a hammer. I can feel the pull of the earth on me, the dragging of its dark curve of gravity, the spaces between the atoms you could fall so easily through.
This is when I hear the voice, not inside my head at all but in the room, clearly: Do it. Come on. Do it. This voice doesn't offer a choice; it has the force of an order. It's the difference between jumping and being pushed.
The Exacto knife is what I use, to make a slash. It doesn't even hurt, because right after that there's a whispering sound and space closes in and I'm on the floor. This is how Jon finds me. Blood is black in the darkness, it does not reflect, so he doesn't see until he turns on the light.
I tell the people at Emergency that it was an accident. I am a painter, I say. I was cutting canvas and my hand slipped. It's my left wrist, so this is plausible. I'm frightened, I want to hide the truth: I have no intention of being stuffed into 999 Queen Street, now or ever.
"In the middle of the night?" the doctor says.
"I often work at night," I say.
Jon backs me up. He's just as scared as I am. He tied my wrist up in a tea towel and drove me to the hospital. I leaked through the towel, onto the front seat.
"Sarah," I said, remembering her.
"She's downstairs," Jon said. Downstairs is the landlady, a middle-aged Italian widow.
"What did you tell her?" I asked.
"I said it was your appendix," Jon said. I laughed, a little. "What the hell got into you?"
"I don't know," I said. "You'll have to get this car cleaned." I felt white, drained of blood, cared for, purified. Peaceful.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk to someone?" the doctor in Emergency says.
"I'm fine now," I say. The last thing I want to do is talking. I know what he means by someone: a shrink. Someone who will tell me I'm nuts. I know what kinds of people hear voices: people who drink too much, who fry their brains with drugs, who slip off the rails. I feel entirely steady, I'm not even anxious any more. I've already decided what I will do, afterward, tomorrow. I'll wear my arm in a sling and say I broke my wrist. So I don't have to tell him, or Jon, or anyone else, about the voice.
I know it wasn't really there. Also I know I heard it.
It wasn't a frightening voice, in itself. Not menacing but excited, as if proposing an escapade, a prank, a treat. Something treasured, and secret. The voice of a nine-year-old child.
66
The snow has melted, leaving a dirty filigree, the wind is blowing around the grit left over from winter, the crocuses are pushing up through the mud of the desolate smashed-down lawns. If I stay here I will die.
It's the city I need to leave as much as Jon, I think. It's the city that's killing me.
It will kill me suddenly. I'll be walking along the street, thinking of nothing in particular, and all at once I will turn sideways and dive off the curb, to be smashed by a speeding car. I will topple in front of a subway train without warning, I'll plunge from a bridge without intention. All I will hear will be that small voice, inviting and conspiratorial, gleeful, urging me over. I know I'm capable of such a thing.
(Worse: although I'm afraid of this idea and ashamed of it, and although in the daytime I find it melodramatic and ludicrous and refuse to believe in it, I also cherish it. It's like the secret bottle stashed away by alcoholics: I may have no desire to use it, right now, but I feel more secure knowing it's there. It's a fallback, it's a vice, it's an exit. It's a weapon.)
At night I sit beside Sarah's crib, watching the flutter of her eyelids as she dreams, listening to her breathe. She will be left alone. Or not alone, because she will have Jon. Motherless. This is unthinkable.
I turn on the lights in the living room. I know I must start packing, but I don't know what to take. Clothes, toys for Sarah, her furry rabbit. It seems too difficult, so I go to bed. Jon is already in there, turned toward the wall. We have gone through a pretense of truce and reformation, straight into deadlock. I don't wake him up.
In the morning, after he leaves, I bundle Sarah into the stroller and take some of my grant money out of the bank. I don't know where to go. All I can think of is away. I buy us tickets to Vancouver, which has the advantage of being warm, or so I suppose. I stuff our things into duffel bags, which I've bought at Army Surplus.
I want Jon to come back and stop me, because now that I'm in motion I can't believe I'm actually doing this. B
ut he doesn't come.
I leave a note, I make a sandwich: peanut butter. I cut it in two and give half to Sarah, and a glass of milk. I call a taxi. We sit at the kitchen table with our coats on, eating our sandwiches and drinking our milk, and waiting.
This is when Jon comes back. I keep eating.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?" he says.
"Vancouver," I say.
He sits down at the table, stares at me. He looks as if he hasn't slept for weeks, although he's been sleeping a lot, oversleeping. "I can't stop you," he says. It's a statement of fact, not a maneuver: he will let us go without a fight. He too is exhausted.
"I think that's the taxi," I say. "I'll write."
I'm good at leaving. The trick is to close yourself off. Don't hear, don't see. Don't look back.
*
We don't have a sleeper, because I need to save the money. I sit up all night, Sarah sprawled and snuffling in my lap. She's done some crying, but she's too young to realize what I've done, what we're doing. The other passengers extend themselves into the aisles; baggage expands, smoke drifts in the stale air, food wrappings clog the washrooms. There's a card game going on up at the front of the car, with beer.
The train runs northwest, through hundreds of miles of scraggy forests and granite outcrops, hundreds of small blue anonymous lakes edged with swamp and bulrushes and dead spruce, old snow in the shadows. I peer out through the glass of the train window, which is streaked with rain and dust, and there is the landscape of my early childhood, smudged and scentless and untouchable and moving backward.
At long intervals the train crosses a road, gravel or thin and paved, with a white line down the middle. This looks like emptiness and silence, but to me it is not empty, not silent. Instead it's filled with echoes.