Happenstance, page 1
These two unique companion novels tell the stories of Jack and Brenda Bowman during a rare weekend apart in their many years of marriage. Jack is at home coping with domestic crises and two uncouth adolescents while immobilized by self-doubt and questioning his worth as an historian. Brenda, traveling alone for the first time, is in a strange city grappling with an array of emotions and toying with the idea of an affair. Intimate, insightful and never sentimental, Happenstance is a profound portrait of a marriage and of those differences between the sexes that brings life—and a sense of isolation—into the most loving relationships.
Praise for HAPPENSTANCE
“A delightful portrait of a partnership, full of quirky humor between two people who are at once familiar and strangers to each other…. A celebration of marriage as historical event.”—The Times (London)
“Shields is both a knowing and exuberant writer. There is a gusto about the way she bounces her characters into and out of situations. We smile and yet—we feel—it is ourselves she is showing us…. A pleasure to read.”—The Edmonton Journal
“As Shields handily demonstrates here, a marriage is the culmination of a million tiny moments, and she strings them together with intense cumulative power…. a tour de force.”—Publishers Weekly
“With dazzling deftness Shields demonstrates the alienation innate in the most loving relationships…. A compassionate, funny, multi-layered [and] remarkably perceptive work.” —The Sunday Times
“It is no small feat to write beautifully and winningly about a happy family, and to say something fresh about a middle-aged man. Carol Shields does both in Happenstance.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“Happenstance is a pleasure to read…. For once we have a sympathetic male character—not only intelligent, but given the opportunity to discover himself, touchingly emotional and loving.”—Flare
The work of CAROL SHIELDS
poetry
Others
Intersect
Coming to Canada
novels
Unless
Larry’s Party
The Stone Diaries
The Republic of Love
A Celibate Season (with Blanche Howard)
Swann
A Fairly Conventional Woman
Happenstance
The Box Garden
Small Ceremonies
story collections
Dressing Up for the Carnival
The Orange Fish
Various Miracles
plays
Departures and Arrivals
Thirteen Hands
Fashion, Power, Guilt and the Charity of Families (with Catherine Shields)
Anniversary (with David Williamson)
criticism
Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision
anthology
Dropped Threads: What We Aren’t Told (Edited with Marjorie Anderson)
Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren’t Told (Edited with Marjorie Anderson)
biography
Jane Austen: A Penguin Lives Biography
About the Author
CAROL SHIELDS (1935–2003) is the author of The Stone Diaries, which won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Canada’s Governor General’s Award. Her other novels and short story collections include The Republic of Love, Happenstance, and Swann. Shields’s work has been translated into 33 languages.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 1997
Copyright © 1980, 1982 Carol Shields
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto, in 1994. Originally published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate Limited, in 1991. Distributed by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Shields, Carol, 1935—
Happenstance: two novels in one about a marriage in transition
Title from cover.
Second work on inverted pages
“Happenstance, the husband’s story was first published as Happenstance in Canada by McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1980; Happenstance, the wife’s story was first published as A fairly conventional woman in Canada by Macmillan of Canada, 1982”—T.p.verso.
ISBN 9780679308560
Ebook ISBN 9781039004191
I. Title. II. Title: Happenstance, the wife’s story.
III. Title: Happenstance, the husband’s story.
PS8587.H66H37 1997 C813’.54 C93-093838-0
PR9199.3.S54H37 1997
Cover photograph: Michael Frye/Strone
Cover design: CS Richardson
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
a_prh_6.0_139445688_c0_r0
CONTENTS
Cover
Praise for Happenstance
Other Titles
About the Author
Copyright
Happenstance: The Wife’s Story
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Happenstance: The Husband’s Story
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
For Catherine Mary Shields
Chapter One
EVERY morning Brenda wakes up, slips into her belted robe, and glides – glides – down the wide oak stairs to make breakfast for her husband and children. The descent down the broad, uncarpeted stairs has something of ceremony about it, it has gone on so long. She and Jack have lived in the Elm Park house for thirteen years now; Rob was a baby when they moved in; Laurie, twelve last October, has never lived anywhere else.
