The Box Garden Part 8

"Why do we even try?" Judith asks lightly, philosophically. "Why in heaven's name don't we give up trying to please her?"

This is a question for which I have no answer, and so I say nothing. I drink my coffee which is already cold. We're on a psychic treadmill, Judith and I; we can't stop trying to please her. There's no logic to it, only compulsion; even knowing it's impossible to please her, we can't stop ourselves from trying.

I hadn't intended to talk about Watson; my divorce is a subject I've never really discussed with Judith. It should be easy these free-wheeling days to discuss ex-husbands, but it is never easy for me. In spite of the statistics, in spite of the social tolerance, there is nothing in the world so heavy, so leaden, so painfully pressing as love that has failed. I rarely talk about it-I make a point not to talk about it-but somehow Judith and I have got onto the subject.

We've crept back into bed, and shivering under a light blanket, I ask Judith if she minded turning forty.

"Yes," she answers thoughtfully, "but only a little."

"You didn't feel threatened or anything?"

"Not really. Of course, it helps that Martin gets to all the terrible birthdays first."

"But what about Martin? Didn't he mind?"

"I don't know," Judith says, sounding surprised. And then she adds, "But he doesn't seem seem to mind." to mind."

"Eugene is forty," I burst out.

There is a pause; Judith doesn't know what to do with this information.

"Is he?" she says politely.

"And he doesn't mind a bit. He insisted we go out and celebrate it. Cake, candles, the works."

"Well, why not?"

"He likes being forty. I think he'd even like to be older. Forty-five, fifty maybe."

"That's nice for him," Judith comments.

"It's a little worrying, don't you think, rushing into old age like that?"

"Maybe his youth wasn't all that marvellous," she suggests.

I think of Jeri and agree.

"Anyway," Judith says, "the saving grace of reaching forty is that most of your friends get there about the same time."

"I suppose that's a comfort."

"It helps."

"Watson is forty-two," I say. "Imagine!"

"That's right," Judith says, "he was about the same age as me."

"It must have killed him turning forty."

"Why do you say that?"

"Remember how he went berserk at thirty? Forty must have been a funeral for him."

"Of course," Judith says slowly, "I never knew Watson very well, but it's hard to believe that a mere birthday could hit anyone so violently."

"It did though. I saw it coming, of course. Even when he was twenty-seven he was starting to get a bit shaky. Once I even heard him lie about his age. He told some people we met, for no reason at all, that he was only twenty-five."

"Strange."

"He seemed to take it into his head that he could go backwards in time if he put enough energy into it. And that was the same year he started hanging around with his students all the time, especially the undergraduates. And talking about the university as 'they.' He even had me go and get my hair straightened so I'd look like one of his students."

"Poor Char," Judith says softly.

Her sympathy is all I need. Now I can't stop myself. "Then he really began to get desperate. The first time I saw him wearing a head band I was actually sick. Literally. I went into the bathroom and was sick. I wouldn't have minded if someone had given him the head band, one of his students maybe, but what killed me was the deliberation of it all, that he woke up one day and decided to go to a store-it was Woolworth's-and buy himself an Indian head band. And then picking it out and paying for it and then slipping it on his head. And looking at himself in the mirror. That's the moment I couldn't live with, the moment he looked in the mirror at his new head band."

Judith sounds puzzled. "Lots of people wore head bands at one time."

"But don't you see, other people sort of drift into it. They don't suddenly make a conscious decision to hold on to their youth by running out and buying some costume accessories."

"And then what happened?" She is right when she says she scarcely knew Watson. She met him only twice and all she knows about the divorce is that Watson suffered a breakdown. A breakdown?

Perhaps not really a breakdown, although that was the term we used at the time, since it was, at least, medically definable. It was Watson's breakdown which made him a saint to Greta Savage: she saw it as a powerful link between them, as though their mutual lapse from the coherent world spelled mystical union, impenetrable by those of us coa.r.s.ened by robust mental health.

But what Watson suffered was something infinitely more shattering than poor Greta: more of a break-up than a break down. He broke apart. At the age of thirty he fell apart. Watson broke into a thousand pieces, and not one of those pieces had any connection with past or future.

"When he was twenty-nine," I tell Judith, "he decided we should sell the house so he and Seth and I could walk across Europe."

"Walk across Europe." across Europe."

"With backpacks and sandals, a sort of gypsy thing. He had this crazy idea that he could earn enough money by playing the recorder, you know, in the streets of Europe."

"Did Watson play the recorder? I didn't realize he was musical."

"He wasn't. It was another of his delusions. Oh, he could play all right, about three tunes, and one of them was 'Merrily We Roll Along.' It was awful. I don't know where Seth got his musical ability but it wasn't from Watson."

"How odd."

"Doug Savage says he became totally detached from reality. In fact everyone we knew told him he was crazy, but he wouldn't listen. He actually had this image of himself tootling away in cute Greek villages with all the fat, red-faced fishermen loving him. I was supposed to write poems, Joan Baez style, and he would set them to music. And if this scheme fell through, he wasn't worried. He was into brotherly love-remember love-ins?- and he was convinced that love was a commodity, like cash, that could take us anywhere. All we had to do was project it."

