Mating for Life (9 page)

She had wanted Johnny with a hunger that had never truly been sated—and at least they still had that. Their bodies fit together in a way that she hadn't imagined possible but that
he
was clearly used to. He hadn't said to her, the way she had to him,
This is the best I've ever had
, or
All I can think about is making love to you
. Instead, in response, he had smiled and said something like, “Yep, it
is
pretty good, isn't it?” If there was one thing Johnny knew, it was his way around a woman's body. A woman's mind, though: that was another story. Especially a woman like Myra, it would turn out. “The others weren't like you,” he had said to her once. She hadn't been sure if this was a compliment, but it did make her feel slightly comforted, and also superior and safe from being filed in the same folder as these other women.
Pretty, blond, unintelligent, gone.

She had decided to take the fact that he considered her different from the others as a sign that perhaps he was interested in having her encourage him toward self-improvement. So she began: “Do you ever want to go back to school?” “Nope. I'm forty-four. That would be stupid.” He had gotten up from the table, leaving his supper unfinished. And that was that. She had tried to ask again and he had snapped at her to drop it. Later, she would learn he barely had a grade ten education, but also that there were reasons for this.

She had never told Johnny what it was that she'd wanted. She had never admitted to him that when her former friend Wendy had said that women would come to live with Johnny and end up pregnant she had thought, with the misdirected clarity only a drunk person can have, that perhaps she had found her answer. That night, through the distortion of too many cosmopolitans or margaritas or whatever they were, she had seen a way to leave it all behind: the disappointment of the city, the starkness of the fertility clinics, the embarrassment, yes,
embarrassment
she had felt when the doctors had said there wasn't a problem with her, per se, and nor was there a problem with Colin, but that they couldn't really understand why she wasn't getting pregnant. In Johnny and the marina and the boys she had seen a way to avoid witness
ing the inevitable dissolution of her marriage to Colin, too. (Oh, and technically, they
were
still married. Technically, they had been in the midst of a trial separation when she had, as he put it, run off to the woods. But it was such a tepid dissolution that neither of them had bothered to do anything about it. Three years, and she hadn't heard from him. She supposed she had always figured that as soon as she got pregnant, she'd get in touch about a divorce. And that in the meantime, if he ever met someone or decided he needed closure, he'd do the same. But nothing had happened in either direction. And she had not told Johnny about Colin at all, at first because she had been nervous about mentioning it and later because she had realized how pointless it was. It wouldn't matter to Johnny. He was never going to ask her to marry him anyway, so her being
technically
still married to someone else was of little consequence.)

Once, Myra had said to Johnny, “We should go to the city.” It was fall, not yet winter, and the leaves on the trees in their yellows, reds, and golds made her think of fresh starts even though they weren't really, even though what the changing of the leaves really signified was a last-ditch attempt at being something before the ultimate descent into nothing.

“Like, for a weekend?”

“No. We should just go. We should sell this place and go. You're a natural restaurateur, and I could probably find you a backer. We could open up a restaurant and live in my house and . . .”

He looked at her strangely and then he said, “
We
should sell this place?”

“Well, I mean,
I meant
 . . . I know it's yours, and—”

“And you have your house. If you want to go back to the city, you can. But I'm not going anywhere.” And he'd shaken his head like she was crazy and walked toward the main house, his work boots undone, his laces dragging. She wondered as
she always did how it was possible he never stumbled. (“Didn't your mother ever teach you how to lace up your boots?” she had once asked him. “My mother is dead,” he had said, and she'd wanted to ask but knew he didn't want her to, so she didn't.)
I should really go,
she'd said to herself after that conversation.
He's right. I have my house. I should go.

But although she had always believed this urge for going would eventually overtake her, she had believed it would happen in winter—probably this winter, when she finally accepted and mourned her barrenness and couldn't take it anymore. And so it came as a surprise to her that the way this red-haired woman left would make
her
think about leaving, even in summer. She had watched those taillights and thought,
I could do that, too. I could get in a car and just go. I don't have to feel jealous of this woman for being able to leave. No one and nothing is forcing me to stay here.
Would the boys be upset? Maybe Jesse would. Was that enough of a reason to stay?

