Jacintha Read online

  That phrase. Grace had used a similar one when Imogen was a newborn. She’d told Richard she’d been on the bus, sitting across from a woman with a terrible pallor — almost chalk white. Jet-black hair and scarlet lipstick.

  “I felt frightened, Richard,” Grace had said. “I had a mad moment when I thought she was being shown to me, a picture of the state of my soul.”

  Richard had hotly denied there was anything wrong with Grace’s soul and said she must be overtired from all her sleepless nights with the baby, and he’d do more to help. He realized now that she was probably suffering from postpartum depression, and he hadn’t taken her to a doctor, hadn’t helped with Imogen nearly enough. Grace had got through it, but had his insensitivity removed the first brick in the foundation of their marriage?

  A hot wave of shame suffused his body, and his head hurt. In a daze, he stepped off a curb and a car honked at him, brakes squealed, and someone yelled. He saw that the light was red and he’d nearly been run over.

  He walked on, trying to pay more attention to his surroundings. To his right was the massive pile of a grain elevator, its walls made up of gigantic, grey-concrete columns with no spaces between, like an ancient Greek temple squeezed and compacted between the hands of an angry god. Railway tracks ran in front of it and the North Shore Mountains were its backdrop.

  A few blocks along, he saw a young woman standing on a corner. She was wearing white vinyl boots with six-inch heels, a leopard-print miniskirt that barely covered her crotch, and a red tank top stretched tightly across her small breasts. Her hair was messily gathered into a high ponytail. She was painfully thin and pale. A wraith. The ghost of a sixties go-go dancer, Richard thought. She was smoking with an elegantly casual flair, taking a drag and then letting her arm float sideways, a Bette Davis gesture. Has she even heard of Bette Davis? She can’t be more than eighteen.

  He felt tears in his eyes and he found he was standing still, watching her.

  “Hey, honey!” she called. “Whyn’t you come over here and talk to me.”

  Richard crossed the street. (Much later, when he tried to understand why he had done so, he wasn’t sure, although his sudden onset of pity seemed to be the most plausible explanation.)

  “Wanna blow job?” she said. “Only twenty bucks.”

  “No.”

  “Fucking’s a lot more expensive.”

  Oh, hell. He looked away toward the mountains for a moment, then turned and said, “No. No. I don’t want anything.” He took twenty dollars from his wallet. “Get something to eat,” he said and turned to go.

  “Do you want to feed me? Be my daddy? Change my diapers?”

  Then she gave a sudden raucous laugh, and Richard’s body jerked, the way a body, when it’s drifting asleep and thinks it’s falling, jerks awake. A pain stabbed his chest and a phrase came to him suddenly. It seemed to come from outside him, a whisper in his ear: All the lost daughters.

  He walked away quickly and didn’t look back.

  When he came to the No5 Orange on Main Street, he heard someone call his name. An acquaintance he hadn’t seen for more than two years was exiting the pub — Nick Wallinsky, a painter whose work was admired in the local art scene, but not by Richard. Carol had met Nick at one of his openings and she’d invited him over for dinner a couple of times. Richard hadn’t liked him much.

  Jesus, this walk was proving bizarre. Had he entered some introductory plane of hell, some Buddhist bardo where one is given an inkling of worse things to come?

  “Richard, you old fart. Come into the pub and I’ll buy you a beer.”

  Richard looked at the sign advertising strippers, and said, “No, it’s too early to look at strippers.” Never would be too early.

  “Oh, hell, don’t worry about that. They don’t start until twelve thirty. That’s a whole hour away. It’s not too early for a drink, though, eh?”

  FOUR

  “OF COURSE HE SHOULD follow his dream,” Carol’s mother said. The two women were sitting in Frances’s garden, drinking wine. Freshly cut grass perfumed the air, and a few late-blooming yellow roses dotted a trellis near them. They were waiting for Richard, who was late arriving for dinner. Although it was almost seven o’clock, it was still warm.

