Punishment (24 page)

“We should really spend a week in the old place,” I said. “The place needs some work. What do you think?”

“I think you should go alone,” she said. “Give me a chance to catch up on some files. Then maybe …”

“St. Ninian without you?” I laughed.

“Oh, I’m sure there are some old girlfriends there to keep you happy.”

In the end we decided to postpone a vacation. “We’ll take all of January,” she said. “We’ll get a place in Florida. Just do nothing for a month.”

Anna had become extraordinarily busy, away from home a lot. We started referring to time spent together as “dates.” A growing legal practice sucks up time and personal attention but I felt no resentment at all. We’d had what felt like a nine-year honeymoon. Now we were both wrapped up in work and
I was happily observing her grow confident and vibrant in spite of all the pressure and professional demands—not to mention the burden of two dysfunctional parents.

“How much longer does your dad have ’til retirement?” I asked once.

“He’ll stay in the job as long as they let him. I can’t imagine what will happen when all they have is each other. Oh, and by the way, Dwayne may well be heading for a halfway house …”

“What …?”

“You’d be amazed by the progress. He’s like a different person. Dad thinks he’s almost ready.”

Fridays she’d always try to be home early—we tried to keep one evening a week for going out together. And when she did arrive at about nine o’clock on a Friday night in August she seemed to linger in the front hall, slowly fumbling through her briefcase. She finally retrieved a sheet of paper and her glasses.

“I’ve been in Warkworth,” she said, when finally she noticed me. Her face and tone were tense.

“Warkworth,” I said. “How are things in Shangri-La?”

She didn’t seem to be listening. “Tony, we have to talk about something.”

“Sure, what.”

“This,” she said. She was holding up the sheet of paper, smiling tightly, eyes narrowed.

“What’s that?”

“You know what it is. Who the hell is SM?”

“Give it to me.”

She handed it over.

In the end Sophie had copied it by hand, added a little note. “The wisdom of experience … SM.”

“Where did you get that?” I asked. I was hoping that I sounded indignant, to mask the guilt I really felt.

“I asked a question. Who is SM?”

“Sophie MacKinnon,” I said. “You’ve heard me mention Sophie, from work.”

“Sophie MacKinnon …”

“The psychologist at the RTC.”

“That Sophie? I thought she was French.”

“She is French.” It was a welcome turn in the tone of the conversation and I was about to embark on an explanation of Sophie’s fascinating family history, going back to the conquest of Quebec in 1759.

“So what’s she doing writing poetry to you?”

“She didn’t write it.”

“Whatever. You should know, Tony, that I’ve been hearing embarrassing gossip around Warkworth. Now this? I think you owe me an explanation.”

The explanation, under Anna’s interrogation, went on for days. Tony on the witness stand, Sophie invisible but everywhere. To be precise, it happened mostly at night as during the day we were both preoccupied with the demands of our professions. For once I felt the elation of relief as the heavy doors of the penitentiary closed behind me every morning.

I considered telling Sophie what was going on at home,
but decided not to. It was best to leave her out of it for as long as possible.

I’ve had a lot of experience with lawyers so I could follow the trajectory of Anna’s strategy, anticipate the inevitable Big Moment: So have you two slept together? And I knew that when the moment came I wouldn’t lie. The choice, for me, would be between simplicity and exculpatory context. The value of indignant posturing was dubious, especially with Anna. Looking back and knowing what she was really up to I can only laugh.

I started with a pre-emptive denial. There was nothing between us. Sophie’s French, a psychologist, mystical, always trying to see into the soul. And Anna seemed to have been reassured and the discussions became, mercifully, more general—state of our relationship, pressures of work, loss of intimacy, stuff that I could handle easily, stuff that had been front and centre on both our minds, as we discovered.

I carefully measured out my concerns and actually thought that we were making progress. But then on the third evening, halfway through a bottle of Burgundy (I had just remarked on what a great year 2000 was and how maybe we should take our holiday in Burgundy instead of Florida), she said: “Let’s get back to Sophie.”

“What exactly have you heard?”

She smiled, almost warmly. “I asked the question.”

