The Worlds Within Her (16 page)

A LIGHT THE
yellow of old daffodils seeps through her eyelids, flickers uncertain across her sight.

She wades through senses unanchored in the larger darkness. Odours unfamiliar: dust not her own, a moistness of musty earth.

When the light grows steady, she lets her eyes open to a prickle of alarm.

“M'um send me, miss, The ele'tricity gone. She din't want you to wakin' up in the dark.”

“Amie.”

In her hand is a candle planted crooked in a brass candlestick.

Yasmin sits up in the bed. “How long have I been asleep?”

“A long time, miss. Is evenin' a'ready.”

She tries to read her watch, but the light is insufficient.

“You feelin' like drinkin' something? Tea maybe?”

“Tea. Yes, that sounds good.”

Amie places the candle on a dresser, turns to go.

“But Amie, the hydro's gone, how are you going to boil the water?”

“Gas stove, miss. We use to this.”

Yasmin leans back on the headboard of the bed, draws her knees up. How long, she wonders uneasily, was Amie there before she woke up — just standing there watching her sleep?

CHARLOTTE GLANCED AT
the receipt, smiled at Yasmin, folded it into her purse. Then she slipped a large tip under the ashtray and waved at the waiters standing in a white-shirted, black bow-tied frieze at the bar.

Outside, the street slumbered through a mid-afternoon lull. Perhaps it was the sunshine thickened in the muggy air, or perhaps
the third glass of wine the waiter, appreciative of Charlotte's flirtations, had offered free of charge: to Yasmin, even the streetcars rumbled by on velvet.

Charlotte said, “I've been meaning to ask you — you notice how Jim walks?”

“You mean the forty-five-degree-angle feet?”

“Exactly. As if he's trying to walk off to the left and right at the same time.”

“I know.”

“And?”

Yasmin shrugged. Jim's feet, the manner in which they fell, were to her his engaging flaw, suggesting to Yasmin aspects of his past and his personality that would always be unknowable.

Charlotte, forehead furrowed above her sunglasses, gave her a glance of exaggerated concern. “So, Yas. You're really going to do this, eh? Join in holy matrimony? Tie the knot?”

Yasmin eased her gaze away: to tables of knitted hats, jewellery of stone and plastic, suns and stars tie-dyed onto T-shirts: the leisurely aspirations of sidewalk commerce. She made Charlotte wait for her response — herself waiting for Charlotte's response to her silence, for the expected quip that this time was so slow in coming.

Finally Charlotte said, “Guess we won't be closing any more bars.”

“Guess not,” Yasmin shrugged.

“So why, Yas? Why are you marrying him?”

“I love him, Charlotte.”

“Yas, those feet …”

“Exactly. Those feet. And those hands, and those arms that seem to gather me up. And these dreams he has of playing with light, of all things. He's like a kid who wants to make
whole worlds out of playdough. I've never met anyone like him, Charlotte, yet I feel I've known him all my life.” Yasmin paused, breathless before the mystery.

Charlotte said, “Should I warn Jim?”

“About?”

“You and men. And that little fridge you've got somewhere around your left ventricle that switches on when they start not measuring up.”

“Aren't you laying it on a little thick?”

“Am I?”

“I expect a lot. So what? Besides, Jim's up to it.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I just am.”

“It's not the first time I've heard that.”

“That's why I know I'm right this time.”

Charlotte took her arm, faced her squarely. “All right, Yas, I'm with you. Just promise me — keep an eye on the little fridge, okay?”

Yasmin pressed a finger to her nose. “Click,” she said.

Charlotte, smiling thinly, gave a sad little twist of her head. A minute later, she said plaintively: “Who's going to play with me now?”

Irritated by the question, Yasmin said, “Charlotte, that tip — it was too much.”

Charlotte paused, jabbed her sunglasses higher onto her nose. “You've never been very good at being single.”

Yasmin stopped, turned to face her. In a voice composed enough to ease the hurt, she said, “You're right.”

HAD CHARLOTTE SERVED
her this cake …

But then, Charlotte would never have dared.

Had her mother served her the cake, a reaction of theatrical horror would have been acceptable.

But unfamiliarity, she thinks, imposes obligation: her mother's view now become her own.

Under Amie's unsettling gaze, she forks a notch of the cake — yellow fringed in pink — into her mouth. Her tongue goes limp at its dissolution into oil and sugar and a desiccated mealiness. She follows quickly, too quickly, perhaps, with a sip of the tea.

Amie says, “It good, eh, miss?”

“Yes,” Yasmin replies. “It is.” She keeps to herself that she is speaking of the tea and not of the cake. She resists the temptation to ask who is responsible.

“Is Mr. Cyril who make it,” Amie volunteers. “Don't forget to tell him, okay? He tryin' hard.”

Yasmin smiles. “D'you think we should be encouraging him, Amie?”