  “The trouble is, he doesn’t really have a dream. He’s just fed up with everything, apparently. He wants to do something useful.” Carol knew she had made the idea sound distasteful.

  Frances stood up and pinched some discoloured leaves from a rose bush.

  “I had a friend once,” she said, “who dreamed of being a filmmaker. Angel was her name, appropriately enough — she was more than a little unattached to the earth. In the clouds. Anyway, she kept phoning Steven Spielberg. How she got his number, I don’t know. She phoned him so often, getting through to his assistant several times, that they finally threatened to get a restraining order if she persisted. She wanted to start at the top. Funny, I never thought of this before: her film was about a woman walking across a city on rooftops — already at the top, you might say. Why she was doing it, or how she got from building to building, Angel didn’t say. Maybe the woman could fly. That was as far as Angel got with the plot. To be developed later with Spielberg, no doubt.”

  Carol had been tapping her fingernails on her wineglass and swinging one leg nervously. Now she said, “Mum, why do you always go off on tangents like that? What’s it got to do with Richard?”

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss it as irrelevant. Think about it.”

  “I don’t … I can’t think right now. My head hurts and I’m tired and I don’t feel like deciphering some sort of parable.”

  “It’s not a parable. It’s true.” She took a sip of wine, looked into Carol’s eyes. “All right, what I mean is this: Richard doesn’t have to start at the top — doesn’t have to change all at once. He can take small steps, climb the stairs. He can start with one useful thing. I, for example, have joined the civic party that I think will do the most to solve our homelessness crisis. Of course, I think gardening and meditating are useful activities, too, but probably at this point, Richard wouldn’t agree. From what you’ve told me.”

  “I think he’s seriously depressed. Stuck. I don’t know if he can find one useful thing.”

  “Suggest one to him.”

  “He’s rejecting my most important suggestion: to get counselling.”

  “Well, give him a little more time.” Frances stood up. “I’m going to make a pot of herbal tea for us. We’ll be drunk by the time Richard gets here if we don’t stop drinking wine.”

  “You have tea, I’ll have more wine,” Carol said.

  She was hot. She’d come straight from shopping at the Bay. She removed her linen suit jacket. Her T-shirt was wet under the arms and sweat had gathered in the band of her bra, which she took off without removing her shirt, down one arm and then the other; then she removed her pumps and, lifting her skirt, pulled off her pantyhose. The grass was deliciously cool on her bare feet. She found a hair elastic in her purse and pulled her hair into it, up off her neck.

  She looked in one of the shopping bags on the lawn beside her and pulled out the towels she’d bought, one coral and one aquamarine, to add some colour to the boring beige of the bathroom. In another bag were silk cushions of shell-pink and silver to put on the old, dull-mauve couch. And she’d found the perfect cashmere V-neck pullover for Richard — aquamarine like the towels, a colour that always made his eyes look bluer. She’d splurged when she should be saving money, but she didn’t care. She needed to boost her spirits, and hopefully Richard’s, too.

  She poured herself another glass of wine, took a large gulp, and stood up and stuck her nose into a blown yellow rose, narrowly missing a fat bumblebee that was just flying out of it. The flower’s sweet perfume made her dizzy. She sat down again.

  Frances returned with a mug of tea.

  “Where has Richard got to, I wonder?” Carol said. “It isn’t like him to be late.”

  “We don’t h
ave to worry about dinner getting ruined, anyway,” Frances said. “It’s a vegetable casserole with cheese, easy to warm up. Have you noticed in movies how dinners are always getting ruined? At least they used to be, as though cooks were unaware that almost everything can be successfully reheated, and chicken and roast beef, for example, are very good lukewarm. Is that happening less now in movies, in the microwave era?”

  Carol said nothing.

  “Have you noticed?” Frances asked.

  “Noticed what? Look, Mum, I’m not worried about dinner, I’m worried about Richard.”

  “I know, dear — I’m sorry.” She stood up and pulled Carol’s head gently against her, murmuring, “I know, I know.”

  Carol started to cry.

