The Best Thing for You (25 page)

She’ll have a veil.

He laughed again. Is that what you’d do, baby? Wear a veil?

No. But she will.

I’m going down there tomorrow. Saturday there won’t be too many people around. Just check out the lighting, the angles. Figure out where this goddamn back door is anyway. Then there’s this bar on Granville, Peretti was telling me, where a lot of them like to go. I thought I might look in there. He said he’d introduce me to some –

Will you be late?

Well, yes, he said patiently. I’ve got to see the place at the same time of day, under the same conditions. That’ll be late afternoon, so I guess I’ll just grab a bite out, then this –

Just that I might go to the pictures.

Sure, sure.

She washed the dishes and he dried.

Peretti was in Spain, he said after a while, as though the sentence clinched something in his thinking. He set a pan on the counter.

Hey, not there, she said. Next to the stove. Hey, where’s my present?

Hey, her husband said.

Please.

What have you done to earn a present?

Nothing, she said immediately.

He hung the tea towel, with its chickens, on the back of a chair.

Nothing, she said. I’ve been bad, actually. I’ve had terrible, shameful thoughts all day long. Dead nuns are weeping for me. I should be punished.

He stared at her. She hesitated.

It’s a game, she said. Just a game.

Still staring, he lifted his hands to his face, fingers stiff around nothing, as though framing a shot of her as she stood there at the sink.

The next day, Saturday, opening the paper packet of ham to make sandwiches for lunch, she found a second note.

Up from the basement, where he kept his photographic equipment, came her husband, in a pair of corduroy pants and an old wool sweater. When he saw her he said, Do they fit all right?

Her present, he meant. She extended a leg toward him, toes pointed, so he could see.

I’ve been thinking, he said. You can’t say no right away. Only I was thinking it might help me if you came along this afternoon.

Me?

You can be the woman. Stand by the door where she’s going to stand so I can work out the details on my own time, nobody rushing me. Like a dress rehearsal. I don’t want to get there on Monday surrounded by pros and realize I’ve got the wrong damn lens.

Of course not, she said. All right, I guess. I’ll feel like a fool, though.

Now you’re talking.

Will I miss my show?

Shouldn’t, he said. I shouldn’t need more than an hour.

I mean, you don’t need me to come to that bar?

He laughed. Baby, no.

I might be late too, after, she said. If I meet some of the girls.

Paint the town, he said, biting into his sandwich.

He didn’t like her hat. It’s in the way, he said.

It’s because of people like you she’ll be wearing it. Think about it. She doesn’t want her picture taken.

How do you know so much about it?

A couple passing the mouth of the alley paused to look.

Trust me, she said.

He was taking readings and scribbling in a notebook.

Are you sure this is the right door?

His flash bathed the alley in a sudden milky light.

Buddy!

Just a couple of real ones.

A small crowd had stopped to watch. Hey, mister! someone called. What’s it for?

He couldn’t resist.
The Daily Province.

Who is she?

It started to rain again. That’s it, he said softly to himself, and the flash exploded again, showing everything.

Who is she?

Hold this one, baby, he said, handing her a lens. She shielded it in the breast of her coat while he packed up, hurrying against
the rain. His touch with the equipment was getting more confident, she thought. Gently he took the lens back from her and zipped it into a thickly padded pouch that fitted into a hollow in the camera bag he wore slung across his chest.

Who is she?

Who
is
she? her husband said, as she tipped her hat lower over her face. He took her elbow and steered her firmly through the crowd, out of the alley. Well, I like that!

On the corner they kissed. Don’t wait up, he said.

You neither.

Stay dry, he added, as the lights changed and she stepped into the street to cross. They were going in different directions. Belatedly he called, What’s the show?

She waved without looking back, acknowledging his voice over the rain and the traffic noise.

The picture was a silly one, something about a housewife who secretly supported her family by singing in a seedy nightclub. Her husband, a blind man, thought she went babysitting every evening. A neighbour who noticed the long silver dress under her drab coat thought she was having an affair. Then one night at the club the housewife witnessed a murder. She knew she should go into hiding, but her husband needed her help. She decided to stay with him, relying on her meek housewife persona as a disguise. When the hit man tracked her to her neighbourhood, he was stumped. I’m looking for a real glamorous dame, he told the grocer, the florist, the vicar, but no one knew who that could be.

