Daddy Lenin and Other Stories (21 page)

Tony eased himself out of bed and went to his laptop. Staring at the screen, he tried out and tested various phrases in his mind. Then he tapped out an email.

He knew it was a very stiff and formal-sounding appeal, but he didn’t want to drop out of character. For the time being.

Tony lay on the rumpled bed, one ear cocked for the ping of his email. But his laptop remained mute. He was worried that he had offended Susan.

If he could speak to her he was sure he would be able to clear things up. But none of the Brecks listed in the telephone book had heard of a Susan. Likely she didn’t have a landline. So he tried to track down her cellphone number on the Internet, but the process defeated him. He wasn’t very tech or online savvy.

Firing off another email was an option, but that might leave the impression he was being a pest. Worse, a stalker.

He wondered if she had been disappointed by his sexual performance. Having married young, and having always remained scrupulously faithful to Betty, his experience in that respect was rather limited. He had always been wary of getting entangled with women, even though many of his fellow actors thought nothing of an affair on the road. He remembered one who had justified his infidelities by saying, “Any port in a storm, Tony. Any port in a storm.” But Tony had known that convenient harbours were often not so snug as they seemed, that shoals and rocks often lurked just below the surface. He had seen enough shipwrecks in his day.

Loyalty had always been second nature to him. Loyalty had landed him in Chernobyl.

Tony hadn’t heard from Susan for almost forty-eight hours. Several times he had contemplated calling the front desk and telling them that he was checking out but he never acted on those impulses. He scarcely left his room and whenever he did, he had bursts of magical thinking on the street. That woman looks like Susan; it means I’ll have a message waiting
for me from her. That Mexican restaurant on the corner – that’s got to be a sign. She adores Mexico. But none of his hunches delivered on their promises.

Late on the second night that she had been incommunicado the phone rang in Tony’s room. It was Susan. In a fearful, urgent whisper she said, “Tony, I’ve got to see you. Now.”

“What time is it?” He was trying to locate the face of the bedside clock. Being jerked out of sleep had left his voice as blurred as his brain.

“Two o’clock. The desk didn’t want to put me through because it’s so late. But I told them it was an emergency. Tony, I want to come over.”

“You sound upset. What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there. Meet me in the lobby. I don’t want to have to explain myself to the desk clerk. I don’t need any more shit tonight. Promise me you’ll be downstairs.”

“Of course. I promise.”

Tony threw on his clothes and hurried downstairs. Fifteen minutes later Susan arrived, looking haggard and red-eyed from weeping.

“Susan …” he began.

She went right by him, in a headlong rush for the elevator. “Not here,” she snapped over her shoulder.

The desk clerk was doing his best not to look like an eavesdropper.

When they got to his room Susan flung herself down on the bed and said to the ceiling, “Crack me something from the minibar. Cognac if there’s any.”

Tony found two Hennessys in the fridge. Susan sat up, took the glass he proffered.

“What happened?” said Tony.

“Bad fight with my husband.”

“Husband?”

Susan ignored that. “It was terrible. Eddy’s a very abusive guy.”

“Abusive? Don’t tell me he hit you.”

“
Verbally abusive
.” Susan paused. “Somebody he works with saw the two of us in that Italian restaurant. The schmuck said something to Eddy, likely something totally innocuous and innocent, but it set Eddy off. He gave me the third degree all night. Because I wouldn’t give him your name or explain who you are, he practically threw me out of the condo. I needed somewhere to go.”

“If he felt that way, he’s the one that should have gone.”

“Tell that to Eddy.”

There was a pause in which Tony thought a thought he would sooner have avoided thinking. “You said you were unattached.”

“What I said was that I wasn’t attached at the hip. I’m not
attached
in any way that matters. There hasn’t been any real feeling between Eddy and me for years. When it comes to me, all he has is a sense of ownership. ‘Nobody gets what’s Eddy’s’ is the way he thinks. That is, not until he decides to get rid of it. Which I guess is what he wants to do now. Well, I’m ready to go. I’ve had twenty-five years of his horseshit.”

Soon Tony joined her on the bed.

Susan insisted on going back to the condo right after breakfast. Tony wanted to accompany her, but she assured him that everything would be fine. She’d have the condo to herself because Eddy had a six o’clock flight that morning to Toronto. He was enrolled in a week-long course of some sort or other, something he wouldn’t be able to duck out of or postpone. Eddy was a chartered accountant and his firm insisted that he attend seminars that would keep him up-to-date on the government’s latest tax code changes.

Susan said she needed to get a move on, to clear her personal possessions out before he returned, to find someplace to live. It seemed to Tony that the prospect of ditching Eddy filled her with elation.

Tony helped Susan find new quarters in an apartment building that rented furnished executive suites by the week. She said that would give her some “breathing space” while she hired a lawyer and tracked down some more suitable, permanent accommodations. But after an initial burst of activity, neither of these things seemed to be pressing concerns for her. She said there was no need for them to sneak around any longer so most days they took long walks on the riverbank trails. One afternoon they went to a matinee in a multiplex in a suburban mall. A half an hour before the film finished, Susan took Tony’s hand, slid it under her light summer dress, and as she eased his fingers into her, whispered in his ear, “That’s what I like about you, Tonio. You’re such an old-world, sophisticated type. You never take liberties.”

When they weren’t together Tony couldn’t stop mentally doodling plans for a new life, a new future that might include Susan. Maybe he should move to Saskatoon so he could be closer to her. There was nothing stopping him from selling the property and buying a condo or renting an apartment here. Susan and he could spend winters in Mexico. She was crazy about Mexico; she’d likely leap at the chance.