In the kitchen she reaches for the wall switch. It’s seven-thirty, a January morning, and the overhead fixture blinks once, twice, then pours steady, lurid light down onto the blue countertops, causing her to reel slightly. Her hands set out plates, reach into the refrigerator for frozen orange juice and milk, into the cupboards for Raisin Bran and coffee beans. Her husband, Jack, has given her a new coffee-grinder for Christmas, a small Swedish toy of a machine which is still a little unfamiliar to the touch. A button on its smooth side sets a tiny motor whirring, a brief zzzz which releases a pleasing instantaneous cloud of coffee smells. ‘Philadelphia,’ Brenda murmurs into the coffee-softened air of the kitchen.
She boils water, pours it carefully. ‘Philadelphia.’ Her voice is low and so secretive she might be addressing a priest or a lover.
For a month now, ever since she decided to go to Philadelphia, she has had her flight schedule thumbtacked in the lower right-hand corner of the kitchen bulletin board. Departure time, arrival time, flight number – all printed in her own hand on one of Jack’s three-by-five index cards.
Above where the card is pinned there are a number of other items. It seems to Brenda, yawning and retying the belt of her robe, that some of them have been there for weeks. Months. She tells herself she could get busy and weed out a few, but the confusion of notices and messages mainly pleases her. She likes to think of herself as a busy person. Brenda Bowman – what a busy person!
The clutter on the brown corkboard speaks to her, a font of possibility, firmly securing her, for the moment at least, against inactivity. On the other hand, she sometimes feels when she glances at it a stab of impatience; is there no end to the nagging of details? Appointments. Bills. Lists. Announcements. Furthermore, these small reminders of events past and present carry with them a suggestion of disappointment or risk. That old theatre programme, for instance, the one from the Little Theatre production they’d gone to – when was that? last November? The Duchess of Malfi. She had hated The Duchess of Malfi. So, surprisingly, had Jack.
Someone – Jack, of course, who else? – had pinned up a newspaper cartoon about the School Board scandal, two pear-shaped men balancing on penny-farthing bicycles and grappling over a sack labelled $$$. The point of the bicycles, though Brenda has been following the scandal with some interest, escapes her.
And there, snugged cleanly in the corner – she has cleared a small area around it – is her flight schedule. It looks purposeful and bright, winning from the welter of other items its small claim to priority. Brenda glances at it every morning when she comes downstairs to make breakfast. It is the first thing to catch her eye, and even before she plugs in the coffee-grinder and starts the eggs, she examines and is reassured by her own meticulous printing, Flight 452, United Airlines, departing Chicago at 8:35. Tomorrow morning, Saturday. Arrival at Philadelphia at 1:33.
There are two short stops, Fort Wayne and Cleveland. The round-trip ticket – she will be gone only five days and so cannot qualify for the one-week excursion rate – comes to $218. Her tickets lie in an envelope on the hall table under a piece of pink quartz someone once brought them from Greece. The thought of the tickets touches her with a wingbeat of happiness which is both absurd and childish and which makes her for a moment the object of her own pity. Ridiculous. As though her life at forty was so impoverished that the thought of spending five days in Philadelphia could stir her to exaltation. Pathetic!
Not only pathetic, but unrealistic. She and Jack have been to New York a number of times. Once, when she was a child, she went for a trip to the Smoky Mountains with her mother. Later there was her honeymoon in Williamsburg; to Denver and to San Francisco with Jack for a meeting of the National Historical Society; twice to Bermuda; and four years ago to France. Philadelphia wasn’t even supposed to be a particularly attractive city. Someone – she’s forgotten who, someone at a party recently – referred to Philadelphia as the anus of the east coast, one of those cities that suffers from being too close to New York, nothing but highways and hotels and factories and an inferiority complex. Nevertheless, when she murmurs the word ‘Philadelphia’ into the rising coffee fumes, she feels engorged with anticipation, a rich, pink strangeness jiggling round her heart that interferes with her concentration.
In recent days she has felt impelled to disguise her excitement, to affect calm. A hand on her shoulder seems to warn her to be careful, to practise sanity and steadiness. (A false steadiness that has nevertheless yielded a real calm, for she has succeeded in making lists, she has been orderly.) She even managed a shrug of nonchalance when the printed programme from the Philadelphia Exhibition arrived in the mail a week ago with her name listed on the back: Brenda Bowman, Quilter, Chicago Craft Guild.