"What do you suppose would have happened if you'd actually gone?" Judith asks.

"I've asked myself that a hundred times. What if I'd said okay, I'll come. What if I'd taken him at his word, bought myself an Indian skirt and a guitar and followed him. At one point, you know, I had almost decided to go."

"Why didn't you then?"

"Two reasons. First, he stopped wanting me to come. By that time he'd already quit the university. Just walked in one day and told Doug Savage he was finished with Establishment values. He used the word 'establishment' all the time as if it was a hairy, yellow dog nipping at his heels. And then, overnight, it seemed I was part of the Establishment too. Wife. Kid. House. We were all part of it. He stopped talking about walking across Europe with us. We just weren't in the picture any longer. For that last year, in fact, I was his wife on sufferance."

"So he left alone?"

"The day after his thirtieth birthday. Which we did not celebrate, needless to say. He must have got up at dawn. Later I reconstructed the whole thing-I used to torture myself with it. He probably wanted to see the sun rise on the first day of his new life. He was like that you know, very big on symbols. I could just picture how he must have stood in the doorway of our house, very theatrical, with the sun coming up over the hedge. And the note he left! It was like the head band, very studied, very deliberate. A big, fat gesture. I tore it up. Oh, Judith, it was so terribly dumb. I've never told anyone about the note. It was just page after page of youth cult hash. Abstractions like freedom and selfhood, you know the thing. I've never had any stomach for words like 'challenge' and 'fulfillment' anyway, but from Watson ... I could have died. I was so embarra.s.sed for him."

"Oh, Char."

"I tore it up. And I wanted to burn it but of course we didn't have a fireplace in that house. And bonfires are illegal in Vancouver, so I burned all the little pieces in the habachi out in the yard. And all the time I was burning them I thought how he would have relished the symbolism. He hated barbecues. He always thought they were the altars of North America where people gathered to worship big pieces of meat. He was already into vegetarianism, of course. In fact-and that was what I hated most-he was into everything. Name any branch of the counter-culture and Watson had swallowed it whole. Oh, it was all so desperate. And so badly done. Do you know what I mean? If only he had done it ... gracefully."

For a minute Judith says nothing. Then she says, "You said there were two reasons."

"What do you mean?"

"You said there were two reasons you didn't go with him to Europe. What was the other one?"

"Because," I say with a short, harsh laugh, "because I was afraid of what Mother might think."

"What about Seth?" Judith asks after a long pause.

"What about him?"

"I don't suppose he remembers Watson. He was only three, wasn't he?"

"No, he doesn't remember anything. Not even the house we lived in."

"He must be curious about him. His own father. You'd think he'd want to meet him."

"No, it's funny but he's never mentioned wanting to meet him. But once he told me he was going to write him a letter. He was about ten then, I think, and it was just after the monthly cheque came. Just before he went to sleep he told me he had decided to write a letter."

"And did he?"

"Yes, he did, and he spent a long time on it. I helped him a little. And it really was a nice kid-like letter all about school and sports and hobbies and his favourite TV programs, sort of a pen pal thing."

"And did Watson ever write back?"

"No. Months and months went by and I kept thinking any day it'll come. I figured Watson couldn't be so cruel as not to write to his own son-after all, he does drop Greta a line now and then. Finally I said to Seth how strange it was his father hadn't answered his letter. And do you know what he said?"

"What?"

"He just laughed and said, 'I never mailed that letter.' "

"Why not?"

"I asked him why. I asked him two or three times why he hadn't mailed it. But he would never tell me."

Three-fifteen. The luminous dial of Judith's travel clock announces the hour. She is asleep, lying on her side facing the wall with one arm slung awkwardly, almost grotesquely, over her shoulder. I'm jealous of her ability to sleep, but I am also irrationally pained that she has been able to fall asleep just minutes after I have recounted the miserable story of Watson's breakdown.

My breakdown too; that's the part I didn't confess, the part I conceal even from myself except when I am absolutely alone in the middle of the night as I am now. The day Watson left, everything more or less fell apart for me too. The world, which I was just beginning to perceive, was spoiled. Everything ruined, everything scattered.

Scattered like me, the way I'm scattered through this house: in the spare room where my aggrieved mother sleeps her thin, complaining sleep. And here where Judith lies drugged on my wretchedness. And in the silent back bedroom where Eugene dreams of us riding into Toronto on the Vistadome. In Weedham, Ontario, where Watson Forrest lies amidst the welter of his strange compulsions. And in Vancouver where my son Seth-think of it-I have a fifteen year old son who is sleeping safely in a strange gla.s.s and cedar bedroom in the corner of the Savages' house.

But it is not three-fifteen in Vancouver. A rib of joy nudges me. No, it is not three-fifteen. In Vancouver it is late evening. There is probably a soft, grey rain falling. It is not even midnight yet. The TV stations are going strong; the late show hasn't even begun. Doug and Greta almost certainly are still awake; they never go to bed until one or two in the morning. Greta likes to read in bed-she is addicted to crime thrillers-and Doug likes to smoke his pipe and listen to Bartok on the record player. True, Seth may be asleep; he is usually in bed fairly early, but it isn't as though this were the middle of the night.

