Your children grow up, they leave you,
they have become soldiers and riders.
Your mate dies after a life of service.
Who knows you? Who remembers you?
MIMI DOES HER BEST not to cry in front of her husband any more. In the months after they received official word that their son was missing in action, she cried. Jack comforted her and predicted a hundred happy outcomes, a hundred bureaucratic errors, a worst-case scenario involving their boy lost in the shuffle, lying wounded but alive in a field hospital. She endured the incoming tide of sorrow, and the slow draining away of hope. Emotional anemia. She kept busy around the edges, which were all anyone could see. At the centre was a bare patch — it could not be called a clearing. Nothing would ever grow there again. Like irradiated soil. Sterile.
She confides in a few good friends. New friends: Doris, Fran, Joanne. She leans, catches her breath, but never collapses on any of them. If no one ever says “poor Mimi” again, she will have done her job.
No one can keep up with her — the Heart Fund, the Cancer Society, the Liberal Party, the Catholic Women’s League, her nursing job. She keeps busy, but Mimi has never had a talent for sidestepping time. She becomes aware of a metallic taste in her mouth — forty years of smoking has never interfered with her ability to season a sauce, this is new. Something has to change. Something does change. No one is able to tell, not her husband or her daughter. Here is her recipe for grief:
Keep busy. But care that the young couple on the corner have planted a new tree. Care that the woman whose husband died last year has a new dog — a mature mutt from the pound — Mimi doesn’t even like dogs, “Ah, mais il est mignon!” bending to pat his bony head. Care that someone had a baby. Cook something, bring it over. Go for a walk every Thursday morning at seven with Joanne, who, what with her long grey hair and Greenpeace pamphlets, reminds Mimi of Karen Froelich, and therefore seems the unlikeliest of friends. When consumed by jealousy of Fran with her grandchildren, by anger at the number of worthless young men who are allowed to survive, sit in your car with the engine off and squeeze the steering wheel. Cry until your throat hurts and the steering wheel is wet and it leaves a notched impression on your brow. Think of the Blessed Virgin, she knows what you are suffering. If you have the presence of mind — in the way that an epileptic might look for a safe place to lie down at the first sense of a seizure coming on — remove your makeup first. Cry at night, careful not to shake the bed. Get up, empty the dishwasher, bake muffins for your daughter in Toronto. Wait until six A.M., then call Yvonne in New Brunswick, where it’s seven. Gossip, judge, tell her not to judge so harshly, laugh. Look after your husband.
Upward tilt of the head for the morning kiss. Co-conspirators:
“When did you get up, Missus?”
“I’ve been up since six.”
“Something sure smells good.”
Look after him. Women live longer than men. Men are delicate, Mimi ought to have taken better care of hers. Both of them.
Put the kettle on. Look out the kitchen window.
Love what remains.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
“‘How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another!’”
SHE HAS FIVE MINUTES before meeting Christine for lunch, then she has an appointment with Shelly to show her material for Stark Raving Madeleine—a mere paragraph, but just add water. She is walking along Harbord in the direction of the university campus and Christine’s office when a title in the window of the Toronto Women’s Bookstore catches her eye. So she makes her way through the usual knot of demonstrators outside the abortion clinic next door, and goes in.
The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation. Feminist goddessy take on Jungian healing blah-blah. Nina stuff. She flips through — cocoons, butterflies…. She sighs. Do I have to heal now? Who’s got the time? The whole idea makes her crave a dose of Dirty Harry. But she buys the book and lingers to chat with the cute dreadlocked girl at the cash, not leaving till she has heard the analysis behind every political button pinned to the bib of her denim overalls.
Get your laws off my body! shouts a pin on the girl’s left suspender. Bi now, gay later, muses one on the right. She smiles at Madeleine and says, “Do you like reggae?”
“I love it.” Overstatement.
“I’m at the Cameron House on Thursday.”
“Are you a singer?” Are you even of legal drinking age?
“Yeah.”
“Cool.” What a nerd. Cool. What a maroon!
“I love your show,” says the girl, leaning forward, elbows on the counter.
Madeleine flees. Hit and run, duck and cover.
She picks up a falafel and eats it on the way to meet Shelly — what a gorgeous day. When she gets home, she writes an inscription in the book and, before taking the phone out to the balcony to call Olivia, leaves it on the kitchen table, a gift for Christine. More up her alley. And God knows, if therapy has taught Madeleine anything, it’s that Christine could use a little honest introspection.
Later that same week:
Madeleine stands stranded on her old Persian carpet in her empty living room. Her office is the only fully furnished room remaining, but she is avoiding it — rebuke of the blank computer screen, posters of past triumphs looming a merry reproach from the walls.
“Take the stuff,” said Madeleine.
And Christine did.
Madeleine had forgotten their lunch date. She had had a terrible meeting with Shelly, who believes in her. Her peripheral vision had gone wavy in one eye, and pins and needles had consumed both hands up to her elbows when she was in the Bloor Supersave buying eggs. And Christine left her.
Nyah, what’s up, doc?
She has enough money to continue nervously breaking down for another eighteen months, if she buys bulk. That’s the beauty of television residuals. Soon she will go to Ikea and fill up an oversized cart. Trawl the aisles, along with the other divorcées, and families with young children. Today is Saturday, she could get started this afternoon.
“What about dinner?” she asked stupidly as Christine unlocked her bike from the veranda.
“Cook it yourself.”
That’s not what I meant.
They had been going to go for Vietnamese food with friends. Friends of Madeleine-and-Christine. Christine-and-Madeleine.
“You call them,” said Christine, dragging her bike down the wooden steps. “They were never really my friends anyway. You’re the shiny one, Madeleine.” Then she rode off on her beautiful old Schwinn Glyder with the generous gel-pad Drifter saddle.
She returned the next day, with a U-Haul and an undergrad. Madeleine helped. Now she has no furniture. She has a beach towel. A Melmac plate, bowl and mug; a knife-fork-spoon combination. At least she still has a bed. She has been to Honest Ed’s and bought a complete set of pots and an ironing board. She brought it all home on her bike, having had no need for the car when she nipped in with the intention of buying bagels. She forgot the bagels. She is as pathetic as any deserted husband. More so, having no home-repair skills.
“Why don’t you just go to her, that’s what you’re going to do anyway.”
“Go to who?” asked Madeleine. “Whom?”
Christine just shook her head and went into the bedroom. Madeleine followed like a spaniel. Christine started yanking open drawers.