• • •

Myra walked toward the store. Johnny was back and he stood in the doorway, apparently waiting for her, his smile slow and easy. “Walt Anderson brought his boat in to get the engine looked at and now he's heading back to the city and needs us to take it back out to his place on the southwest side of the island. But I've got Amos coming in to look at the stove any minute and the boys are all busy, except Jess. So can you go out there with him? You can drive our boat and he can drive Walt's, and then you can come back together.”

“Sure,” she said. “I'm just going to grab a water.”

As she squeezed past him through the door he slapped her on the seat of her jeans. “You're looking fine today, you know,” he said, and it felt like there were pop rocks, the kind they sold in the store in little packets, fizzing inside her chest, hopeful effervescence, her body and mind responding with
desire. The call of Johnny's body to hers was a difficult thing to ignore. And maybe this time it would happen. Maybe, just maybe, when she was on the precipice of giving up, it would happen. She certainly wouldn't be the only thirty-seven-year-old in the world to get pregnant. So she winked at him. “Be sure to make some time for me later,” she said, and he kissed her quickly and said, “You betcha, babe,” and walked up the hill toward the restaurant while she stood in the doorframe where he had just been, now watching him, the water forgotten.
What if it happened? What if I did get pregnant? Would I stay if I had his baby? Would I really want to raise a baby here?

Myra didn't know the answer to that. But one thing she did know: she'd never leave her baby here with him. She
would
be different from the other women in that way, too: if she left, she'd take her baby with her.

Maybe you don't love him as much as you think you do.

• • •

On the way back to the marina after returning Walt's boat, the water was rough and Jesse drove slowly. This pleased Myra. She was certain that if she had not been there he would have been far more reckless, because he was a teenage boy and that's what teenage boys did. (Jesse even had a battle scar to prove his recklessness, on his upper lip, from when one of the older boys—Myra couldn't remember who because it happened before her time—had gotten him with a fishing hook. It had been an accident, of course. The story was that Jesse had been walking around where he shouldn't have been. That was how things went in the Hicks household: Don't be stupid and you won't get hurt. And yet people did still get hurt.)

Now Jesse slowed the boat and directed it into the channel where the water was calmer but where he had to slow down even further.

“Your father wanted you back at the restaurant,” Myra said
quietly, wondering why she'd said that. She was tired. She didn't want to go back to the restaurant right away. Maybe he didn't, either.

He drove the boat in silence, looking over at her every once in a while. She eventually got the impression that he had something to say to her. This alarmed her slightly, mostly because she wasn't sure how to encourage him to say whatever it was he needed to say. As always, when faced with any sort of situation with the boys, it amazed her how little she knew. Was she supposed to talk to him, to try to draw him out, or to stay silent and wait for him to speak? She wished suddenly that she
was
his mother. Then she'd know exactly what to do.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, then sat and thought, selecting and tossing aside different conversation openers until they were out of the channel and he was starting to speed the boat up again.

“Jesse . . . wait. Slow down.” He did. “Are you okay?” she finally asked. It was as good a start as any, she supposed.

He glanced at her sideways again. “Sure. Yeah. Well. Um. I'm good, actually. Because, I, uh . . .” He cut the engine. “Well, here's the thing: I got into school.”

“Really? As in—”

“Yeah, as in university. University of Toronto. Into the forest biomaterials science program we talked about. Late admission, so, uh, well, yeah, I didn't think it was going to happen.”

Neither had Myra. She'd known exactly when he should have heard back from the schools and had been torn about whether to mention it to him or not, to offer her support and empathy, to encourage him to try again the following year, or to apply to a community college, or to take some enrichment classes.

“This is amazing! I didn't—I didn't want to bother you about it, but I was hoping . . . and then . . . I didn't think . . .” She realized she was talking exactly the way he did, in choppy
half sentences.

“Yeah, well. I just thought I'd tell you. It's not like I can go or anything, but it's kind of nice to have gotten in.”

Myra thought about what Johnny had said when she'd broached the topic once. “I don't have any money to send anyone to university,” he'd told her, and she hadn't known what to say, but she'd known what she'd
wanted
to say, and several times since then she'd wished she'd said it.
I'll pay
. But if she'd said that, there was no telling what might have happened. Johnny might have gotten angry, or he might have been surprised to find out that she had money, that she had more than just her house in the city, which she currently rented out to two tenants, main floor and basement. “Have you told Johnny yet?”

