As She's Told (7 page)

She laughed. "What do you mean?"

"You cross-reference things. You catalogue."

"That sounds awful!" She looked down into her glass. "But you're probably right."

"Is that what made you go into it?"

41

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

"Because my mind works that way?" She thought a moment. "Don't think so. That's more a product of school than a cause."

"Why, then?"

She gave an embarrassed smile. "Well – I've always hung out in libraries. Reading. Nerd that I am. Nice and quiet, safe. This huge one in Oakland – I used to sit near the reference desk and listen. It was amazing what that woman could find out; all sorts of information – basic, obscure, downright esoteric. And she'd just give it out, no strings attached. Anyone could come in or call and ask all sorts of stuff, and she'd look it up for them."

"And you liked that."

"Yes. I want to do that myself, one way or another. Get people the information they need." She unfolded her napkin, folded it up another way.

"At home everything seemed to be about money, about what something was worth, what it cost. How to make more. How to make people pay. My father has a software consulting business. He doesn't do anything for free; he says he can't afford to. But I don't want to live like that."

"What does your family think of your going –" his eyes darted to left and right, and he leaned forward to whisper, "– non-profit?"

She mimed shock, grinned, shrugged. "It's a job. They tried to make me a junior entrepreneur like my sister, but they had to give up on that pretty early. I'm too introverted. I think they've got visions of me going into corporate information technology or some damned thing, but if so they're going to be disappointed."

"Ah, yes, the expectations. My mother wasn't too happy about my business. Wasting all that college education. Picking up master electrician instead of an MA. Though she's come around now and my dad never minded, as long as I got the education in the first place; he insisted on that."

"That was a given in my house, too."

"Well, not entirely in mine. My grandmother was pissed that I wasted time in university, given that it had nothing to do with construction. She said I'd been reading blueprints and building things since the age of three and that there was no point pretending I was going to be anything else. She still harps on it whenever she wants to annoy my mother."

"You were reading blueprints at three?"

"So to speak. I used them in my games. My dad gave me old draft 42

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

versions; I kept piles of them.”

“You could have taken architecture or urban planning or something."

"Probably. Though I don't think I would have been satisfied if I wasn't building with my own hands. I like getting in there. Anyway, back then I didn't think I was going to be in any way like my father. Who does at eighteen? I thought I was going to be quite unlike any of my relations. Shake their dust off my boots. Have an impact on the world. Thus the political science. After a while I figured out that I was actually quite a lot like my father and there was no shame in it. And then everything fell into place.”

“Despite your mother's disapproval."

"Nah, she's okay with it now. As long as I'm happy; you know mothers.

She's a teacher; education is high on her list." He set his cutlery on his empty plate and wiped his mouth. "What about your mother, what does she do?"

"Everything, all the time, it seems to me. Always going at something full tilt. Mostly she runs an organic food wholesaling business. The first thing she wants to know when she calls me is whether I'm eating organic.

Tells me about all the poisons in the food chain as if I'd never heard of them.”

“The first thing?"

"I exaggerate, sorry. Maybe the second. The first is whether I'm using birth control and safe sex. She seems to have this vision of me partying away night after night with one boyfriend after another. It's got to be left over from her college days in the seventies, because she sure didn't get it from me. 'Just for god's sake don't get pregnant, Maia,' she says. 'I raised you to be a powerhouse, not a baby machine.'"

"I'll bet she was on the ramparts back in the seventies."

"Oh, man. Not just the seventies. She's got a drawer full of buttons from abortion rallies, violence against women, all that." Maia saw his eyes dance, and she laughed. "I know. Hey, I've got some, too; she used to haul us along.

Well, my sister didn't need hauling; she was really into it; still is. I used to try not to hear the stories – the abuse; it upset me for weeks." Maia broke off, looked down at her lap, clasped her hands there. Then she looked up.

"It's not that I don't agree with feminism, right down the line. Only – not for me." Then she spread her hands on the table. "No, you know, even for me. I don't think men – all men – have the right to make my decisions for me. Just

– one."

