Poached Egg on Toast (11 page)

I look out again to the yard where Karla is playing. She looks like a flash of leaves herself, in bright yellows and reds. The leaves rain past her as she deftly leaps from rope to branch and back to swing. She painstakingly twists the tire round and round, lies back and allows herself to spin until her body and the movement of the rope merge to an opaque blur. I watch her with a knowledge, a certainty that she will always be a wonder to me, a mystery of spontaneous joy and selfless happiness. Restless, I leave the blank canvas and go outside. I think about my sister Kristina and her family coming for Christmas. Karla and I both look forward to that. Kristina’s family will help fill the growing spaces.

The week Kristina is to arrive, Karla decides to make hats. With glue and paper and paint she creates jesters’ hats, soldiers’ hats, clowns’ hats, hats that look as if they should be worn by Popes.

The tree is decorated; we are ready for visitors. Karla’s holidays have begun and I feel the relief and joy of the break in routine, of having just the two of us in the house.

Karla tires of the hats and decides to play dress-up. I go through my closets and donate to her dress-up box, two old sundresses, one of which—a bright blue—she holds to her chest.

“Children can have breastuz too,” she says, peering into the top of the dress. And then, as if she has been saving this for days, she eyes me shrewdly and says, “How does a man’s sperm get inside a woman?”

I can never anticipate the questions. They seem to spring from a deep well of curiosity and, for Karla, a deeper well of hilarity. Their timing is a mystery to me. We get out her book, one she has gone through many times, and we read
How Babies Are Made
. But it holds her interest only a few minutes, and off she goes, this time to build with her set of logs.

Miss Ellis arrives, for tea. She brings a bag of knitting and we sit in the living room before the fire, where an ancient and useful rite goes on. I kneel before her, a skein of scarlet strands looped about my hands. My arms sway to Miss Ellis’ rhythm as she winds the wool to a furiously growing round ball. Karla watches this magical performance. Miss Ellis sits back comfortably and begins to knit—a shrug, she says, for her shoulders. A scarlet shrug.

Karla waits and then, testing, remembering the book, says coolly to Miss Ellis, “Did you know that when a man and woman are in bed the sperm eats the egg?”

“Meets
the egg, Karla!” I say. “It
meets
the egg!”

Karla thinks this very funny indeed.

“You seem to know all about it, don’t you, Karla,” says Miss Ellis.

Then she tells us she has received a Christmas card from Alan. “He seems to write happily, Simone.”

Yes, he writes happily to Karla and me, too, but as much as Alan and I have tried to make contact through our letters, he is removed from the fringes of my real life. There are things that I am forgetting. I am living with the new knowledge that my life is somehow changing, almost against my will. In one of my own letters to Alan, sent at the beginning of the week, I found myself scribbling—a postscript: “Do you remember who I am, Alan? Do you remember the things I do?” I have begun to feel anger, anger mixed with sorrow at missing him, and even fear, a new fear that has crept in: that our friendship, our partnership, will somehow be damaged when we meet again.

But these are all of the things that cannot be said, and I stumble over my reply. As Miss Ellis leaves, she pauses at the door. “Isolation can be terrible if you allow it. You’re vulnerable, Simone. Please take care.”

At dinner, Karla is quiet; she makes few demands on me, seems to know something that neither of us can articulate. And for the first time, she leaves Alan out of her bedtime prayer.

Christmas is, in Miss Ellis’ words, “A great success.” She joins Karla and me, Kristina, her husband, Tim, and their two children, who have now arrived. There has been only one light snowfall and, feeling cheated, Karla and her cousins manage to scrape and heap enough of it to make a thin slide. They spend hours shrieking and laughing outside the house. Tim amuses the children and moves easily in and out of the reminiscences which now surround him on all sides. Kristina and I have five days in which to remember, and talk, and remember. And we laugh. We tell stories to Miss Ellis about our childhood, and Karla and her cousins listen, agog. Miss Ellis tells us stories of the town and its past. She seems to know about every settler who came to this area in her great-great-grandfather’s time.