But before any of that could happen he knew he would have to come clean about who and what he really was. The old-world gentleman façade couldn’t be maintained forever. It was a dumb prank that had got out of hand. If he explained it to Susan that way, she’d understand, see that his reasons for doing what he had done were essentially innocent. Just a case of an old trouper getting carried away. He had never had any intention of deceiving anyone, not long-term.

After days spent working up as self-deprecating and humorous a confession as he could devise, Tony decided that the bistro where Susan and he had met was the place to deliver it. Its romantic associations might help her receive his apology in the proper spirit. He made a date to meet her there for lunch.

Susan was already in the bistro, seated at the table where they had had their first encounter. Tony had specifically requested it when he made the reservation. He wore what he thought of as normal,
honest
clothes, corduroys and a commando sweater, a commitment to straight-shooting in the future. He kissed Susan, sat down, and ordered a gin martini; he needed bracing. Susan asked for a crème de cassis. As soon as their drinks arrived, Tony leaned across the table and touched Susan’s forearm, to bring her attention back to him, from the street outside where it had wandered.

“Susan,” he said, “I have something to tell you.” And he began. He had left the accent back at the hotel and he wondered what she made of his new voice, this wardrobe straight out of the L.L. Bean catalogue.

Tony had carefully rehearsed what he was going to say, but in no time he lost his way in the maze of the last eighteen months. He jumped from one thing to another without making the connections clear: his renunciation of acting, exile in Chernobyl, poor Betty, a ghost in a grey suit, the strain the endless winter had put on his nerves, the dying deer.

As confused as this leapfrogging monologue was, part of his mind remained clear, still, and focused on whether or not Susan was piecing together this patchy story. She seemed to be stitching it up, seemed to be grasping what he was telling her. She didn’t look angry. Or shocked. Or hurt.

He staggered to an anticlimactic end. “I never intended any harm by it. You see that, don’t you? What is it they say – sportscasters? No harm, no foul.” He gave her a weak smile and waited.

Susan glanced at the window and studied the passersby for a moment. Then she turned back to him and said, “Jesus, Tony, did you think I didn’t recognize you the second I spotted you? From that old show
Aid
? I used to make a point of watching it just to piss Eddy off. It drove him nuts. Bleeding-heart liberal crap, he used to say, and my taxes are paying for it. So when I came in here and saw you in that weird outfit, the first thing I thought was, Where are the cameras? I thought maybe I’d walked onto a location shoot. Location shoot, that’s what you call it, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Tony, “location shoot.” His lips felt numb.
He
felt numb.

“But no cameras. And I notice that you’re reading that Bernanos book, and I ask myself, What’s that about? So I speak to you. And you answer in that accent – what was it supposed to be? From the Balkans or something?”

“Actually, Austrian … I think.”

“And then I wonder if maybe this guy thinks he’s so famous that he has to wear a disguise. To protect himself from the public. But you used your name. So I figured it might be some sort of male sexual fantasy. Like pretending you were the Marlborough cowboy or something when you went on the prowl for women.”

“Shit,” said Tony despairingly.

“And, hey, that was fine with me,
Tonio
. We had fun, didn’t we? We’re all adults here. And you’ve cleared the decks for me to tell you what I have to say. I appreciate your honesty and maturity. Truly.” She smiled brightly, confidently. “And now I guess it’s my turn to return the favour.”

“Your turn?”

“It’s just that Eddy and I have been talking,” said Susan. “In fact, he’s been phoning me every night. Whining. Apologizing. And I’ve been asking myself, Do you walk away from twenty-five years of marriage over an adventure? I’ve had them before and Eddy got past them. He’s willing to do it again. That says something, doesn’t it? And divorce is a big step at any age, let alone mine and Eddy’s. A person has to consider.” Her tone became earnest and confiding. “What I think really pissed him off was that his co-worker saw us together. Eddy’s touchy when it comes to losing face.
Take Mexico. He has a pretty good idea that I get up to things down there, but there are no embarrassing repercussions for him. So he doesn’t think about it. You come right down to it, he’s a sensible man.”

He was expected to draw an implication from that last judgment on her husband. Be sensible like him,
Tonio
.

Slowly, he got to his feet. “Yes, I see.” He left her there, stuck with the bill.

Tony set out from Saskatoon very early. Usually, he was a poster boy for defensive driving, but not that morning. He motored flat-out, pedal to the metal, 1960s rock on the sound system as loud as he could crank it, hand drumming the dashboard in time to the beat, head bobbing maniacally, eyes wildly flicking from side to side as if he expected to be blindsided any moment. None of it worked, none of it drowned out the monotonous whisper in his ear, the thought cycling and recycling in his brain, which relentlessly whined one question.
Are you real? Are you real, Tony?

Shortly before ten o’clock he pulled up to the cottage, lurched out of the car to find a message taped to the window of his back door:
Clean up your goddamn mess. Other people live here or haven’t you noticed
.

It was unsigned, but Tony knew that it had to come from his next-door neighbour, Fred Martin. Betty had had trouble with him when she was renovating the cottage: protests about the noise, about the building materials that a careless contractor had once let overflow over the property line and
onto Martin’s yard; a never-ending series of complaints that accelerated to threats of legal action.

Tony had no idea what might have set the guy off now and he didn’t intend to investigate. Given his own sour mood, things would only escalate if he got sucked into listening to Martin piss and moan about some minor problem that anybody in his right mind wouldn’t give a second thought to.

He took his suitcase into the house and left it sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. The recent spell of warm weather had turned the air in the cottage unpleasantly stuffy. Tony cracked the window above the kitchen sink, filled the kettle, and put it on the stove to boil water for a cup of instant coffee. While he waited, he wandered into the front room to take a look at the lake. The ice was almost gone. How many days had he been away? Ten, maybe. But it felt like a lifetime. And all the while the sun had been hard at work, dissolving all memory of winter. The kettle whistled for his attention.