43

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

Anders nodded. He was deeply familiar with the apparent conflict between sexuality and values, between intellect and politics and the body's needs. He sat back. "I suppose you could be a rather extreme and quirky demonstration of a woman's right to choose.”

“The personal not being political in my case."

"Right. Tell me, does the contrast bother you? Between what your mother thinks and what you are?"

Maia furrowed her brow. "I don't know," she said. "I'm used to concealing things from her – from my sister, too – everything that matters, really. Pretending to be something I'm not, doing the assertive act so they'll stay off my back. The stuff I learned from books, not them, I might add."

She met his eye. "And believe me, I'm not like this in any kind of reaction to my mother and her feminism. The two aren't related. I used to wonder about that. But it's not so.”

“The thought never crossed my mind." Maia smiled. "No, I guess not.”

“Would you ever tell her the truth?"

"God, no!" The shock on her face slowly receded, leaving a wry smile in its wake. "Gays and lesbians don't know what a closet is, compared with us."

"You'd tell her if you were lesbian?"

"Sure. No problem. But this? Not in a million years. She'd never accept it. " She squeezed her eyes tight for a second, as if to shut the thought away, then opened them again. "Would yours?"

He shrugged. "Don't know. Not without a lot of work. And why would I bother? They're not about to walk in on us, or participate in our lives. I don't need their approval." The waiter took their plates away and offered dessert menus and coffee. Anders ordered cheesecake; Maia mimed being full but conceded to a little crème brulée. When the waiter was gone, Anders leaned in on his elbows. "What about you? Do you accept it?"

What came out of her was a short, rueful laugh, but for a long moment she didn't speak.

"Yes," she said at last. The table held her eyes for a while, and then she looked up at his face. "I am what I am."

A twist of a smile. "Me, too."

"Inside myself, for a long time it's been – right. I don't know why; it just is. But in comparison with the rest of the world, you know, it's harder. Not to 44

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

think of oneself as a disgusting object."

He shook his head. "Rest assured…." She smiled.

Anders ran his eyes over the woman across the table, over the fine contours of cheek and eyebrow, the slender shoulders. So small, and even smaller in that she was self-effacing. He could easily imagine her disappearing from everyone's notice, despite her looks. "Maia. What was it like, moving all the time when you were a kid?"

She raised her eyebrows, then looked resigned. "Oh. Well. Sometimes it was hard. I didn't exactly come up to expectations on making new friends."

"Whose expectations?"

"My mother's. She was always trying to push me out the door."

Resentment flickered. "Expecting me to be the centre of the crowd like my sister. When I'd rather have been sitting on my bed with a book." Maia began turning the salt shaker round and round in a very small circle. "I was safer with the teachers than the kids, actually. Authority figures." There was a wry flicker of a smile, one corner only. "I suppose I sucked up. I was smart. Teacher's pet. Which was a bit of a liability in the long run, with the other kids.”

“You said you did their homework."

"Here and there. Sometimes more than I did my own. Some of the kids could act like authority figures too, you know."

"I'll bet."

"But actually I didn't mind helping them out. It felt like an okay thing to do. Even if it was a bit exploitive on their part."

Anders put cream in his coffee and stirred. "Wasn't it a little hard on you?"

"A little," she agreed. "What are you asking?" She sipped some tea and gave him a long look over the rim. "Am I submissive because I got beat up at school?" She put the cup down. "No. No one picked on me particularly.

I'm good at being inconspicuous. I wasn't exactly popular, but I wasn't abused. Not at home either. No secret trauma. And I've had submissive fantasies as long as I can remember." She gave a little snort, and shook her head. "'Fantasy;' what a word. It makes it sound lightweight and fanciful, tra la la. Not the – what can I call it? It felt huge, heavy, rich; a dark kind of weight. An intense secret life."

She lowered her eyebrows at him, her face faintly challenging. "Are you 45

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

asking if I'm like this because I've got low self-esteem? Not that either. I may not be the most confident person in the world, but in my own way I'm all right."