“‘Culture’ was not a word that was used in my day,” she says. “Nor was ‘ethnic.’ People were just people then. Things used to be more simple. Sometimes I look out my window and see young people congregating around the shopping mall, and I feel as if I don’t know what’s going on any more.”

One late afternoon, Miss Ellis describes a ballet she had seen when she was a child. She’d been taken to Montreal by her parents, and they had visited the theatre. A touring company from Europe was performing. Her eyes are bright with the memory, and she moves her hands and arms as she talks.

“Children were
banked
along the back of the stage. Then, the smallest girl, a carnation, stepped forward and danced. How that little flower danced! After that, I always played the piece for the dance, always for those tiny feet, that little flower.”

Miss Ellis rises from her chair and goes to the piano bench. Her fingers stretch and falter on the keys of my old Heintzman, but she stiffens her back, perseveres, and the tune is played. Miss Ellis’ head bows forward on her chest. We sit quietly, gathering the dusk.

Kristina and I walk to the big white house with Miss Ellis, who has recovered herself. At the door, her hand on the knob, she tips back on her heels and thanks us.

“There’s something of the belle about her, isn’t there,” says Kristina.

“She’s wonderful,” I reply. “A wonderful friend.” But I think to myself: We’ve left her alone, in that big old house.

That night, I sleep fitfully. In and out of sleep, I reach across the bed for Alan. I wake to the realization that he is gone and it is then that I feel the first and deepest loneliness. There is nothing I can do.

The following day, Alan phones. It is the first phone call from the other side of the world. I am not expecting the call; it is sudden; the connection is poor. Kristina hurries everyone from the room and shuts the door, leaving me in privacy. But my voice echoes back through the receiver each time I try to speak, and I think of tortuous cables moaning and tangled in the deepest parts of the sea. Because of the echoes, our words are delayed. We speak at the same time, cancelling each other out. Every few seconds, there is a beeping noise in the background. What chance do we have of saying anything meaningful?

“I tried to call Christmas Day,” he says. “I couldn’t get through.”

This is followed by loud crackling noises.

“Are you all right?” he shouts.

And I shout back, “Perhaps I would feel better if I were indifferent.”

And that is the only thing Alan seems to hear clearly. He sounds puzzled; his voice is choked. I hear, “Indifferent? No, Simone, not indifferent.” But it’s too late to try to erase. We hang up, suffering. For that brief second, I recognized the temptation to punish him for leaving.

Kristina and Tim prepare to go. They have already extended their visit to a week. I would like them to stay longer, but they have made the emotional switch; their thoughts are back in their own home. All of the activity here moves towards departure.

I am saddened by this and think of it only in terms of being left. Karla picks up my mood and we irritate each other.

When the car is packed, Kristina and I go for a last walk in the fresh snow along the riverbank. It might be a year before I see her again, and by then Alan will be home. But Kristina, knowing my mood, is bent on handing out sympathy, which I hate. I am angry and want no part of it. What does she know of separation? I walk beside her, bitter and silent. Our conversation ends; we have had our parting. But at the car door, Kristina says, “I never realized how weak you are, Simone. All through our childhood, I thought of you as being so strong.”

I think of Miss Ellis. Vulnerable, yes, but do I have to believe this, too?

“No, Kris,” I tell her. “You’re wrong. It’s just that, from here, I can’t see the end of it. But it’s my life and I’ll arrange it the best way I can.”

Karla goes back to school; I begin to paint. I work upstairs near the south window where the sun streams in. Some days while Karla is in school, I wander outside, taking walks in the cold air, keeping my back to the west wind. I hike through the woods and watch the sun as it glazes over icy patches on the surface snow.

Cars move slowly and continuously, up and down our street. The women in them seem to travel in groups, four or five to a car. In and out of cars much of the day. What do they do? Play bridge? Coffee? I cannot imagine. When we first moved here four years ago, they came calling, clusters of them, like neglected nettles. I wanted no part of that. They know I paint; they leave me alone; we greet one another on the street, that is all.

But Miss Ellis is not like that; she is unique, alive. There is nothing of loss about her, nothing of death—only life. She tells Karla, “How wonderful is life, Karla, if you only take hold.”