A shadow of alarm crossed Jesse's face. “No. Because he'll just . . . well, I know what he'll say. And I don't have a full scholarship, so there really is no way to pay for it, and even if there was, well, where would I live? It's all just kind of a pipe dream, you know? But I wanted to tell you. Because I didn't believe you when you said I was smart enough to get in, but I guess you were right. I mean, sure, I was wait-listed and all, but I still got in, and I thought you'd be impressed, and I also wanted to say thanks because, well, it made me feel really good . . . even if I can't go.” These words came out in a rush and she imagined it probably wasn't easy for him to say them.

Myra took a breath. She put her hand on his, on top of the steering wheel, and she spoke loudly and firmly to be sure he heard her, to be sure he understood her, to be sure he knew she meant it. “Yes, you
can
go.
I
have the money to pay for it and I
want
to pay for it and I won't take no for an answer.” His mouth opened, but he didn't speak. “And I have a house in the city,” Myra continued. “We'll live there.” Then she swallowed and took her hand away. “I mean, because I wouldn't want you to live in my house alone, and also . . . I was planning
on going back to the city anyway at the end of the summer. So it's perfect timing.”

She thought about Johnny and the way he had kissed her earlier and the idea of making love to him later in his bed in the cottage beside the marina.
His
bed.
His
cottage.
His
marina.
His
life.

Funny. Instead of leaving behind a son, I'm taking one with me.

5

Great Blue Heron
(
Ardea herodias
)

These large wading birds usually breed in colonies, in trees close to lakes or wetlands. Great blue herons are considered monogamous, not because they mate for life, but because they only have one mate per mating season.

I
ain had been the one to tell Helen that Liane was wearing her engagement ring. He was angry, she could tell. Or hurt. Or maybe both. “You didn't even tell me it was lost,” he said. “You told me it was getting polished. Which, now that I think about it, is ridiculous. You would never do that.”

“I knew I'd find it eventually.”

“If we're going to be married, we can't hide things from each other.”

“Sometimes things are better left unsaid.”

“That's not a good philosophy.”

“Maybe one of the reasons I never got married, then. I don't know the philosophies.”

“It's not a marriage philosophy to tell people the truth. It's a general one. A life one.”

And just like that, over the phone, while the girls were still there, they were in a fight. Or not a fight, but something. A tiff? Helen had grown tired of trying to classify these disagreements.
Why do we have to do this?
she wanted to say.
We never
fought, not once, until you decided we needed to be tethered to one another by a piece of rock and a legal document.

“Aren't you at least going to ask her why she's wearing it and saying she's engaged? I'm a bit concerned about her, to be honest.”

“You hardly know her.”

“She's your daughter. I want to know her.”

Helen felt herself soften. This was part of why she loved Iain so much. He cared about Liane already, because he cared about Helen. And she appreciated it. But she still wasn't about to interfere.

“She'll explain it to me. I don't want to embarrass her. And also, she's had the kayak out. Did I tell you that? I think she's had some kind of breakthrough about Wesley's death and I don't want to get in the way.”

“What if she
needs
to talk, though?”

“She'll come to me. You don't understand what it's like with daughters.”

“I have a daughter.”

“Okay, then you don't understand what it's like with
my
daughters. I never pry. It's just not my way. It always makes things worse. She'll tell me what's going on eventually.”

“What if she doesn't, and she leaves, still wearing the ring? Then what will you do?”

“Liane wouldn't do that. She knows it's not hers. It's just a matter of time until she explains.”

At that point, of course, her weekend with the girls was still chugging along, despite the fact that Fiona had not shown up, throwing the equilibrium off in a way that surprised Helen. Helen had told Iain she needed to get off the phone then. She had said, “I love you, I really do,” and he had said, “I really love you, too,” but he had sounded more exasperated than usual.

Then, two mornings ago, Helen had woken and gone
downstairs to make coffee. In the kitchen, she had discovered the butter dish open, finger-shaped gouges in it, and the ring in a juice glass filled with soapy water.
There's a chance I could have just dumped it down the drain,
Helen thought.
Then Iain would
really
have had something to be angry about.
But she hadn't dumped it. She'd taken it out of the glass and cleaned it with care, and when Ilsa came downstairs later that morning, Helen told her it belonged to a friend who had stayed at the cottage.

“Then why was Liane wearing it?” Ilsa had asked. “Is she not really engaged?”

