Before I Wake (19 page)

“That's all for now.” Ignoring the cries for “just one more question, just one more,” I continued, “I'd like to ask, please, everyone go home. We'll be here at ten o'clock Monday morning, so there's no need for you to put your health further at risk by sitting out here in the cold. Go home, please. Take care of yourselves.”

I ducked back inside, ignoring the voices behind me, closing them off with the front door.

From behind the curtains in the living room Karen and I watched as most of the crowd dispersed. The press left first, hopping into cars and speeding away, eager to meet deadlines and get footage edited.

I wondered which sound bite the five o'clock news would choose to run, and how the paper the next day would deal with the whole thing.

The pilgrims who had been at the house all night were slower to slip away. Some stayed to clean up, picking up their garbage, rolling up their sleeping bags before leaving the yard. Someone even cleaned up the mess of coffee cups and takeout wrappers the press had left scattered in the driveway. Someone
else rolled up Jeffrey's sleeping bag and left it on the front step as they were going.

By five o'clock the yard was empty. The last pilgrim to leave shut the gate. It was as if none of it had happened.

MARY

All day I managed not to answer the phone when it rang. Instead I'd pause in the middle of whatever I was doing—a long overdue cleaning, another chapter in my book—to listen to the answering machine as he left his messages.

Five messages in the past twenty-four hours. The first an hour after I had left his house, while I was out walking along the water. “Mary? It's Simon. Are you there?”

I'd gotten into his habit of checking a clock every time something happened, making a mental note of the time, measuring my life out in increments. Just like him.

9:40 a.m. “Mary, it's Simon. What happened to you last night? You just disappeared. I was worried. Listen, give me a call on my cell…”

His voice was low. Not a whisper, but pitched low enough that Karen wouldn't hear him. I could picture him, sitting in their family room—

family room

—speaking softly into his tiny black phone, keeping one eye on the door, ready to cut it off should his wife appear.

I'd been through all of this before.

12:10 p.m. “Mary, it's Simon again. Are you there? Are you okay? Please call…”

His voice was touched by tenderness and care, by worry. I should have explained why I had to go.

But what would I have said? “I'm leaving you so that you can choose between me and your wife. I'm leaving because you want me to leave—you just don't know it yet.”

I almost picked it up. Too late. He'd hung up.

3:40 p.m. “Mary, it's Simon. Listen, I know you're mad at me. I know we need to talk. Please, just call me, okay? I love you…”

Mad at him? Not a chance. I was too furious at myself to even think about him. What was I thinking, destroying a family like that? Taking a father away from his daughter, a husband away from his wife. Mad at you? God, no, Simon. And that last, that “I love you,” as if just saying it could make everything all right.

But love was easy. I had loved Simon long before he ever moved in, long before it was even a possibility that we could have a life together. Loving him was easy.

Was
easy.

5:55 p.m. “It's me…I've…It's been a really long afternoon…I don't know if you saw the news or not, but…I really need to talk to you. If you get this, please call.”

I hadn't watched the news; I hadn't been doing anything except sitting around, putting CDs into the player, changing them after a few songs, unable to find anything that seemed to speak to me.

I couldn't stand to hear him in pain. I was reaching for the phone to call him when it rang. I jumped a little, then answered it. “Hello?”

“Party Girl!” came the loud, familiar voice, almost a shout over the music in the background.

“Brian?”

“Who else, Party Girl? Where have you been hiding?” He was clearly camping it up for an audience at his end of the phone. “We thought you'd died!”

“No, not dead. Just in love.”

“That doesn't sound as happy as it should.”

“Is it ever?”

“It's always a man, isn't it?” he said, more sympathetically.

I didn't need to answer. Brian and I had known each other since we were undergraduates, both headed for law school. The hippie girl from the small town up-island, straight As, who
never did anything bad, falling in with a flaming hometown queen who lived off-campus in a house full of lesbians who kept stealing each others' girlfriends and tampons.

“How can you live like that?” I had asked him at one point.

“Honey, if I ever need a reason not to be interested in women, all I have to do is spend a few minutes in the living room.”

Victoria was Brian's town, and he didn't hesitate to show me its secrets: the bars, the restaurants, the nightlife. We would study through the week, pouring all of our energy into our books, papers and exams. Then we'd go crazy on the weekends, dancing at the clubs or raves, crashing house parties, whatever. With Brian it was impossible not to have a good time. Law school went the same way—the work was harder, and we partied harder. After, I decided to go the private route, while Brian took a job at Legal Aid. Always helping out the little guys.

“Married, gay or stupid?”

I found myself smiling. Brian can always do that. “Married. And stupid, I guess.”

“Is this a bad one?”

“The worst,” I answered. “And you?”

“This is the lawyer, right?”

I was a little surprised, but I shouldn't have been. Just because I hadn't spoken to Brian in the past few months didn't mean that he was out of the loop. “Yeah, it's the lawyer.”

“I just saw him on TV. On the news.”

“Him and his wife, right?”

He ignored the question.

“Listen, Party Girl, I've got just the thing for you. Big rave, up the Peninsula somewhere. Love bus leaves at ten—”

“Brian, I'm not—”

“Listen,” he said, suddenly serious, oddly maternal, his voice dropping an octave. “You need to get out, right?”

“I don't think—”

“Let me guess: you've been puttering around the apartment all day, not answering the telephone, in a cleaning tizzy, not
eating, trying to think of anything else but him, right? Changing the CDs every half-hour?”

Ah, Brian. “Right.”

“So you need to get out.”

“Brian, I'm not up for this.”

“Look, we'll dance. We'll drink some smart drinks, we'll talk, we'll just hang, okay?”

