This Is All a Lie Page 4

  Inside this moment, maybe they both just want another bottle of wine, because it’s pleasant to sit and talk with someone – even if there are unasked questions, and apprehension, and insecurity.

  Right now, the husband and wife are in a restaurant on North 104 Street. This particular street is brimming with bistros, and wine bars, and cafés. The husband picked this restaurant because of the piano player, who wheeled through a list of jazz classics and started every night with ‘I’m in Love Again.’ He can’t explain why he loves this song so much. When they leave here, the man and his wife, Tulah, will likely go to the Marc for a drink before calling a taxi. They hesitate to even think of it as a nightcap because that’s too old-fashioned. But it will be a nightcap.

  The man just ordered the Rouleaux de Printemps – a goat’s cheese spring roll, pistachio beetroot hummus, sautéed kale, mustard greens, with sweet espelette dressing. His wife orders the marinated flank steak, new potatoes, wilted spinach, smoked red pepper aioli. She asks for her steak to be medium rare. The waiter smiles and says, “Of course, Madame.” The husband nods his head. He knows perfectly well this chef would not cook a steak to anything other than medium rare.

  They are drinking a bottle of Jackpot Petit Verdot from a vineyard in the Southern Okanagan called Road 13. It was one of Tulah’s favourites. She loves the black current flavours that persisted beyond expectation. At least that’s what she said. Ray thought it was a nice, chunky red.

  Tulah Roberts and Ray Daniels have been married for eighteen years and they haven’t made love for two years and three months. They both try to think of this as not a big deal. They lower their expectations of marriage, of each other and their life together. And there was the story in The Guardian, about thousands upon thousands of married people who go without sex. It’s no big deal.

  Tulah kept her name when they married. Neither of them liked hyphenation – they thought it was goofy and a bit ostentatious, as if all the hyphenated couples in the world were trying too hard to prove how enlightened they were. And then, of course, Tulah and Ray did it to their girls. They were Sarah and Patience Roberts-Daniels.

  Ray looks at his wife. The colour of her hair has always stopped him, the severe chestnut tones, and the way it falls across one eye and flows like water to her shoulders. She says if she stops colouring it, it will be grey, and she’s not ready for that.

  Tulah teaches grade 10 English and Science at Strathmore Senior High School. Even though she will often rail against the curriculum, she loves teaching, and has her own set of fixes that sometimes cause her students to sit up straight. For instance, in her English class, there are no set rules around the interpretation of literature – if a student’s thinking is sound, or original, or even analytical, Tulah is fine with moving away from the accepted analysis. However, in her Science classes, Tulah is firm. The school is in a bit of a Bible belt, so in her first class each term, she explains right up front that in their discussion of the origins of man and the Earth, there will be no mention of creation. She makes it clear her class is a science class, not a theology class. Some students take this announcement in stride; others are wide-eyed and astounded.

  * * *

  They’ve been talking about a book over dinner. They are both reading a small novel by the Italian writer, Alessandro Baricco, called Mr. Gwyn. Ray believes the two parts are absolutely linked – they were simply two parts of one novel. Tulah thinks they are separate and distinct novellas.

  “Even the publisher says these are two novellas. It’s on the front of the book. It says two novellas.”

  “The publisher is all about positioning the book to sell. It’s a sales pitch, and this time, an inaccurate one. Besides, publishers are never authorities on the book.” He’s grasping and he knows it. At best, he thinks, there could have been some confusion as the book was translated from Italian.

  “Books,” she says, smiling and hissing the ‘s.’ She takes a sip of her wine. “Two novellas. One physical book.”

  The waiter is there, silently and efficiently pouring wine. When he leaves, Tulah leans toward Ray over the table and whispers, “For a hundred dollars I’ll let you fuck me up the ass.”

  They’ve both been drinking, but Ray is thinking this is way beyond wine. This is quite different. This is not something his wife would say. Nor is it something she would normally do. It’s true they’ve been struggling with sex. The spontaneous, wild and exploratory sex of the early years is a distant memory and they have been at a loss about how to move forward. They are at the point now where neither of them knows where to begin. A first touch, a first kiss – it seems as if there are so many barriers to getting there. Each time is awkward and uncomfortable, because they know it shouldn’t be this awkward and uncomfortable.

  Ray smiles at his wife. “I’m sorry?” he says.

  “You heard me.” She does not smile. As if this is serious business and she is focused on making the deal. As if this type of negotiation is something she does all the time, or that the details of this are beneath her.

  Ray’s heart is pounding. He’s excited by her offer. He’s not obsessed with the idea of sex. That’s not why he’s excited. Not exactly. He likes it that Tulah has surprised him. He is pleased that after being with her for twenty-two years, he still gets turned on when she talks dirty, and she can still surprise him.

  “If I give you a hundred dollars, you’ll do that?” He wonders if his wife has been looking at porn.

  “That? That?” She sighs as if she is impatient, or pretending to be impatient. “Yes. I will do that, but I want my money first.”

  “But we’re in a restaurant.”

  “Oh, you want the logistics spelled out for you? Okay.” She leans back and looks around the room. “In the bathroom, right now.”

