A History of Forgetting (8 page)

‘Have I ever mentioned George to you?' she asked.

‘No,' he said, all at once noticing how dispirited she seemed. She removed her glasses, folded the white arms with a click and set them in her lap. She waved a hand towards one of the boxes. ‘Those are his clothes, if you want them. No, it's not what you think. All this time I've had his things. Just in case he came back for them. I didn't want to seem a spoilsport.'

‘My God, Faye,' said Malcolm. ‘He must have been mad.'

‘You're sweet. Please take them.'

Mrs. Parker had started some kind of trend. Faye was the
third woman to offer him the clothes of a departed male.
‘What? You want to see me every day dressed up like the rogue?'

She flushed and could not seem to look at him. ‘How are your finances, Malcolm?'

The first thing he thought, ever the optimist, ever deluded, was that she was offering him a raise along with her absconded husband's clothes, something he could certainly have used. He made a joke. ‘I find myself, as usual, teetering on the brink.'

‘So you couldn't buy the place?'

She lifted her hand out of his and showed him her crooked fingers getting worse. The neighbourhood was turning hip. A buyer, she said, had approached her.

At that moment Malcolm realized just how happy he'd been there, as happy as was possible, considering the circumstances. He'd dedicated himself to his clients, gazed affectionately into their lined and wobbling faces. He owed so much to them; collectively, they had saved him by saving his pride. Just now, how Mrs. Parker had been thrilled to see him step into the mirror wearing that familiar ascot. He tried to picture them, grey, white and blue, climbing aboard a city bus for the first time in decades, heading out of Kerrisdale in search of the good, old-fashioned wash and set. Impossible. Mrs. Parker rode a scooter, Mrs. Szabo used a walker, a number required canes.

‘You can't abandon them,' he said, pressing his eyes, teary not only for himself.

‘Absolutely not,' said Faye. ‘I've put a clause in. You'll get to rent a chair.'

All the way home—a daze. He couldn't quite take it in.

He even forgot he'd dyed his hair until he walked into the apartment and caused Yvette to shriek,
‘Câlisse!'

She thought someone was breaking in.

But Denis knew him at once and threw him a radiant smile. ‘Oh, hello, Malcolm! It's you! Are you angry?'

Malcolm nearly broke down and wept.

Perhaps everything would work out after all, for the time being at least. He might have lost Faye, but he had won back Denis. That germ, hope, was infecting him again. The leash was attached to the dog waiting to go out. She stood there with her tongue out. Even she was smiling.

 

They would dine at the oddest hours, depending on when Denis was moved to cook—eleven o'clock at night, three o'clock in the morning—but when they sat down to dinner on that night, it was at a perfectly sensible hour, seven o'clock in the evening. Before both of them was a wide-lipped bowl, a slice of French bread fried in butter waiting in it. Denis ladled out the stew. The bread drank it up.

‘Bon appétit,'
he said, lifting his spoon to sip.

Malcolm swirled his wine glass, staring down at the heady, alcoholic broth in the bowl. This had used to be his favourite dish, but lately it tasted more and more like bile. ‘Oh, I know!' he said. ‘Would you like to hear a joke?'

Denis leaned forward to listen.

‘This old Jewish lady is walking down the street when she sees, on the bench at the bus stop, a man she used to know—a Mr. Epstein. “Mr. Epstein!” she cries out in delight. “It's me, Mabel Goldberg. I haven't seen you in years!”'

Denis frowned.

‘“Mabel,” he tells her. “It's true. I haven't been around.” “Where have you been?” “To prison,” says Mr. Epstein. “Prison!” cries Mabel. “What did you do?” “I strangled my wife.” “Strangled your wife? Why Mr. Epstein! I guess you're
single.”'

Every time, Malcom changed the joke a little, just to amuse himself. But Denis wasn't laughing. He was looking in his bowl, wearing a disgusted expression, as if he'd finally grown sick of everything: the joke, the
matelote d'anguille.

