First Things First, page 34
But then she thinks perhaps she should congratulate herself on being able to fantasize about this man at all. Perhaps it is a good sign, perhaps there is hope after all. But then again perhaps it is a bad sign, perhaps it just means that she hasn’t learned a damn thing, will never ever learn, is doomed forever to falling in love with oblivious unavailable brown-eyed men.
She and Nicholas leave before the French couple (who seem to have settled in for the evening—they have menus now, more beer, the woman is bringing her spiral notebook out of her knapsack and also some intellectual-looking books which she is passing across to the handsome man) and Jane forgets about them the minute she leaves the restaurant with Nicholas by the hand.
* * *
Back at the Gasthaus Wolfenschiessen, they get ready for bed right away, Nicholas into his teddy bear pajamas and Jane into her t-shirt because she’s brought nothing else. She tucks Nicholas into his bed and then she is going to read in hers but he complains that her lamp is keeping him awake. So she turns it off and lies flat on her back in the dark room with her hands behind her head, staring up to where the ceiling would have been if she could have seen it.
For once she is not waiting for anything. For once she is not waiting for the phone to ring or a knock at the door. She is not thinking about Daniel. She is not doing any of those things that she always does at home.
She is not willing him with all her might to call or come over. Not wondering what he is doing at this very minute while she is eating/drinking/sleeping all alone, while she is listening to songs without words and wanting him, always wanting him. She is not picturing him at home with Anna, at a movie with Anna, out for dinner with Anna, walking hand in hand with Anna, going downtown dancing with Anna and all their happily married friends.
For once she is not replaying the last conversation they had in which he told her once again how much he loved her, how he was in just as much agony as she was but how he couldn’t tell Anna the truth, not yet, how he couldn’t hurt Anna that much, not yet, how Anna would probably die if he left her.
For once she is not rehearsing the next conversation they will have in which she will tell him how much she loves him, how no one, not even Anna, could ever love him as much as she does, how if they were together they would surely have the very best that life has to offer, how lots of people have broken up and lived.
For once she is not even wishing that he would just get hit by a bus and be done with it.
She is just lying there, just lying there and listening. To the traffic swishing through the street in the rain, to the sirens from the fire station just around the corner, to the murmuring of passersby, to high heels clicking on the concrete, a solitary set of footsteps fast receding into the rain. She is just lying there breathing in the smell of the rain on the asphalt, the smell of her son, that precious heart-breaking scent which all sleeping children seem to give off. Just lying there inhaling the detergent-edged odour of the soft gingham duvet cover which forever afterwards she will imagine is what all of Switzerland smells like. Knowing full well that if she ever goes there (knowing full well that she will never go there), she is bound to be disappointed because the country will smell just like any other country anywhere.
She knows she’ll never be able to fall asleep without having her favourite cigarette of the day, the last one. At home every night she has it at the kitchen table, the red dot of the lit end glowing into the dark while she thinks of everything she has and hasn’t done today, everything she should and probably won’t do tomorrow, and what on earth is going to become of her in the end?
Now she gets up and opens a window. It will only come up about six inches and then it gets stuck. She tries the others and they are no better. She drags the single chair over to the open window and sits down. She lights the cigarette and then rests the left side of her head on the wide windowsill and blows the smoke out through the screen. With every puff she is expecting an alarm to go off, expecting Heidi to come marching down the hall (having traded her dirndl skirt and peasant blouse for a brown SS uniform and knee-high lace-up boots), expecting the door to be broken down and a machine gun to be trained on her law-breaking mouth. She was brought up to obey authority, including crossing guards, librarians, and all manner of signs: No Parking, No Spitting, No Loitering, No Overnight Camping, No Speeding, NO SMOKING.
Every time she hears footsteps coming down the street, she pulls her head back in from the screen like a turtle and prays that none of these strangers scuttling past under their big black umbrellas will see her smoke coming out the window, think the building is burning, and run for the fire department around the corner.
