Losing It (39 page)

“The longer we leave it the longer you’ll have to wait for your settlement.”

“Yes. Yes, I know.”

She didn’t want to leave the place unlocked, but Bob had her keys, so she went around to the back, found the spare house key they kept in a film canister behind a stone in the garden, locked the doors and pocketed the key. Then she left, walked off,
worried. The more she thought about it the more likely it seemed to her that Bob was unravelling somehow, that the drinking was a symptom but not the root cause. Ever since her mother had started to come apart, she’d been more aware of how vulnerable anyone’s mind might be to depression, to chemical changes signalling the onset of some horrible disease. Was that it? Were these the early stages? She was carrying Matthew’s Willy, the rescued photo album, and the wet box of old receipts, and with each step weariness invaded her limbs. She felt abandoned, suddenly and single-handedly responsible for a wilful young child, a failing mother, and a fading husband. It seemed as if the heavens were against her, had burned out her house, plagued her life. And why? Because she’d stolen him, that’s why. He was already married, she had no right responding to his overtures the way that she did; she should have kept her distance rather than wrecking their home.

“You must be devastated!” Brenda said at the door, looking at her face, then hugging her ferociously. “I can’t imagine!” she whispered.

Julia was confused for a moment – Brenda knew all about the fire already. “It’s not so bad,” she said, when they’d separated. “The house is still standing. I like the insurance guy, he’s going to be all right to deal with.” Brenda was looking at her with blazing intensity. “
What?”

“You don’t know,” Brenda said, and Julia had a sudden, sickening premonition, a vision of a car wreck, of Bob’s body crushed inside ruined metal. She felt faint, had to lean against the railing by the door.

“Tell me,” she said. Matthew was playing in the hallway with plastic men – safe, thank God.

“It’s the weirdest thing,” Brenda said, “I don’t know what to make of it. But everyone with a university e-mail address got this message. I just read it an hour ago.”

“What message?”

“About Bob and … and one of his students.”

“What about Bob and one of his students?”

“Come in – oh, I’m sorry!” Brenda suddenly said and held the door open.

“
Brenda, just tell me
!”

“Julia, it’s so strange. It’s either a prank or … or your husband has been having this … bizarre affair. It’s hard to describe. Maybe … you need to see it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for this,” she said. “Come in! Don’t stand out here.”

Julia felt her feet carry her into the living room.

“Let me get you something,” Brenda said. “I have coffee, I have alcohol -”

“Willy! Willy!” Matthew said, and Julia numbly let the snake drop into his hands.

“What do you mean he’s having a bizarre affair?”

“Well, given his history, do you think it might be -?”

“Brenda, I don’t know what you are talking about!” Julia was shouting now. “He’s been impossible lately, but -” She didn’t know how to continue. She felt smacked in the face, as if she’d walked straight into a pane of glass.

“I’m sorry. But you need to see this,” Brenda said.

Julia followed her into a small room with a single bed, a dresser, a desk and computer. There was only one chair. Brenda sat in it and Julia sat on the edge of the bed. She could see the screen clearly, waited with a sense of mounting doom while the machine warmed up and Brenda clicked the appropriate icons. “I didn’t bookmark the site. I’m sorry, I was just so astonished,” Brenda said.

Julia could hear Matthew playing happily. She had a strange sense that everything was whirling apart despite her sitting so still and composed. That she had control over nothing except taking one breath and letting it out.

“Come on. Come on!” Brenda said. The modem was dialling, but kept encountering a busy signal. “This is one of the worst times,” she said. “The traffic just builds and builds all through the afternoon.”

Brenda tried a different number and it was busy, tried the first again and it was busy. Then she tried a third, a slower line, and got through. In a few minutes she had the letter on-screen.

THE SEXUAL PROCLIVITIES OF ENGLISH PROFESSORS: PRELIMINARY RESEARCH

“Poetical and sexual anthropologist?” Julia said.

“You don’t want to see this. Believe me,” Brenda said, but she’d already clicked on the icon. The Web page was coming.

There was the title again in bold black lettering. The explanation followed.