“I don't know, I didn't get the chance to ask her. She left.”
Without telling me anything.

Ilsa had rubbed her head as though it hurt. “It's my fault she left. She got really mad at me yesterday because I went over and started talking to the neighbors and invited them for dinner today. We argued after you went to bed.”

Helen wasn't blind. She had seen the man next door watching Liane, and Liane watching him. But, as usual, she hadn't said anything. “Ilsa—”

“I was just being
friendly,
” Ilsa had said, defending herself against the things Helen hadn't said yet. “They're our new neighbors. We should get to
know
them.”

“They're just renters.”

“Renters don't count?” Ilsa was now storming around the kitchen in a way she hadn't since her more tempestuous teen years. Morning light streamed in through the big kitchen window and Helen knew that it probably made her look old, especially first thing in the morning.
And
I'm
the one who's supposed to be getting married.

“Why did Liane get so upset?”

“Because she thought I was interfering, trying to bring her and that neighbor man together, in an attempt to prove she doesn't really want to marry Adam.”

“Were you?”

“No! I just thought it might be fun for her. The amount of lustful glances they were shooting each other from across the lake, Jesus! I thought it might help her to know that all marriages aren't sacrosanct, that maybe none of them are.”

“Help her in what way?”

Upstairs, Xavier had called out, “Mama?” The day before, his nose had started to run and he had gone to bed with a slight fever.

Ilsa had stopped moving around so frantically, brought back to herself by the sound of her son's voice. “You know, we might just head home early, too,” she said. She stood still, looking down at the butter dish. “I'm sorry. We had an off year, but there will be others. There always are.”

“An off year,” Helen had repeated.

“Maybe I'll come back later in the summer,” Ilsa had offered.

“You're always welcome,” Helen had said, surprised by how badly she wanted Ilsa to return, or not to go in the first place. But instead of trying to convince Ilsa to stay, she had walked down to the dock with her coffee to watch the sun finish its ascent. She felt lonely. Even though she had Iain, just a few cottages over, and a daughter and two grandchildren still in the cottage, she felt completely alone. What she wanted, she realized, was someone to talk to. A friend.

She thought about something Liane had said the day before. She had mentioned that she had been flipping through the cottage guest book that week. “And I saw an entry from Edie. What happened with you two, anyway?”

Helen had stopped what she had been doing—salting and peppering fish fillets she had thawed—and looked up at Liane, thoughtful.
Well, let's see. What happened? She ran off with Fiona's father, that's what happened. She turned out to be more envious of me than anyone else.
“I don't remember anymore,” Helen
had finally said. “Something silly. I think she lives in California. Or maybe New York City. I don't know. She got married.” Helen had squeezed lemon on the fish and then rubbed the lemon over her hands before washing them.

“I went out in the kayak,” Liane said next. “I don't know if you noticed.”

“I did,” Helen said carefully. “I'm proud of you.” She covered the fish with a pot lid. She cleared her throat and waited. Maybe now Liane would explain about the ring. But she didn't. The conversation appeared to be over.

And then both girls had left and Helen was alone on the island with nothing to do but walk over to Iain's and admit to him that she had failed at her mission. She had spent the day and night with him, but now needed to go back to her place for more stuff. He was reading the paper, his reading glasses down his nose. She stepped in front of him, sandals in hand.

“I'm going for a walk,” she said. “I need a few things from my place.”

“Mmm-hmm,” he replied, without looking up. He was upset with her still, she could tell. Perhaps she couldn't blame him. It probably hadn't felt very good to arrive at her cottage and discover her daughter wearing the ring, as though playing dress-up with some discarded trinket.

Helen put on her sandals, walked out the front door, and couldn't help but think the old Helen—or, perhaps more correctly, the
young
Helen—would keep walking away from this place and never return. And although she still felt like the same person (sometimes that didn't seem fair, mostly because of the crow's-feet), at sixty-four Helen was finally grown-up enough to know that walking away from a man like Iain, a strong, solid, intelligent, passionate, and, yes,
traditional
man like Iain, would be a mistake she'd regret, always.

• • •

Meeting Iain had happened for a lot of reasons and in a roundabout way. Mainly, the events that had set it into ­motion—or at least that had preceded it, had helped her identify her need—had happened because Helen had finally grown tired, one day, of eating dinner alone.