Amie purses her lips, shakes her head slowly, like a mother too tickled to be disapproving of her child's mischievousness. “Mr. Cyril that way, miss. He like doin' things with his hands, nuh. He always out in the backyard diggin' and hoein', tryin' to grow cabbage and lettuce and tomato. Now he spendin' time in the kitchen. But you know —”

The lights flash back on, and in the sudden illumination Amie falls silent. She retreats visibly into herself, her hand reaching back, as if in blind search of the open door. She tells Yasmin
that Mr. Cyril says he will drive her back to the hotel when she is ready. She leaves the room without a further word.

On the dresser, the candle continues burning a steady flame.

EVEN THOUGH SUNLIGHT
flooded the apartment, Jim insisted on lighting candles. Then he signalled for the music, and the opening notes banished the rumble of conversation.

To marry to the sounds of Vivaldi's
Four Seasons
was his decision — more befitting the occasion, they had both thought, than Charlotte's suggestion of the
1812 Overture.

The judge who would marry them, an old friend of Jim's family, stood beaming before the picture window, aware, Yasmin thought, of his dramatic effect against the sunlit greenery of the valley. As they waited for the sedative to take effect on Anubis, Yasmin saw a small red car emerge from behind the judge's left shoulder as if fleeing the folds of black silk; saw it scamper along the parkway and vanish once more behind the trees. And in a moment of light-headedness, she wished herself in that car, the music electrifying, Charlotte at the wheel, riding the knife-edge of abandon.

Presently Anubis's mewling quieted down, the scratching at the door stopped, and the judge, voice weaving above Vivaldi, indulged in memories of Jim — “a young man of promise and drive, potential and ambition” — and of his friendship with Jim's parents, “with us in mind and spirit if not in person.”

Jim tightened his fingers around Yasmin's, a moist and yearning clasp. His parents had welcomed the news, his mother quickly
hatching plans on the telephone for a wedding in Montreal: the guest list to be drawn up, the caterers to be hired, the church to be booked.

A week later she had called back to express concern over the cultural differences between her son and his fiancée. Jim said: What cultural differences?

You know, she replied. Stop being obtuse. And besides, think of the children,
half-breeds
— Jim was staggered by the word — society would never accept them.

Jim said: Mother … And then he used the word
racist.
Yasmin watched him hang up on his mother's indignation, her hands reaching for the pieces as he crumbled.

“… a sensitive boy who knew his own mind. I remember one day …”

He mailed his parents an invitation anyway. The judge, attempting to mediate, assured Jim they would attend. A week before the ceremony, his father telephoned to say his mother was not well. Nothing serious, he said, but the trip would be too much for her. They both sent their best wishes. No, his mother could not come to the phone, she was taking a nap. And, by the way, the gift was in the mail.

This notion of cultural differences: Jim, unnerved, wondered about Yasmin's mother. He suggested that Yasmin see her, alone. He felt her mother to be what he termed spiritual — delicately so — not in terms of religion but of traditions. He was uncertain, though, how thoroughly she separated the two; was uncertain how she imagined her daughter's wedding.

Her mother heard her out in silence. Religious belief, she said finally, had been granted to neither of them. Religious theatre unsupported by belief left them both cold. Ritual for the sake of ritual became a parody of itself.

Her mother said, “My brother's daughter, your cousin Indrani
whom you once met in Belleville — yes, I know you don't remember her, you were young, there's no reason you should — your cousin Indrani took the unusual step of converting to Roman Catholicism in order to marry the man she loved. Religion today, my dearest, is mostly an inconvenience. Choose your own theatre, my dear Yasmin. I'll be happy to buy a ticket.”

The judge cleared his throat. “In my work I see many things that cause me to despair. But today, as I stand here …”

Yasmin wondered what Charlotte, standing close behind her, was thinking. Told of the plans, she had not hidden her disapproval; had said, “Yas, I know it's a life sentence — but a judge? Are you serious?” She had not, however, been long in admitting that she was disappointed only because she herself, when her own special day came, wanted it to be grand and impressive; she wanted to feel herself breathless in the midst of pageantry.

Suddenly the judge's eyes moistened. He fell silent, leaving the air to Vivaldi. And Yasmin understood with disbelief that his own words — whatever they were — had moved him to speechlessness. And then the sound of sniffling told her, to her greater disbelief, that his words had moved Charlotte, too.

Yasmin wondered what she had missed. A glance at Jim offered no clue. His gaze was lost in the distance, somewhere in the rolling greenery, somewhere — perhaps — in Montreal.

A hand touched her shoulder and her mother whispered, “Never mind, dear. Greeting-card sentiment. Good show, though.”

The ceremony moved briskly after that. She was asked for and gave her assent. Jim was asked and gave his. They exchanged rings, a matched pair. At their kiss, their guests — her mother, Charlotte, Mrs. Livingston, Garth, colleagues from the station and the architecture firm — came alive, as if taking a collective breath of relief. They were shepherded to the dining table, where many pairs of eyes peered over their shoulders as they committed
themselves to what Gorgeous Garth, with less than impeccable timing, had earlier referred to as “the sinkhole of modern optimism.”