I'll telephone. I can dial direct; I know the number by heart. It's long distance, but I can keep track of the time and leave money to cover the call. My mother will object-the thought of the charge on her monthly bill will be grievous to her-but it will be too late then. I should have thought of phoning earlier, but there's no harm in calling now, not if I go about it quietly. In fact, this is a good time to phone because the Savages are sure to be at home.

The telephone is in the hallway, a black model sitting on my mother's gossip bench, a spindly piece of furniture from the twenties, half way to being a real antique. I need only the light of the tiny table lamp, and I dial as quietly as I can, marvelling at the technology which permits me, by dialing only eleven numbers, to sift through the millions of darkened households across the country and reach, through tiny electronic connections, the only person in the world who is really and truly connected with me.

But in Vancouver no one answers. I hang up, wait five minutes and try again. The phone rings and rings. I can picture it, a bright red wall model in the Savages' birch and copper kitchen. It rings twelve times, twenty times. No one is home. Can they possibly sleep through all this wild ringing? Impossible. No one is home.

Why can't I sleep? Why can't I be calm like Judith, why can't I learn to be brave? Why is my heart thudding like this, why can't I sleep?

Chapter 4

In the morning my mother's bedroom is filled with sunlight. Someone has opened the curtains, and high above the asphalt-shingled roof of the house next door floats an amiable, blue, suburban sky terraced with flat-bottomed clouds, lovely. Shutting my eyes again I tense, waiting for fear to rea.s.sume its grip on me, but it doesn't come.

The sun has brought with it a calm perspective, and suddenly I can think of dozens of reasons why Doug and Greta might not have been at home last night. They might, for instance, have had concert tickets; Doug is a music lover and never, if he can help it, misses the symphony. They might have gone to an exhibition at the university and taken Seth along; hadn't I seen a notice about the opening of a pottery show or something like that in the Fine Arts Building? Or they might have gone out for a late dinner. (Greta frequently has days when, maddened by the world's unhappiness, she cannot summon the strength to cook a meal.) Or taken in a movie. Or gone for a stroll on the beach. There were countless possibilities, none of which had occurred to me the night before.

And this morning, waking up, I yawn, stretch, smile to myself. Nine o'clock. There is no reason to hurry. This evening I can phone Vancouver again; if I phone about ten o'clock I will be sure to catch them at home.

I dress lazily, savouring the rumpled feel of the unmade bed, the open suitcases on the floor, the faintly stale bedroomy air. Through the shut door a burr of lowered voices reaches me, my mother's, Martin's, and whose is that other voice? Of course, Eugene's.

A determined indifference is the perfect cure for anxiety. That's what Brother Adam wrote me. I take my time. I unpack and hang up my clothes in my mother's closet, arranging them next to her half dozen dresses-such dresses: limp, round-shouldered, jersey-knit prints, all of them, in off-colours like maroon and avocado, grey and taupe. They give off a sweetish-sourish smell, very faint, a little musty. Beside them my new orange dress appears sharply synthetic and aggressively youthful. I am sorry now I bought it. For today, I decide, I will put on my old beige skirt instead. And a blouse, a dotted brown cotton which is only slightly creased across the yoke.

In the living room I find Martin, hunched on the slipcovered chesterfield with several sections of the Globe and Mail scattered around him. After all these years I scarcely know him. He is an English professor, Renaissance, and as is the case with a good many academics, his essential kindness is somewhat damaged by wit. And a finished reserve. As though he had spent years and years simmering to his present rich sanity, his pot-au feu pungency. He is a little uneasy with me-I am so brash, so non-Judith-but his uneasiness has never worried me; our present non-relationship has a temporary, transitional quality; at any moment, it seems to me, we will find our way to being friends. For Martin is a man with a talent for friendship, and in this respect I once believed that Watson resembled him, Watson who knew hundreds and hundreds of people, whole colonies of them secreted away in the cities and towns between Toronto and Vancouver. The difference, I later observed, was that for Watson friendship was not a pleasing dispensation of existence but a means, the only means he knew, by which he could be certain of his existence.

"Well," Martin greets me, "I hear you and Judith made a night of it last night."

"We had a lot of catching up to do," I say. "I hope I didn't wear out her ear drums." I add this apologetically, feeling that Martin might begrudge me a night of Judith's companionship while he himself has been relegated to the back bedroom.

But he smiles quite warmly and says, "Why don't you come and spend a week with us after the wedding and really get caught up?"

"I wish I could," I tell him, "but Seth's staying with friends. And there's my job."

"Surely you could take a few days?" he urges.

Does Martin think I have no responsibilities, nothing to nail me down? No life of my own? And what about Eugene? But I sense that his invitation is no more than a rhetorical exercise; cordial, yes, but mechanically issued. Martin grew up in a hospitable, generous Montreal household where the giving and receiving of invitations was routine, as simple as eating, as simple as breathing.

"Where's Judith now?" I ask, looking around.

"She went out for a few groceries."