I smiled back. “I didn’t realize it was a question.”

Her smile died. “Come on Tony, let’s not play games. I’ve heard the gossip. Now tell me, straight out. What’s between you two?”

We’re friends and colleagues, I explained. I was intrigued by her name the first time I encountered her at a team meeting. She was obviously francophone but the name on the identifying card in front of her, S. MacKinnon, suggested that she was married to someone Scottish, maybe someone from where I was raised. So during a coffee break I introduced myself and she informed me that MacKinnon was her own name. She came from a small place in Quebec where many of the invading British soldiers settled back in the eighteenth century, inter-marrying with the French or women from the native tribes, so that there were many there who, though unilingual franco-phones, had names like MacKinnon, Fraser or MacDonald. And I recall how Sophie laughed at the irony of names—“You have a French name but you’re an Anglo.”

In meetings we seemed to agree on most issues. I came to rely on her judgement, common sense and, yes, compassion. She believes in people, actually means it when she talks about “correction.” We’ve become natural allies. Drink a lot of coffee together. I laughed. Anna was just listening, frowning. Then I brought Strickland into the narrative, and I might be imagining it now but there seemed to be a subtle change in Anna’s posture. I told her how Sophie became a vital connection between Dwayne and me, how Sophie had asked for my help in working to transform Dwayne from con to citizen. I might have grown suspicious but at the time I was simply relieved by her momentary change of mood.

——

Four days into the confrontation that started with the poem, Sophie called my office. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s cool,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Was just wondering. Haven’t seen or heard from you for what seems like years.” She laughed. “Isn’t that pathetic. I feel like an insecure school girl.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s a bunch of things going on. Let’s have a lunch soon.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m good, Sophie. Thinking of you all the time.” And that, at least, was true.

Anna was sarcastic. “So. Coffees and lunches and God knows what … what
did
you find to talk about in all that time. I’ve never thought of you as a compulsive conversationalist, Tony. And surely it wasn’t all about your convicts.”

“Actually it was mostly about work. And her family.”

I had asked about the three children who were conspicuous in photographs on her desk. The oldest had just turned thirteen. Her husband, also in a framed photograph, was a carpenter—a very skilled carpenter who built cabinets for the kitchens and bathrooms of wealthy people.

“Her family? What about
your
family?”

“Please …”

“I can’t believe that you would talk about us and our marriage to an outsider. That’s appalling.”

“What?”

“You expect me to believe …”

“I never discussed our marriage with Sophie. There was nothing to discuss. I thought our marriage was just fine.”

“I can hear the two of you. I can’t believe this. So just how far did this little
serial
tête-à-tête proceed, and I want an honest answer.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Her laugh was bitter. “My God! Where’s your head, Tony? Don’t play stupid with me. Did. You. Have. Sex. With. Her.”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you
fuck
her, Tony?”

I was—and I can’t think of another description—flabbergasted by that ugly, vulgar word. My head swarmed with hot self-righteous answers. Or, I should say,
responses
because all the possibilities came out of a primitive instinct for self-preservation. Lie. Dissemble. But there could be no retreat. Lying and evasion could only make it worse.

“Yes,” I said, struggling for dignity. “Once.”

She became, I thought—I hoped—very calm and suddenly so did I.

We stared at each other for the longest time and in the silence I felt the love for Anna that I had forgotten because over time it had broken into fragments that had become redistributed in a variety of places. Isn’t that what happens to long-term couples? The vast emotion that brings us together eventually gets broken down and packed away in smaller packages. Sort of like the way information is stored in tiny bits on digital devices, ultimately unrecognizable for what they are in aggregate. Sometimes we forget all about them until we stumble across one little package unexpectedly. And I wanted
everything to not have happened. For a moment, I wanted my life to not have happened.

Our house was very silent. I ached for a sound. Anything. A crash of something falling, smashing. Heavy metal music. The clash of steel cell doors closing, the terrifying stampede sound of a cell extraction unit. Anything to distract from the inevitability of what would come next.

“Are you in love with her?”