‘What's the matter?' asked Malcolm. ‘Don't you think it's funny any more?'

‘Non,'
Denis said. ‘I don't like jokes about Jews.'

Malcolm was taken aback. ‘A very nice man told me that joke. The son of a client and Jewish himself. He told it in a room probably full of Jews and everyone laughed. No one thought it was offensive in the least.'

The way Denis pursed his lips, he looked surprisingly ugly for such a beautiful man.

‘What?' asked Malcolm, defensively. ‘I don't see anything wrong.'

Denis said, ‘I don't care for them. Jews.'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW IT GOES

IN RATLAND

 

 

 

 

1

 

T
he new owner
—her name was Amanda—called him at home and invited him in a NutraSweet voice to have lunch with her. Malcolm had already met her before they'd closed up Faye's. She'd brought with her three minions bearing tape measures and paint samples, and not once did she look at or speak to Malcolm. ‘We have a lot to talk about,' she said now on the phone.

She named the restaurant—right there on the avenue, conveniently—and the time. Malcolm came a little early,
then had to wait twenty minutes for her. When she arrived, it was calmly, without a hint of hurry or apology. She was a tall woman, ageless in her too-taut skin.

‘Look,' she told him as soon as she joined him, ‘there are other salons nearby. Five, actually. I took the trouble to count. At any of them you might fit in better.'

Already Malcolm's back was up and he had not even opened the menu. ‘Do you include in that number MagiCuts and Wanda's House of Beauty?'

‘Okay. Four. Wanda's is okay.'

‘As far as I can tell, her clientele is exclusively Cantonese-speaking.'

‘Okay, three. Those are only the ones within walking distance. There's a whole city out there, you know.'

He didn't. He rarely sallied forth. The closest he came to adventurousness was to trace his finger along the crest of the North Shore Mountains, as he had used to do as a boy, though now it felt as if he were mimicking his own unstable vital signs on a screen.

The waitress interrupted to take their order. Malcolm didn't really care what he ate any more, so long as it wasn't eel. Amanda ordered the wine. She had a system, he observed: the second most expensive. The only system Malcolm's budget tolerated was that he choose water.

He watched Amanda pose before the menu, exquisite nostrils flaring, her adolescent breasts resting pertly on the table. She was a phoney, Malcolm thought, and not only because of cosmetic surgery. As any hairdresser-philosopher knows, beauty has little to do with perfection. A truly beautiful woman acknowledges her flaws, even flaunts them, for they are what make her unique. They grace her character, which is the real seat of beauty. What was Amanda doing with a salon if she didn't understand something so elementary?

‘What is your background?' he asked, hoping to steer the
conversation to personal matters, hoping she might say something that would persuade him to change his mind and like her.

‘I have an MBA. Have you gone to see it yet?'

‘What?'

‘The salon. It's almost finished.'

‘Yes, I walk the dog past it every day. You've given it quite a facelift.'
Wicked,
but she didn't even flinch. She wasn't listening. She was only talking, and what she went on to say did change his opinion.

‘Your clients won't like it. You won't like it. Best if you take them elsewhere, don't you think?'

Now he thought she was a fool, as well as a phoney, if she believed for a second that he wanted to stay. He fully intended to look around for another position, once he had got Denis settled somewhere. It was taking longer than expected; every home had a ticker tape waiting list. In the meantime, he just wanted to work in peace.

The food arrived. He wished she would shut up. On she harped, which only made him dig his heels in. ‘They're old, my clients. They don't like change,' he said. ‘I can't get them to change their hairstyle, let alone their salon.'

‘I don't give a damn about your clients.' She stabbed petulantly with her fork at the grilled vegetables on her plate. ‘I don't want a bunch of old ladies tottering around spoiling the concept.'