  Ray was not even close to thinking about the logistics of his wife’s proposal. This was so out of character for her. He’s in shock. He knows for a fact there are sodomy laws in this country and they definitely apply to anal intercourse in public. His wife is a fervent follower of rules, laws, and her own self-designed lists. It would be natural to not believe her. But, he was considering the erotic notion of it, and listening to her voice, and enjoying the view of her body. He leans forward and whispers. “You want to have sex in the bathroom of this restaurant?”

  “No,” she says. “You do. That’s why you’re going to pay me a hundred dollars and meet me in the women’s bathroom.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes. I’m serious.” She stands up, places her napkin on the table, and looks at him with such knowing and intention.

  * * *

  There is different moment that might be more appropriate for the opening scenes of a book called This is All a Lie. This ‘other’ moment unfolded three days before Ray and Tulah had a conversation about having sex in the women’s bathroom in the basement of a restaurant on North 104 Street.

  Imagine a man standing on an expansive balcony, thirty-nine floors in the air, and he’s holding a square, crystal glass containing a few ounces of eighteen-year-old whisky. The name of the whisky doesn’t matter. This man might be wearing a black polo shirt and khaki trousers but what does it matter what anyone is wearing? The glass is heavy – it’s chunky and yet he takes care with it, protects it. This glass cost $120. There used to be two of them but he dropped one about a month ago. He’d gone online and tried to replace it. With shipping, it was $270 for two glasses. They came as a set. Buying one was not an option.

  There is a woman slouched in a chair beneath a massive painting of a yellow horse. On the tile floor beside her chair, there are two books – both by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. The woman’s name is Nancy Petya. When Nancy says her name, Ray hears Nincy. Her pronunciation is heavily accented and he finds this to be both charming and amusing.

  He might take a sip of the whisky and then try to do the math on how old he was when this whisk
y first went into the cask. He’d like to say he was eighteen when this eighteen-year-old whisky started its journey, but he knows better than to lie about his age – especially to himself.

  Nancy turns toward him, places her tea on the floor beside her chair. “I want you more than you want me,” she says. “I want all of you.”

  “You know that’s not realistic…” He looks at her, notices the rip in her nylon. He chastises himself for noticing such an insignificant thing. What does it matter? But it’s not like Nancy to have a rip in her stockings. He can’t take his eyes away from the rip.

  “…I don’t care about realistic. I want the banalities, the lists of things to do, shopping trips to Costco, a glass of wine after work. A vacation together.”

  “You have a rip in your stocking,” he says, and instantly regrets saying it.

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  “Yes, I’m listening to you.”

  “Because I was telling you that I want more from you and you’re telling me I have a goddamned rip.”

  “I heard you, it’s just, for some reason I noticed the rip in your stocking.”

  “You’re an asshole, Ray,” she says.

  He looks at her and weighs her words against her voice and the view of her body. He measures the sting of her words against the truth.

  “Surely you know you’re a bit of an ass.”

  “Do I?” This hurts. It pushes against his admittedly self-delusional belief that he’s a fairly decent guy who is just a little damaged.

  “It’s not a bad thing, or a good thing. It’s just a thing. But let’s not do any judging. We’re beyond judging, yes?”

  “Look,” he says. “I’d like us to be more real too.”

  Her face becomes a study in sadness. “But that’s not going to happen is it?” She covers her body with her robe. “I might want babies, Ray. What about that?”

  “Babies?” Something in him is panicked by this word. It would complicate things immeasurably if Nancy were pregnant.

  “Yes. What if I want to have a child?”

  “Do you want to have a child?” Why is she talking about babies? This has never been about babies.

  “I don’t know. I’m uncertain, but this could change. Tomorrow, I might wake up and want to have children. The clock is ticking, Ray. My clock is ticking and it’s getting louder.”

  “I don’t know how I can give you more.”

  “Yes you do.”

  He grunts his acknowledgement of this truth. “Yes, I do,” he says.

  Ray takes a couple sips of his whisky and Nancy looks into the depths of her tea. They are silent for a few minutes.

  “You would be a wonderful mother,” Ray says, finally.

  “What?”

  “I said you would make a great mother.”

  “But why would you say that?”

  “Because I can imagine you as a mother.”

  “Trust me, I’m not mother material…”

  “…but you just said…”

  “…I said I can feel my biological clock ticking when I close my eyes at night. You piss me off when you don’t listen.”

  “Still. I think you would make a great mother.”

  Her voice is a straight and narrow line. “Oh, God, you really do not know me.”

  “I know what I know,” he says.

  Even though she realizes he’s likely referring to knowledge he’s gained by having children with his wife, she feels oddly complimented. She lets her robe fall open again. “That’s sweet of you to say, but I just want more right now. I want something normal for us.”

  “But not babies?”

  “I would have a baby with you. You should know that. Do you know that?”

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes, I heard what you said.” He takes a sip of his whisky.

  “Good,” she says. “Right now, I just want something not hidden. Just one normal thing.”