All in all, she does not enjoy one puff of this cigarette but she smokes it all the way to the filter and then uses the empty tinfoil-lined half of the package as an ashtray for the butt.
She is not thinking of all the times she promised Daniel she would quit smoking even though she knew she never would, even though she knew it would kill her in the end. She is not thinking of all the times she ran for the toothpaste when she saw him coming up her street, how she brushed her teeth madly while he knocked so he wouldn’t smell it on her. She is not thinking of how every time after they made love Daniel had to have a shower so Anna wouldn’t smell it on him. She is not thinking how all along she knew that what they were doing was wrong, dangerous, doomed, how many times she tried to stop but how she couldn’t help herself, even though she knew that either way, loving him or leaving him, it would kill some part of her in the end.
She goes back to bed.
* * *
In the night she is roused several times by the fire sirens and also she thinks she hears singing, some thumping, a loud male voice pontificating in a foreign language, beer cans popping, footsteps in the hallway, a hand on her doorknob, a voice in her ear.
In the morning they wake up early (how early Jane can’t say for sure, being without her watch and unable to locate a TV channel that gives the time) and when they venture out of their room, there is no evidence of a disturbance, a party, or a crime. There is only a red-haired woman in a blue bathrobe striding down the hallway with a towel and a bottle of shampoo. She beats them to the bathroom and glares at them triumphantly as she slams the door behind her.
They wait anxiously for their turn, Nicholas bouncing from one foot to the other and clutching himself, Jane perched gingerly on the side of his bed, feeling something warm leaking out of her, horrified to think she’s lost control of her bladder and will have to spend the rest of her life wearing adult-sized diapers.
In the bathroom at last, she sees that it is not urine but blood pouring out of her with a vengeance she hasn’t experienced since she was thirteen in Geography class giving her report on apartheid in South Africa, wearing a light pink skirt of course, and feeling sure she would die of shame right there in front of Mr. Dawson, all her friends and Stephen Soanes, the boy she’d been in love with for three whole weeks. Now she washes herself and folds a clean white washcloth into a thick absorbent pad and places it between her legs.
After they are dressed, she and Nicholas go down to the basement for breakfast. Heidi, in a shiny emerald green dress more suitable for evening attire than breakfast, shows them to one of the square white pine tables with which the windowless room is crowded. The placemats and napkins are red-and-white gingham and there are more travel posters on the pine-panelled walls. Heidi makes a little fuss over Nicholas who instantly becomes shy and uncommunicative, ducking his head and refusing to answer any of her perky questions.
Some of the other guests are already eating, singly or in pairs, reading newspapers, studying maps of the city, asking Heidi for directions to the museums, the galleries, the provincial archives. Heidi is flitting between the tables, dispensing such valuable information along with tiny glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice and endless refills of rich black coffee.
She brings a plump round loaf of bread, still warm and cradled in a white wicker basket, to their table. She whips out a small ceramic board and lops off several slices of white cheese. She comes back with a huge crockery bowl of some Swiss specialty (Jane doesn’t catch the name) which appears to be a combination of oatmeal, yogurt, and chunks of fresh fruit. She holds a spoonful of this mixture right under Nicholas’ nose and tries to tempt him to taste it.
Nicholas says, “Oh yuck,” and asks for Corn Flakes instead. He eats two bowls full while Jane sips her coffee, feels her blood flowing into the wadded washcloth, and wishes she could smoke. She asks Heidi for directions to the nearest shopping centre. It turns out that there is a lovely new one just two blocks west. She tells Heidi they’ll be back to get their things before checkout time.
* * *
Out on the street, Jane tries to determine which way is west. She has a chronically unreliable sense of direction. She is the kind of person who has to turn a map upside down to figure out where she is. She almost always has a sense that she is facing west, an intuition that is only occasionally correct. Whenever she is travelling, be it by train, plane, bus or car, she always has the unshakeable sensation that she is heading westward. She left the city where she grew up, where she lived for twenty-one years in fact, still wondering why the main street was divided into East and West sections when it had always seemed to her to be running north and south.