Admittedly she was one of hundreds listed; the print was the size of telephone-book type, all the quilters crowded together with the spinners, the weavers, even the tapestry-makers and macramé people. Yes, Brenda has told Hap Lewis, herself a macramé person, yes, she’s glad she decided to go. Why not? It would be interesting (and here she had shrugged, lightly, dismissively) to see what quilters from other parts of the country were doing. It might even be (another shrug) inspiring. She had held herself in check, even with Hap, whom she regarded as one of her closest friends, projecting a half-grimace over the cost of domestic flights, passing off the trip to Philadelphia as a mere whim – though a whim which required a certain amount of preparation. Jack and the children weren’t used to having her gone. There were the meals. There was the laundry. ‘Fuck the meals, fuck the damn laundry,’ Hap had encouraged her.
Leaving 8:35, arriving 1:33. Brenda has taken this information over the phone asking the United reservation clerk to repeat the times and the flight number. She loves the busyness of facts, but distrusts them, and today, after breakfast, after everyone has left for the day, she plans to phone United again for a confirmation.
In the frying pan she melts a minute quantity of butter and cracks in four eggs, two for Jack, one for each of the children, none for herself. She is watching her weight, not dieting, just watching. Maintaining. And keeping a restive eye on her daughter Laurie, who in the last year has gone from a child’s size twelve to a fourteen Chubette. Laurie’s brand-new Big Sister jeans hardly fit as it is, but when she finishes her egg this morning she will be sure to reach for a second piece of toast. Only the stuffing of carbohydrates keeps her civil these days. Puberty is the worst of diseases, worse in its way than diseases of withering appetites and painful restrictions. Brenda stares at the shiny side of the percolator and sees beyond it the tender beginnings of Laurie’s breasts, melting and disappearing under new layers of fat. She imagines returning home in a week’s time and finding her daughter obscenely bloated with food and maddened by sugary cravings. Poor Laurie. ‘It looks like we’re going to have a baby elephant on our hands,’ Jack had remarked to Brenda only a week earlier. Brenda had reacted with fury. ‘It’s only baby fat. All girls go through a period of baby fat.’
She should, though, sit down with Laurie today; have a little talk, just the two of them.
But there is so much still to do, and she hasn’t started packing. Two of her blouses need pressing: the green one, the one that goes with her suit and with the pants outfit as well, and the printed one, which she plans to wear to the final banquet. At 3:15 she is having her hair cut, tinted, and blown dry at a new place over on Lake Street which has wicker baskets and geraniums in the window and scarlet and silver wallpaper inside. And if there’s time, she wants to make a casserole or two to leave for Jack and the children – lasagna maybe, they love lasagna. Not that they aren’t capable of looking after themselves; even Rob can cook easy things – scrambled eggs, hamburgers – and Laurie’s learned to make a fairly good Caesar salad. They’re not babies any more, Brenda says to herself, either of them.
Tomorrow morning. Saturday. Jack will drive her to the airport. They should plan to leave the house by seven; no, earlier, the car’s been acting up lately, the rear brakes. She’ll have to take it in herself when she gets back from Philadelphia and have it checked over. Jack tends to be vague and overly trusting (or overly distrusting) about mechanical things. What if they get a flat tyre on the way to the airport? Unlikely, but still…She should set the alarm for six, have her shower, get dressed, and then wake Jack. She will say goodbye to the children tonight. No point hauling them out of their beds on a weekend morning.
Besides, there’s always the danger that Laurie might cling to her. She should be past clinging, but she’s not. Even going off to school in the morning she sometimes stands in the open doorway, letting the heat escape, clinging to Brenda. These embraces are wordless and pressing, and Laurie’s breath seems imprisoned inside her heaving chest. Brenda can feel, or imagines she feels, the desperate, irregular thud of her daughter’s heart through the material of her ski jacket.
And Rob has been so bad-tempered in the morning lately. Loutish, Jack calls it, though Brenda rises to his defence; Rob, or Robbie as she still sometimes thinks of him, is, after all, her first-born child, and his lowered eyes (sulkiness) and dark, curling hair still make her heart seize with love. ‘It’s only adolescence,’ she tells Jack. ‘It’s hormones. Fourteen’s the worst age. We should be thankful he isn’t on drugs. Or skipping school. Look at Benny Wallberg. Even Billy Lewis…’
She puts forks and knives on the table, checks the eggs. She will have to stock up on eggs today. They could always fall back on eggs. Eggs, the compleat food; where had she read that? And she should buy some canned soup. Jack likes chicken and rice, but Rob only likes tomato, and Laurie…and what else?