  Even though he knew this was coming, Ray feels backed against a wall – pushed into a corner, claustrophobic. These are reasonable requests. He has enjoyed getting to know this woman. She is clever, and kind, and she has been nothing but understanding. Well, she’s been complicit in an affair, but he pushed her into this complicity – complicity and a complex dishonesty and any other number of words that mean dishonest and secretive.

  It’s clear now. He can see the line of them, stretched out over an impossible thirteen months of desire. He wonders if desire of this sort always ends with a simple and reasonable request for something normal. One request for something not secretive, and that’s the end of it. This is the end of his desire and Ray can imagine himself smashing into a brick wall. The second it gets complicated, it’s over.

  “Okay,” he says.

  But this ‘okay’ is not an affirmation. He is not agreeing to anything. He is saying yes to a completely different thing. He is saying yes to a decision only he knows about.

  Nancy watches as he carefully places the square whisky glass on the edge of the balcony railing and turns around. “Okay?” she says.

  She’s slouched in the chair, her bathrobe fallen open, the swatch of darkness between her legs, the fullness of her breasts. The body he knows so well, the curves and scars and skin – everything – is just there, waiting for him, if only he can say the correct words. He knows the right words but he’s already bashed face-first into the brick wall and there’s no recovering. He wonders if she’s done this on purpose – positioned herself to be so salacious. Her hips lifted and turned out slightly, her soft body, there in the chair, poised at the corner of need and want. He wonders if she knows about the brick wall, if she knows how hard it has become for him to push away his life to have a fragment of something with her. And now she wanted more.

  He leans over and kisses the top of her head. “Goodbye, Nancy,” he says.

  She looks up at him with her slow, sad eyes. “Will I see you Tuesday?”

  “No,” he says. He crosses the room and closes the door softly, as if he is trying to erase the fact he was ever there.

  The elevator arrives quickly and he hopes for a swift, uninterrupted ride to the ground. He watches the numbers as they flash down. He thinks only about the numbers. He counts them off in his head, like a shifting mantra.

  * * *

  In the elevator, Ray is thinking about the appeal of newness, and being in love, and its inevitable unsustainability. Nothing remains new. No one stays ‘in-love’ forever. He does not know one person in his life who has managed to stay in-love with their partner. ‘In-love’ is the force that bangs people together. It is the doorway to something deeper and more sustaining, and surprisingly, freeing. Nancy wanted to step through that doorway into love. But that sort of love is nested inside a long conversation between friends, and an abiding respect. This, and a willingness to work at it when things threaten to go off the rails. Of course, he is a bad example of these concepts. He was willing to work at his marriage only after he strayed into a wild affair. He was not about to confess to Tulah – to fall on the ground in a heap of remorse and beg forgiveness. He could punish himself better than she ever could. He knows this about himself, and keeps his self-loathing in a room with a good sturdy lock on it. He places his guilt in the same room.

  Ray is confused about why he feels he’s lost something. Nancy was an illusion of something real. Can you miss an illusion?

  He’s feeling twitchy because he just walked away from her. He dumped her and he has no idea what she’ll do now. Does she keep the secret of them, or does she lash out and spill everything? Ray is counting on her discretion – a sort of honour among adulterers. But she could do anything. She’s Russian and she has a temper. The elevator slows around 20 and stops at 18. The doors slide open and a tall woman wearing a low-cut cocktail dress and a grey, sequined s
carf wrapped three times around her neck, steps carefully over the crack with her high heels and looks at him. Her face scrunches into a question. “Are you okay?” she says.

  “What?” Ray can smell lavender, and sandalwood, and pine. And somewhere in that mix, a heady body odour. This combination of scents makes him dizzy with memory.

  “Are you okay? You look pale.” Her smile is crooked – it rises up more on one side than the other. It’s charming, and disarming.

  “Oh. I’m fine,” Ray says. “I just don’t like elevators.”

  She looks at him hard, as if he’s naked and can do nothing about her gaze. “Well, that’s not really true is it? You’re perfectly fine with elevators. But you’re not fine in your life. Not by a longshot.”

  Ray steps back. He lines his spine up against the side wall of the elevator. “What?”

  “I said elevators are quite safe. I dated a guy once who was an inspector with the government. He said they’re very safe.”

  “I was in an elevator that stopped for two hours once,” Ray says. He’s never been stopped in an elevator for more than a few panicky seconds.

  “More bullshit,” she says, her voice a pleasant flat line. “I don’t understand why you feel compelled to lie to a complete stranger.” She smiles again. “You’re not flirting with me are you?”

  “Flirting? I’m…No. I’m not flirting.”

  “I think you are. You’re flirting with me, despite being married and I am thinking you probably have children.”

  “What?” He has no idea what this is, or who this woman is, but she makes him uncomfortable. As much as he enjoys awkward conversations, it’s manufacturing the awkwardness that he likes the most. He’s okay with awkwardness so long as he created it. This is a few big steps beyond awkward.

  “Oh, I’m not dangerous,” she says. “Unless the truth can hurt you.” She turns toward the mirrored wall of the elevator and makes a small letter ‘o’ with her lips – she applies red lipstick and puckers. “You don’t live in this building. I would know. Are you messing around on your wife? Is that why you’re here? She lives in this building? Your mistress?”