After an early morning spent doing yoga back in the rural village where she lived during the year, after her daily walk, after tending to her vast garden of herbs, the smells of which brought back so many different memories and made her feel a little sorry that every summer she would give the house to a house sitter (almost always an actor or painter or some other form of artist friend who needed somewhere to be) and spend most of the time on the island, after a visit to the library in town for a new crop of literary thrillers, after lunch with her friend Nina (wheat germ burgers at the Carrot Top Café), after a nap in the solarium, from which she woke, slightly disoriented, dreaming she was about to go on at Massey Hall, after realizing it was not in fact 1975 and feeling that perhaps she had slept too long (she had, and she'd never get to sleep that night), after watching the sun fade on the horizon from where she lay, after feeling hungry, moving to the kitchen, and beginning to prepare a meal—her idea had been kamut pasta, fresh tomatoes, basil, olive oil, a glass of wine, but instead she had put toast in the oven, sliced tomatoes, ground pepper, felt tired of cooking for one—after carrying it outside and turning on CBC radio to keep the silence at bay, after all this, she had had the following thought:
I am tired of eating alone. I don't want to become a woman who eats cereal over the sink, who ceases to care about her meals, or who constantly invites friends in for dinner, bustles around the kitchen, all the while thinking,
If you weren't here I'd go insane with loneliness
. I never used to be that woman, but I am getting lonely. My days I can fill fine. But at night, in the evening . . . well, I want someone to eat with. I want someone to cook for who isn't a friend. And, to be frank, postmeno
pausal or not, I wouldn't mind a good lay once in a while, and none of the men in this town seem up for the task.

And so she stood and fetched her laptop, left her toasted tomato sandwich, and drank her red wine instead—one glass, then another—while she set up a profile on MatchedSilver.com, a website that Nina had mentioned that day at lunch. The name of the site had caused her to cringe, but she still went on.
Gracefully Aging Flower Child Seeks Dinner Companion,
she wrote, and immediately felt embarrassed. Still, she continued with a jumble of words that described her completely and would likely put most men off.

She faltered for a moment—surely she would be recognized; or perhaps not; it was indeed no longer 1975—then uploaded a picture a friend had taken of her at a party. In the picture Helen was laughing while facing slightly away from the camera. In the soft light of the photo, the white streaks in her hair looked blond and her laugh lines were still visible but softened.

She got a lot of messages. Some of them memorable because they were bizarre, some of them memorable because they were pathetic, a few memorable because she was indeed recognized (the “folksinging goddess of my not so illustrious youth,” as one man put it), but none of them memorable because they were
memorable
. She began to grow frustrated.
This isn't going to work.
If I'm going to meet someone, I'm going to meet him in a different way than this. I always did before, didn't I?

Except in the life she had led before, it had been somewhat easier to meet men.

• • •

Helen had left her hometown of Mulmur, Ontario, at seventeen. When interviewers asked her why, she always said, “Have you been to Mulmur?” and left it at that. But in truth, it was a pretty little farm town she wished she could tell idyllic
stories about. Stories other than: “
My mother, Abigail, did all the things in her life because she had to, not because she wanted to, and sometimes I would see her looking out across our fields of potatoes with an expression of longing so fierce I wanted to take her hand and run away. But I knew if I suggested it her face would return to normal and she would smile and say, ‘Why on earth would I ever want to do that
?
'” Stories other than: “
My brother, Ellis, was ‘not right in the head.' That was how the townspeople put it, but no one ever sought to figure out what the problem was, exactly. Then one night he came into my room, covered my mouth with his hand, and climbed on top of me, but I bit him and he screamed and my father came runnin
g.”

Helen's father, Angus, didn't speak of what he had seen happening that night because he almost never spoke of anything. But he also didn't argue with Helen when she said two days later she was leaving, didn't have a response when Abigail cried and said, “But she was going to marry Beacan Wilson.” (Later, though, when the cottage was put in her name, she recognized the small piece of property they had visited each summer, for quiet vacations during which Helen once swam the entire perimeter of the island and thought she might die from exhaustion, as an act of contrition. So she fought Ellis hard for it in court when he attempted to prove that their father was going senile and was not in his right mind when he bequeathed the property to her, then paid him what would have been his share to make sure he never came around, and gave him her share of the farm, too.)