  FIVE

  WHEN RICHARD AWAKENED he found himself sitting in an armchair, facing a huge abstract painting. Where was he? Then he remembered. He’d come to Nick’s work-live studio on Alexander Street, just a few blocks from the No5 Orange.

  He’d felt depressed the moment he’d walked into the pub. It smelled of the stale smoke that permeated the hideous carpeting. He’d sat with his back to the stage, so there’d be no chance of seeing any dancers by accident if they came on early.

  Nick had started in by saying, “Still pushing literature on people, Richard?”

  Richard remembered then the conversation he’d had with Nick a few years before, the one that had pissed him off so much. Over dinner, Nick had said that literature was just an entertainment and probably did more harm than good. “Stories plant ideas in people’s heads — lies, fantasies.”

  What an asshole, Richard had thought. He’d given the standard line back: stories teach us about ourselves and others in a way it would otherwise take lifetimes to learn. And then there was the beauty of language and the reaching for transcendence, and so on. Richard didn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but he remembered getting angry at Nick’s smirking and head shaking and had become more and more heated in his defence of literature. Now, though, he wasn’t the least bit angry. He was interested.

  Nick had gone on, saying again what he’d said at that long-ago dinner. “Painting,” he said, “is less harmful. The female form. How can we go wrong, contemplating it day and night?”

  “I’m not very keen on teaching right now, as it happens,” Richard said over his second bottle of beer. “I don’t see my work as harmful, but it’s becoming irrelevant to me, not meaningful enough.”

  “Well, I don’t know about meaningful,” Nick said. “Life’s a crock.”

  “How existential of you,” Richard said.

  Over a third beer, Richard, beginning to feel tearful, told Nick about the landslide and Jenny’s death and his depression. Nick listened, giving a few sympathetic nods and hmms from time to time.

  When the music for the strippers started, Nick said, “How about lunch at a Chinese restaurant? It’s just a short walk to one of my favourite places.”

  After lunch, washed down by two bottles of Chinese beer each, they’d come to the studio, where they started drinking Scotch. What time is it? He looked at his watch. Shit, almost seven.

  Richard looked around the room. Nick was sleeping on a couch, his slim frame stretched out, his chin jutting up — arrogant even in sleep.

  The painting on the wall behind the couch seemed to be of a human being floating in cobalt-blue water. A few pale shapes near the bottom looked to Richard like bones and skulls. When he’d first seen it, he said, “It needs a couple of pearls.” He’d immediately regretted it because Nick said, “Ah, yes. Full fathom five thy father lies, something, something, something. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Two of the few lines of Shakespeare I remember.”

  The words seemed to Richard irreverent in Nick’s mouth.

  “Shakespeare I can stomach,” Nick went on. “Plays are the best things in literature, I think, because you can see people behaving badly toward one another right before your eyes. There’s an honesty to it. I haven’t read Shakespeare since school, but I go to stage productions now and then.”

  “Do you think people behaving badly toward each other is the norm?” Richard had asked.

  “I do indeed,” Nick had replied.

  Richard stood up, and Nick opened his eyes.

  “Can I make some coffee for you?” Nick asked.

  “No, I have to be going,” Richard said. He’d be late for dinner with Frances, and Carol would be angry, but it would be minor compared with the anger that was building up in her about his inability to make love.

  “Shall I call you a cab?”

  “Thanks.”

  As Richard was leaving, Nick said, “Right, well, I’ll see you around sometime. Hope you find what you’re looking for.” And he lay back down and closed his eyes.

  Reluctant at first, Carol eventually consented to read my MS and to comment and/or criticize whenever she was moved to do so. The following is her first email.

  September 2012

  Richard,

  I have a feeling guilt will come up quite a lot in this story. But regarding Jenny, I think the degree of guilt you felt was unwarranted. I was aware that you found her attractive, but I never believed you would have seduced her.

  I wish I’d known the extent of your suffering over what you perceived as your part in her death. I tried to convince you that you were in no way at fault in the days and weeks after, as you have written, but maybe I could have done more, would have done more if I’d known. Oh dear. Guilt seems to be infectious.