He was impossible to resist. “Well…”

“I'll be there at ten,” he jumped in. “Wear your Day-Glo lipstick.” He hung up.

As I cradled the receiver I looked at the answering machine, the red light flashing four times, pausing, then flashing again. I thought for a moment about calling, just to let him know I was okay.

Instead, I pressed the button and erased the messages.

The light went out.

KAREN

I was afraid to admit to myself how good it felt to have Simon at home. It was like what Donna had said, about getting accustomed to the worst and accepting it, and how anything else, any slight hope, was almost too much to bear.

Sitting at the table, a glass of merlot in front of me, watching him cook, I was reminded of the early days of our relationship. That first basement apartment, so tiny, so dark. We had rented it furnished with an awful cream vinyl chair and couch, a bed that felt like it had no mattress on it at all and a rickety table with two chairs. God forbid if we ever wanted to have company. We had no money, but it never felt like suffering. He could whip up a gourmet meal from a few vegetables, some noodles and the tiniest pieces of meat—all that we could afford. It was so easy to romanticize the poverty of those days, both of us in school, no TV, always working or reading or going for walks or making love. There was no sense of a real
world outside that dictated our actions to us. Not the way it seemed to once we grew up.

When the telephone rang, Simon looked at it with suspicion. I couldn't blame him. I'd just hung up after a painful near-hour with my mother.

“Is it true?” she had started, without any warning or preamble.

“Mom—”

“Father Jean just called me and said he had heard from someone in Victoria—”

“Mom—”

“It
is
true, isn't it?”

I could picture her clutching her rosary beads to her heart.

“I was going to call…”

“Oh, Karen, you must be so happy.”

“Happy?”

“To be so blessed.”

I sighed, and Simon shook his head, obviously piecing together the conversation.

“I wouldn't say happy, Mom. I'm…the house is under siege. There are reporters and people everywhere—”

“They just want to see the miracle,” she answered. “They just want their questions put to rest. Just like you.”

“Mom,” I said warningly, gritting my teeth.

“It's true, Karen. It's what I've always said: God doesn't depend on your belief or disbelief, He just is. And now you see proof.”

“Mom, I really don't want to—”

“I've called Air Canada,” she interrupted. “They can get me on a flight Monday—”

“No,” I said, so firmly Simon looked startled.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said no, Mom,” I said, trying to stay calm.

“But Karen—”

“Now is not a good time, Mom. Let us…give us a couple of weeks to get used to this. Maybe right after New Year's.”

“That's a month!”

“Mom, you were just here three weeks ago.”

“But that was before—”

“Before what, Mom? Sherry's the same as she ever was.”

I could hear her sigh over the phone. “I know how tough it must be for you,” she said. “To have everything you believe—or don't believe, I guess—fall apart with this proof.”

The conversation degenerated from there.

So when the telephone rang again, mere minutes after I had hung up, I hesitated.

“It's up to you,” Simon said. “The machine will pick it up if you don't.”

I decided to chance it.

“Karen, it's Jamie.” I waved Simon's concern away. He turned back to his cooking. “I just saw you on the news. How are you holding up?”

“Fine, I suppose.”

“Are you guys really sure about this, this whole thing with letting people in to see Sherry? It's going to turn into a zoo.”

She was repeating my own fears back to me. “We don't really have a choice in the matter.”

“Well, yes, you do.”

“We can't just—” I couldn't finish the sentence.

“I suppose.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Do you need any help? I know you'll have Ruth there. But Simon?” She trailed off.

“Simon's still here.” He glanced toward me at the sound of his name. “He's cooking dinner.”

“Ah. Well, he's going to have to go to work, and, well, I seem to have the time…” I hadn't often heard Jamie at a loss for words.

“I'd really appreciate that,” I said. “We've got no idea what to expect.”

“I'd be happy to come over.”

“Thanks, Jamie.”

“Don't worry about it. I'll be there, what, eight o'clock? Just to be sure everything's all ready? Or should I come earlier?”

I couldn't help but smile. “Whenever works for you. I'm just happy you're coming.”

“Me too. I'll see you Monday morning, then.”

“Yeah.”

“Jamie wants to help on Monday morning,” I explained when I hung up.

He nodded. “Good. We'll need as much help as we can get.”

“Are you going to be here?” I asked, not even realizing the enormity of my question until he glanced at me. “I mean, don't you have to go to work?”

“Actually, I thought I'd call in, take some personal time.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Really.”

I was speechless for a moment. “Okay, then. Jamie will be here, and Ruth, and you and I. We should be okay.”

He returned his attention to his cooking. I took a sip of my wine. “Have you spoken to Mary?” I asked before I lost my nerve.

He shook his head. “No, not yet. I've left a couple of messages.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“This must be very hard for her. And you.”

He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Grab a plate,” he said. “Dinner's ready.”

After we had been eating in silence for several minutes, I said, “Can I ask you something, Simon?”

“Of course.” He was watching me warily.

I set my fork on the edge of my plate and picked up my wineglass. “You and Mary. How long had that been going on, you know, before…” I took a sip of my wine.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I…it was…I
don't know, I guess a year or so before I moved out.” He spoke without looking at me, without meeting my eye.

I shook my head. “I never even suspected.”

He nodded, still looking away.

“I was…stunned,” I continued, filling up the empty spaces between us.

At this, he turned to me. “Do we have to talk about this now?” he asked quietly. “Haven't we got enough other stuff to worry about?”

“I'm sorry. I was just—”

“Don't be sorry. But let's not talk about it, okay? Not right now,” he said.

I bit my lip. “Okay.”

But I needed to ask him why. I needed to know why, after being together for more than fifteen years…

“No. Not okay,” I said. “I'd like to know why.”