He stiffened in his chair. ‘You'll be old yourself one day. Sooner than you'd like. Anyway, I believe there's a clause in the contract.' She waved it off, so Malcolm said, ‘I'll have to contact my lawyer.' It was a bluff. He'd sooner hire a call girl than a lawyer, but Amanda fell for it. She had no imagination. She thought everyone was like her. Amanda would call a lawyer in a snap.

The bill came on a little William Morris tray. She snatched it up, read it, then tossed it his way. ‘We'll split it, okay?'

 

During the renovations he made house calls. Then, when he saw the place and heard the music that they played, he felt sure none of his clients would come anyway. But their diminished hearing proved to his advantage, as well as the daily confusion over which pair of glasses to wear. The one universal complaint was that they had to change. ‘We didn't change when it was Faye's,' they griped. As for the decor, it offended Malcolm more than it offended them, the outcry over EuroDisney echoing daily in his head. ‘I have become a snob,' he admitted to himself, no different from the snobs he had been decrying all those years.

As for his rapport with the other stylists, something had gone grotesquely wrong from the start. Perhaps he had said something to offend them, or maybe they had simply sensed
how he felt—that they were flowers of degeneration, that freak
ishness and mutilation had replaced beauty as a standard. Theirs was a torture-chamber aesthetic. If he hadn't already ceased to give a damn about the world, he would have shud
dered for it. None of this meant he didn't
like
them, of course. It was their values he disapproved of, their grammar, and their clothes. As individuals, however, he was actually fond of one or two. Thi, for example, the manager. She charmed everyone and,
apart from the silver knuckles of rings on her every finger, didn't look half so vicious. Even her tattoo he liked, a delicate Celtic interlace around her ankle, as if she had dipped her little foot in the Book of Kells. Jamie had a tattoo, too, and ponytail—a nosegay of bright red curls. He was less a favourite though. He liked to work out, he told Malcolm. ‘Work what out?' Malcolm had asked, though he only had to look at Jamie's Popeye forearms to know, his tattoos spiral bracelets of song lyrics. Malcolm, who read compulsively, picked out several alarming phrases about rape and hate. Also:
I think I'm dumb
. . .Well,
he
said it first.

For the first eight months they had a languid, metallic-
headed apprentice named Donna. ‘So you lived in Paris,' she
said, snapping gum through her brown lipstick and
smirking as if she did not believe it. ‘Attitude' was Donna's affliction. It did not hold her back. They made a stylist out of her.

A new girl came, Alison, who in one hour did what took Donna all day to do. When Alison was seen sitting down on the job, it was because she was on her break. She spent it in the corner, watching everyone work. Over and over that first day Malcolm heard her say, ‘I have so much to learn.'

 

From across the street, they looked almost imposing—marble columns rising between the deli and the Shopper's Drug Mart. Alison had no idea what the Latin meant, or that the stone wasn't real; she simply marvelled that her placement had brought her to this temple.

She crossed over then stood a moment looking in; the whole front of the salon between the columns was glass. A beautiful child looked up from behind the desk as Alison entered and asked in an adult voice if she had an appointment.

‘I'm the new apprentice,' Alison told her.

‘I forgot it was today!' She laid a chiding hand against her cheek, her thumb and every finger reinforced with a silver ring. ‘We've been unbelievably busy. Come in. Come in.'

Not a child, then. When she stood, Alison saw a grown woman in miniature. She looked straight down on the perfect blue-white path of her parting, two blue-black fields of hair on either side. ‘It's Ali, right?' she asked as she led Alison through another pair of columns to a gallery where three stylists were working.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm Thi, the manager, and this is Donna.' Thi stopped beside one of the stylists who, pausing in her work, smiled at Alison, though not exactly in a friendly way. She wore a helmet of platinum hair, chin-length, cut at angles. ‘Oh, Ali.' She stressed the first syllable—Aa!—the same sound she'd make if she found a hair in her soup. ‘Shucks.
A-lee,
we thought. We were expecting a big black bruiser.'

Thi kept her moving along. Between each station, a half-column rose from counter to ceiling and a different bust stood, each with eyes rolled back showing whites. On the far wall, trompe l'
o
eil windows looked out on an idealized garden where nudes of both sexes posed.