In the bookstore I overhear two women of the town discussing Miss Ellis.

“Poor brave thing,” says one. “I wonder how she manages alone in that big place.”

And the other: “She is a brave little soul, isn’t she. I feel so sorry for her.”

And I am angry because they dare to describe her with pity.

I recognize one of the women who describes her so; she is a tall, beautiful woman who dresses in brightly coloured two-piece ski outfits. I see her from my studio window, daily, walking around and around the block. Around and around, day in, day out.

I recall another conversation, overheard at Karla’s Christmas concert. I was sitting in a row of metal chairs in the school gym, awaiting the curtain. The gym was filled to the back doors, and parents who could find no chairs stood in the doorway. Behind me, someone unknown. But I watched as another woman pushed her way along the row and leaned over my shoulder to speak to that person behind.

“Angela,” she said, her voice urgent and business-like. “A boy in our parish has crashed into a fallen tree while sliding—ruptured his spleen. He’s in hospital.”

“What shall I do?” said the voice behind, as if accustomed to this line of conversation.

“Could you, over at St. Mark’s, pray? He’s Anglican, but the parents don’t go to church. I thought if we all prayed, it might work better.”

“Sure,” said the voice. “I’ll get on it right away. I’ll call the minister after the concert.”

“Fine. We’ll do the same at St. James.”

The lights dimmed; the voices hushed. The woman made her way back out to the aisle. All of this in rapid talk they both understood—drums in the jungle. A pipeline, sleek and implicit.

By March, I am at peace again. The trees surrounding the house creak in the north wind. Birches bend, laden with ice. On sunny days, the snowbanks that line the street are honeycombed with their own melting. One day I see a black spider hurrying through these empty chambers, promising spring. I think of the weeks following Christmas, how preoccupied I have been with the separation. Days when I seemed to be running on the edge of despair, sinking into it, fleeing into its face. But I have been painting steadily. I have set my own rhythm. Always, at the back of my mind, wondering what it is about Alan that is essential to me. An essence, a bond that has never been broken. I see Karla watching me sometimes, searching for something of her own.

When the ice on the river begins to break up, I walk over the hill every afternoon and sit, watching. I take a sketch pad with me; my knuckles become red and cold as I work, but the sun is strengthening. I feel it, daily.

The floes shift downstream, sometimes lazily. They slur into one another, and smaller pieces hurriedly break away through fluid paths of the darkest blue. With the sun so hot, I feel as if I am part of a spell: sitting on a large stump, knees drawn up, hearing and feeling the swish of ice as it pushes on and on. Dead trees and branches waggle back and forth, caught by underwater roots or logs. Surprising objects float past on the surface of the larger floes—a sleigh, three paint cans, a car fender. No matter how much ice jams against the bank, there is always some greater force behind, ready to dislodge or crush what has gone before. This, too, has its own rhythm. Steady, steady. It is a rhythm of destruction that will yield only to spring.

A brochure arrives in the mail—an application for a two-week course at an arts centre I know, not far from here, by the sea. It would be an overnight trip by train, that is all. The instructor this year is a well-known artist from the west. She has just had a show on the west coast; I read about it in the weekend papers that are sent by mail.

“How would you like to go to the sea?” I ask Karla, when she comes in after school.

“Oh!” she says. “Remember the last time? We jumped over the waves! “ She is breathless with memories.

“But it will be too cold to go into the water,” I tell her. “It will be during the late part of May and the water won’t be warm enough then.”

“We can pick up shells, can’t we?”

“Yes, we can pick up shells. We’ll even take the train to get there—a bedroom on the train. Would you like that?”

In response, she runs upstairs, comes back with a shell from her old collection, and threads a long string through it. She places it around my neck and says, “You are the Queen of the Mommies!”

“It’s settled then. We’ll go.”

I decide to book rooms on the top floor of a lodge in the little town of Sea View. The rooms face the sea; there will be light enough to work. I try to remember those upper rooms, and recall a kind of loft arrangement. Alan and I stopped to eat in the lodge dining room one summer evening, and looked around while we were there. The lodge sits on a cliff, old and silent, facing the gathering winds of the north.