The answers rose quickly, silently to my tongue. Yes. No. “I’m not sure,” I said.

“That’s as bad as a yes,” she said. “A chicken-shit yes.”

“What I’m trying to say …”

She sighed, walked to a window, arms folded across her chest. And eventually, with her back to me, she asked: “So what are we going to do?”

I could have said we could work it out. Maybe I should have said it. Maybe it was true. I could have said: there’s nothing between Sophie and me and that was, in physical terms, quite true by then. But emotionally? I suddenly felt emptied out of words and thought. But I knew the unutterable pain betrayal causes—I knew its permanence. I had learned about it the hard way when I was nineteen years old.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

“I suppose you are,” she said.

From the tone I knew that she’d already moved on. I just didn’t know where she was coming from and I didn’t have a clue about her destination.

“I’m going to bed,” she said finally.

——

I lay awake in the guest room. I desperately wanted to call Sophie, fought the impulse, satisfied myself with an imagined conversation:
You would have been impressed. It was, in the circumstances, surprisingly civil
.

At 2:38 in the morning I tiptoed into our shared bathroom and collected basic toiletries. Razor. Deodorant. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. That’ll be enough for now. Motel rooms always have shampoo.

Later, lying in the darkness of the anonymous motel room, surrounded by the impersonal fragrances of commerce and other transient lives, I made a mental note of the date: August 5, 2001. It would be one of the benchmarks in memory, one of the series of existential dots that, when joined together, show the jagged course of a screwed-up life. I’d checked into a low-budget motel near enough to the highway that the night was busy with the hurried sounds of traffic. I noted in the parking lot all the minivans with bike racks and roof racks, the paraphernalia of family adventures. And I thought of Sophie, surrounded by her little clan. Would the outcome have been any different if my answer to Anna’s loaded question had been no? If that lovely night in June had never happened, would I be here now, trying to anticipate my future? What if I had been able to clearly, honestly, unambiguously answer yes or no to the logical question, Are you in love with her? But, I told myself, it doesn’t matter, does it? Even if this dreadful moment were a consequence of just one memorable evening in an unlikely far-off place, I’d still have no regrets.

——

The motel room was stale and stuffy when I awoke to the sound of children in the parking lot, the consciousness of where I was and why I was there restored by the glare of daylight.

I sat for a long time naked on the side of the bed, staring at the floor. I thought of calling home, decided to wait until the house was empty, leave a message on the answering machine.
I’m okay, in case you’re wondering. I’ll stop by the house later in the day to pick up some clothes. I hope you haven’t changed the locks already
. Tried to sound ironic.

Then I left a message at Sophie’s office.
Hi, it’s me. It’s important that we have that lunch soon
.

It was distressing to find two cars in a driveway I expected to be vacant. I circled the block but they were still there. I parked in front of a van, where I could watch the driveway through the mirror on the passenger side. One was Anna’s blue BMW but I didn’t recognize the second car, a small red Mazda. After fifteen minutes I was certain that the visitor was there for the long haul. A man friend perhaps? Unlikely. I circled the block again, pulled in behind Anna’s car, strode to the door and knocked.

There was no immediate response from inside and I felt my poise begin to wobble from the incongruity of standing on my own doorstep waiting for admission. I had a goddamned key in my pocket. What was preventing me from using it, as I had ten thousand times before? Then I heard that subtle shift in the internal ambience of the house that told me someone was stirring inside and, yes, a heel-strike on the brief expanse of wooden
floor between Persian rugs I could imagine clearly. Then the click behind the door.

“Why are you knocking?” Anna asked, pale and puzzled, when she opened up.

Then she turned, and walked briskly down the hallway.

Her visitor was a woman, sitting sideways on the edge of the chesterfield, thighs pressed close together. She was in the act of tugging her tight skirt over her knees. She was attractive, a tumult of auburn hair to her shoulders, a face that might be pleasant in other circumstances. She was smiling but with that cold professional appraisal that conveys tactical interest without the normal human elements of curiosity or self-consciousness. Another lawyer, I thought. She stood and said to Anna, “I’ll run along, but you know where I’ll be.”