They passed a bust in a matted wig and sunglasses. ‘Christian works at that station. He'll be late. Here's Robert. Robert, Ali.'

Roxanne was the stylist with the nose ring at the sinks shampooing her client. ‘I love your hair,' said Alison. Roxanne's was the most hair Alison had ever seen on one person at one time, a great tendrilling mass of brown. It seemed impossible that she could support a whole head of it on such a thin neck.

‘And Malcolm's in the back,' said Thi. ‘I'll show you the back room, Ali.'

‘Don't leave her alone with him,' Roxanne teased. ‘He bites.'

‘What kind of name is Thi?' asked Alison as they moved on.

‘Vietnamese. T-H-I. You know, like what the Queen drinks.'

The stock, supply, lunch and laundry rooms were combined in a six-by-twelve-foot square; dye samples stacked on style books stacked on the microwave, then on the shelves
Pepto-Bismol
, dishes, a fan, perming solution, sugar cubes,
bulk shampoo—all the verticality, squalor and cramming­ together of a slum. This was the slum off the Forum.

The man on the bench covered his face to sneeze, then looked at her from behind the tissue with a wet-eyed, sour expression. Thi said, ‘That's Malcolm. What do you think so far?' She took two mugs from the shelf and filled them, sliding one towards Alison.

When Thi wasn't looking, Alison rapped knuckles on the columns and scrutinized the walls. She'd never been close to antiquity, not even in a museum, so could feel unjaded awe for replicas and marble mocked up with a sponge. ‘I like that it looks so old.'

‘Post-Bankrupt-Italian-Taverna,' someone quipped from the doorway just as Alison picked a package of coffee whitener out of the clutter on the counter.

‘Here you are, Christian,' Thi chided. ‘Your client's wait
ing.'

Alison saw him framed in the doorway, his face flattened like it was pressed against glass. He was small, bigger than Thi, of course, but tiny for a man. ‘That's bleach activator you're putting in your coffee,' he told her and laughed a grating warble.

Thi shooed him off.

‘I love coffee. I love Thi. I love Thi, but she doesn't love
me . . .'

The bar fridge, tucked under the counter, was where she would find the cream. It would be a day of little chores, Thi explained, until Alison got to know the place. ‘The dryer's ready to be unloaded and that's the cupboard for the towels. When you're finished, let me know. I'm up front.'

Alison dumped the tainted coffee in the sink, cringed and rolled up her sleeves. Under all the submerged dishes, tea bags clogged the drain. Malcolm was still there on the bench, breathing heavily through his mouth, head lolling against the wall. He didn't look like a stylist. Much older than everyone else, he looked, in those clothes, like an out-of-stylist. An over-stylist—his hair rinsed a lustreless black. Also, there was a musty smell
in the tiny room that seemed to be coming from him.

‘So, Malcolm. What do you do?' she asked.

His eyes opened. He seemed surprised—by her question, or that she'd talked to him at all. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Do you own the place?'

He started to cough, a deep phlegmatic hacking, and pressed his fingers to his eyes.

She let him alone. He clearly wasn't well. After she had washed the dishes and tamed the static-spitting towels, she tiptoed out, back to the gallery where she found Thi at one of the sinks bowing over a client. Up front the phone started to ring.

‘Can you get it, Ali?'

‘Vitae,' Alison said, assuming that was how she should
answer.

On the telephone, old people always sounded to her like those old vinyl records, their voices popping and scratchy. She plugged the music in the background out of her other ear and still barely heard the caller say she was the one who cancelled with Malcolm that morning.

‘You're afraid?' Alison asked. ‘You had a fright?'

‘Am
a . . .'

In the appointment book Alison pencilled ‘Mrs. Parker' in a slot for the next day.

‘Take her phone number, too,' said Thi over Alison's shoulder, smiling approvingly when Alison hung up.