  Our “sex scene” is pretty much as I remember it and you handled it delicately.

  I’m reacting well so far, aren’t I? But that might change.

  Carol

  Dear Carol,

  I don’t know if the outcome would have been any different in the long run. Jenny’s death, combined with the trauma of my own near escape from death, were, I think, enough to cause a kind of breakdown, guilt or no guilt. Still, I kept my deepest feelings from you and that points to the corrosive effects secrets can have, how they can engender mistrust between people, especially sexual secrets.

  Gratefully,

  Richard

  SIX

  “I PRESUME YOU’VE all read The Tempest at least once,” Richard said to the eleven faces in front of him, some mildly expectant, some almost eager, one or two unreadable. The students sat at various angles in the wooden, desk-armed chairs. One of the young men was mainly horizontal, so far were his legs extended into the space between him and Richard. Richard had asked for a regular classroom, rather than a seminar room with a large, central table, because he wanted space for movement and separate groups.

  “Have any of you seen the play performed?”

  A few raised their hands.

  “Good — that’s good. If you haven’t read it, please do so before the next class. Will someone please briefly outline what the play is about?”

  A hand went up.

  “And you are …?”

  “John Garven.”

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “Well, Prospero’s a magician who’s been living with his daughter, Miranda, on an island for about ten years. There’s also a rough, beastie sort of guy called Caliban, and a spirit called Ariel, and both of them are kind of servants to Prospero.”

  John’s delivery was rapid-fire; he barely paused for breath.

  “Prospero causes a storm to shipwreck his brother … Antonio, who sent him and Miranda out in a boat to die, and then usurped his title, Duke of Milan. This duke is with a king and various other cronies. Anyway, all of them survive the wreck, but Prospero separates them into small groups so they think the others have drowned. The son of the duke, Ferdinand I think his name is, meets Miranda and they fall in love. Prospero puts his enemies through all kinds of shit and then they all — well, almost all — live happily ever after.”

  “Yay!” someone called out, and the class laughed and clapped.

  John stood up and took a bow.

  “Yes, quite well d
one,” Richard said. “Now, what is the main theme of the play? Anyone? Yes, you are …?”

  “Anna Giovanni. Revenge.”

  “Is that all?”

  “And forgiveness, I guess.”

  “Good. Reconciliation is one of Prospero’s aims throughout. He makes sure, for example, that no physical harm comes to anyone in the shipwreck.”

  “But he kind of tortures them, you know, psychologically,” a student said, but before Richard could learn his name or respond, the door to the classroom opened and everyone turned to see a young woman with long, blond hair and long legs high-booted in green suede.

  A violet, wide-collared jacket billowed out around her. She stood stock still like some exotic flower and smiled at Richard. “Sorry I’m late. What did I miss?”

  “Thanks for not asking if you missed anything. Drives teachers crazy. Name?”

  “Jacintha Peters.”

  “We were just speaking of the theme of reconciliation in The Tempest,” Richard said.

  “Ah!” Jacintha took off her jacket, revealing a sweater moulded to her very round breasts, and sat down. “But it takes the whole play to get there, doesn’t it? There’s all that satisfying revenge on the way.”

  “Okay,” Richard said, and waited as everyone’s eyes turned slowly back to him. “Here’s what I propose: during this semester we write, together, an environmentally themed play based on The Tempest.”

  Stunned silence.

  “Bear with me. It seems to me it will be an excellent way to get to know the play inside out and at the same time do something timely, something relevant.”

  More silence, until Anna said softly, “It seems to me Shakespeare is always relevant, without any updating, or bells and whistles. I dislike most of those modern-dress versions.”

  “Yes, I agree,” Richard said. “He’s always relevant in his eternal themes, but some modern treatments have been very successful. And there’s an urgency for us now, with climate change. I propose the island in our play be up the BC coast, home to a small community with ecological and perhaps spiritual interests.”