Is this seat taken? a man asked.

The movie was half over. He must have been watching her from somewhere else in the theatre.

But I’m in love with you, the neighbour, an artist, told the housewife. He had followed her to the club one night and
discovered her secret. Come to New York with me. They will adore you in New York!

I won’t run away, the fervent housewife said. My life is with my husband.

Oh, for Christ’s sake, the man in the next seat said as she squeezed past him. I was only –

Outside the sky was rain-cool, rain-cleared. She walked for a while to clear the nonsense out of her head, then turned into a long, narrow café with a velvet cloth hanging like a thought across the door. He was sitting in a booth at the back. She walked over, sat down opposite him, and said, Why are you bothering me?

Bothering you? he said. Jesus, if that’s what you want to call it. An invitation, a polite –

You wrote on my meat.

You know why, he said. Obviously.

She looked down then and saw his hands on the table were trembly.

Aren’t you having anything? she asked.

I was waiting for you.

Of a single accord they studied the items arrayed on the table between them – spoons, salt and pepper, and a tall glass sugar shaker – collecting themselves.

You were pretty sure of yourself, she said, more kindly.

No I wasn’t.

She signalled the waitress for coffees.

I’m an existentialist, he said.

She said something in French.

All right, he said, flushing darkly. All right.

She took her notebook and a pen out of her purse and wrote down what she had said, then tore off the page and handed it to him.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy, she said in English.

He folded the note and put it in his shirt pocket. Cigarette? he asked, conjuring a pack.

No, thank you, Stephen.

He put the pack back in another pocket. The waitress set their cups in front of them and left. The coffee tasted smoked.

Nietzsche says history is circular. Do you believe that? What’s your husband’s name?

Buddy.

Buddy? he said, laughing. Buddy?

What did you think was going to happen here?

His hands started trembling again, badly.

Chicory, she said. I remember real coffee.

You’re not so much older than me.

I am, though.

No, he said, for she had risen and was pulling her coat back around her. On his jaw, like a rash: sweets plus shaving.

She said, I have to go.

Jesus, you don’t.

They were both standing. She thought: look at us, each with something big and clear and important to say, but he starts his in the middle and I manage nothing at all.

Aren’t we the pair, she said.

Anna. Anna!

Coming.

Here she is. Hello, love.

What’s wrong with the car? Anna asked.

– under the car. Let the men.

This is new, Anna said, not quite touching her mother’s silk scarf.

No.

It is.

No. Oh, sweetheart, his trousers.

– the car.

Let me hug you.

Hello, Mummy.

Aren’t his legs long.

Buddy! she called, and one of his feet waggled where he lay in the street.

Nothing major, sir, he said, pulling himself out from under the car and sitting up. His hands were black.

I’m glad to hear it, sir, her father said.

There followed the regular Sunday roast and talk of war, its stringencies and sacrifices. In this they were marshalled by her father.

After they left her husband said, He never lets me forget, does he?

He doesn’t mean it like that.

It’s not my fault.

Of course it isn’t.

He thinks it is.

They took it to bed with them, the bad feeling he had with her father.

I want to fight.

He knows that.

No. He wonders how it is I can bang you every night and still claim a weak heart.

She had wondered the same herself but said nothing. He was rarely crude. She was the one. At the dance the night they met he had asked her what she wanted from life. A mate and a litter, she had said, and felt herself in his gunsights from then on. He told her later she was like a coin toss: heads nine times running, but then came the tenth.

It’s not my fault, he said again. All my father’s family have it.

I know.

It’s an inherited condition.

I know.

I know you know. I just wish someone would explain it to your father.

She was imagining a coin toss, a spinning silver chip. It could fall this way or that way.

I never asked about the show last night.

I left early.

She felt him go up on an elbow to look at her.

You never do that. You get mad at me if I suggest that.

I couldn’t concentrate.

Why not?

My life is with my husband, she said dramatically, striking her brow like an actress.