"Well said." His eyes were warm.

"Hey, what about you?" she asked suddenly.

"What about me what?"

"You moved, too. To a different country, a different language even.

That couldn't have been easy."

"I guess." Anders leaned back in his seat and stretched out long legs beneath the table. "But I thought of it as an adventure; I know it's hokey, but it's true. My English wasn't bad, and using it in school was a bit like a game, a puzzle. Something like driving when you're only just learning how. Clutch, gas, turn the wheel…. Svend had a harder time; he wasn't so far along in English.”

“So you fit in right away?"

"More or less. Well, I was taller than everyone else. I didn't exactly blend in with the crowd. No hiding for me. We lived right downtown; Bellevue Park, you know it? Behind Kensington Market. My parents couldn't stand the suburbs, and the ethnicities were mostly Asian or southern European; a lot of short, dark kids. I was the guy at the back who looked like he was in the wrong class. A broomstick. Skinny as hell. That was my nickname for a while.”

“Broomstick?"

"Yeah, or Broom. See, my hair when it's short kind of sticks up…." He ran his fingers through his hair from below, and sure enough, for a few seconds it defied gravity, a haystack gone wild. "It's bit long for it at the moment." He brushed it back down.

She reached over to smooth the remaining stragglers, and he kissed the inside of her wrist.

"But I take it you didn't get left out or picked on," she said.

"Why do you say that?"

"Just a feeling."

He looked at her curiously. "Well, you're right. Apart from some jokes.

Though I suppose I could have been. I don't know. Mockery, or that macho challenge thing that boys do, they're easy enough to deal with. So when it came up I dealt with it. For myself or anyone else I thought was getting it 46

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

rough."

She smiled broadly. "You protected the weak, did you? My superman?

"You betcha." The waiter topped up his coffee, and Anders stirred in more cream, watching it swirl and vanish. "Tried to, anyway." She gave an enquiring look, but he left it at that.

"So – my information management girl," he said, "you want to give freely, find people what they need, serve them with facts."

"Yes." He rested his eyes on her, and her face shifted. "Okay. I know.

It's the same – I want to do the same for you."

"Give me what I need?"

She nodded.

"I think you will."

They sat quietly, looking out. It was full dark now: streetlights, headlights and neon signs reflecting on wet asphalt. Cars and crowds. At last she spoke up, a little timidly.

"And – and what about your fantasies? When did all this – take hold, for you?"

He considered. "Hard to say. I don't remember a time when it wasn't there. At least the assumption that I ought to be in charge." He smiled. "I'm sure my siblings appreciated that very much. But of course there were all the ideas beneath the surface that I only talked about later, with a cousin of mine who's also into it. A fascination with unequal power relationships. Feudal droit de seigneur, patriarchal marriages, purdah, and of course every kind of slave-owning culture. I even wrote essays on the subject, anti- of course, while secretly imagining myself as a Viking slave raider.”

“They did do a lot of that, didn't they."

"Sure. Thralls. Trælle. Spoils of war, or the results of all that coastal raiding. Not that they were the only ones.”

“I can just see you in a Viking boat. At the helm. Sword in hand."

"Standing over the pretty captive. Who, incidentally, fell for me big time and quite liked her collar."

"Consent even then?"

"Oh, yes; always."

"A left wing Viking slave raider."

He laughed. "Twenty-first century version."

They went for a long walk. The air was still damp but the clouds had 47

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

moved on; the moon was visible between the streetlights. They strolled north through Grange Park and along Dundas, still crowded with stalls, and thick with the odours of Chinese food, car exhaust and damp asphalt. The restaurant smells persisted until they were well into the residential part of Chinatown. Here the scent of damp earth rose unevenly through the downtown exhaust fumes; people's gardens waking up. Anders felt Maia's small, smooth hand like a child's in his own. "What about your cousin?" she asked him. Anders looked down at her. "What about him?”