“Everyone at the university was notified of this?” Julia asked.

“Everyone on-line,” Brenda said. “It seems to have been a bulk mailing. There are supposed to be spam guards, but this chick knew what she was doing.”

There was more text, but by then a picture had arrived on-screen. It was a grotesque, partially blurry image of a fattish, aging man wearing a hideous black wig and garish make-up, and stuffed into the most awful-looking hooker-style scarlet mini-dress. He was leaning against a desk in some professor’s office – in Bob’s office; Julia recognized the pen and pencil set her mother had given him years ago, and the window behind, the chair and the books …

It was Bob’s office, and the sorry-looking Hallowe’en figure with the gash of red lipstick, the gaudy face, the stockings, for Christ’s sake, his legs apart as if he wanted people to look up his dress … it was Bob. Unmistakable, but she couldn’t believe it. She fought down a rising sense of nausea.

The expression on his face, almost drugged, and yet … so ordinary, too. A shy little smile. Bob a bit embarrassed. Bob as if gazing up from a funny article in the Saturday
Globe and Mail
, a particularly nicely phrased review lacerating some overrated author.

Brenda said, “That’s enough, I think.”

Julia said no. “It says there are more pictures. I want to see all of them.” So she sat through them all. Twelve grainy photos, the
colours leaking over the edges of things, like in impressionistic paintings or tabloid exposés. Bob standing, his arms – hairless, big meaty jokes coming out of the ludicrous dress – crossed in front of his chunky bosom. Bob’s back and rear, his skin bulging out of the lacing of the dress, clues of underwear poking out – a black bra strap, the edge of some sort of slip or something. Then there he was just in a black bra and panties. Bob trying to cross his legs, Bob standing as if in a police line-up, staring blankly. Bob with his hands on his hips. Bob sitting on the corner of the desk, his tongue resting on the edge of his painted lips.

“There’s text, too,” Brenda said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I want to read it,” Julia said. She felt deeply focused, angry but cold. Weak, but holding on somehow. She promised herself she would only look this once. She wanted to see everything once.

The text read:

Julia could barely move. She felt suddenly pumped full of some heavy, hot, debilitating liquid, as if she were in an old-fashioned diving suit that had filled up suddenly and now was holding her sickeningly on the bottom.

“It must be a joke,” Brenda said. “It’s so awful. I can’t believe …”

“Her name is familiar,” Julia said. She tried to think. Sienna.
Sienna?
Oh, Sienna. Oceana. Oh my God.

Brenda was hitting the BACK button now, flipping once again through the horrible, horrible pictures. Julia said, “She must be his student.” Undoubtedly she was his student. Who else could she be?

Matthew came in then dragging a yellow plastic bulldozer and making flapping noises with his lips. He turned his little head to look at what Brenda and his mother were so intent on, and Julia shrieked, she threw herself at him, banged her shoulder on Brenda’s chair as she went down. “Ow! Ow!” he said, holding his knee, his face full of outrage and surprise.

“Oh, baby. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry!” she said, and cuddled him, smothered him against her, held his struggling head away from the monitor. “
Turn it off!
” she howled. “Please, Brenda, get rid of it!” and she ran with Matthew out of the room, the plastic bulldozer bumping behind as the boy held on, craning his head to see what was so interesting.

34

B
ob felt his vision narrowing, a circle of blackness closing in, everything else superfluous except for what was on the screen. Helen’s fingers did not let any single picture dwell for long. They flitted by with just enough force to shatter his life. One, two, three – by the fourth one he had to turn away, reeled against the window frame, against the figure standing there.

“Whoa! Hey!” the man said. It was Gerry Calcavecchia – Bob knew it was, but it didn’t look like him, his face was so distorted and blurred. Everything at once was different. Bob felt awash in malfunctioning sensations that turned the air grey and the floor blood-red, that squeezed all meaning out of sound.

He cried out something anyway and would have hit the man, the hand that was leaden on his shoulder. But he spun instead, heard his name strangely, found himself in the hall lurching like a madman, bouncing off one person and another, then running, running …

Where?

He didn’t know.