After two false starts, she gets them headed in the right direction and the shopping centre, a massive conglomeration of concrete, steel, and copper-tinted glass, turns out to be exactly where it’s supposed to be, wedged between two office towers which seem to be made of miles of glass, giant panes streaked now with rain (it is starting again) and the feeble morning light.
“Ice cubes,” Nicholas says, looking up at the towers. “They look just like ice cubes.” As they go up the stairs leading into the shopping centre, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in one of the ground floor windows. He waves at himself and says, “Look, Mommy, there I am, stuck inside the ice cube. Look, Mommy, I’m melting.”
It is early and the centre is nearly empty, a vast shiny cavern full of fluorescent lights, dead air, anesthetizing muzak and acres of over-priced merchandise prominently displayed and demanding to be bought. Some of the stores aren’t even open yet. Sleepy clerks are straggling in, unlocking glass doors, pushing back floor-to-ceiling fences made of black iron bars that disappear into slots in the walls. They are turning the “Closed” signs to “Open” and firing up the cash registers in preparation for another exhausting day of conspicuous consumerism.
Much to Nicholas’ chagrin, the toy store isn’t open yet so they go across to the drugstore instead. Jane buys a box of sanitary napkins and a new wristwatch that she selects from a locked revolving glass case on the cosmetics counter. The clerk patiently shows her several styles (they are all on sale for $39.99) and Jane finally chooses the plainest one: white face, black Roman numerals, black leather band. The clerk tries to interest her in a tube of Really Red lipstick, a compact which contains sixteen different colours of eye shadow including the ever-popular silver with sparkles, a minuscule jar of face cream which costs as much as the watch and will make her look ten years younger in only one week. Jane says, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and straps the watch on right then and there and wears it out of the store. She thinks about shopping with her mother and how, no matter what they bought, shoes, sunglasses, barrettes, a new jacket, her mother would never let her put it on until they were back home, how her mother wouldn’t even let her look in the bags on the bus.
Jane never has liked shopping, has never quite been able to fathom the comfort it seems to bring to some of the women at work: the ones who tell her at coffee break what they bought at the mall last night, describing every little thing and then describing all the things they didn’t buy but wanted to; these women who can quite without conscience spend $300 on a new tablecloth and feel happy every time they use it, twice a year, Christmas and Easter, and how are they ever going to get along without that $900 teak table it would look so good on, they just have to have it, they have to. At home Jane and Nicholas eat off plastic placemats with Big Bird on them and the kitchen table has an empty cigarette pack wedged under one leg to keep it level. Jane is used to it, she says she likes it that way.
Now Nicholas says he needs a chocolate bar, a licorice pipe, a bag of sour candies shaped like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He settles for a package of sugarless gum (of course Jane doesn’t tell him that it’s sugarless).
They head across to the toy store which is finally open. Nicholas has a hard time deciding between a puppet meant to resemble an elephant but looking more like a grey alligator and a race car guaranteed to do wheelies on a dime. He carries both of these toys around the store with him while he checks just to be sure he isn’t missing something better. Finally, with a little prodding, he decides to get the puppet and reluctantly puts the race car back on the shelf. He whines a bit but Jane says, “One thing, just one, not both,” and he gives up.
They leave the shopping centre, Nicholas with the elephant puppet on his hand pretending to bite off his own nose, Jane with the watch on her wrist wondering if maybe she should have bought the red one instead. Nicholas engages the puppet in a long conversation about Batman and Spiderman and the relative merits of each. He’s forgotten all about the race car already, the choice that he didn’t make, Jane thinks, no longer relevant or regrettable.
* * *
Back at the Gasthaus Wolfenschiessen, Jane takes their clothes out of the wardrobe and packs them neatly into the overnight bag. She calls Deborah to tell her they’ll be on the next bus. She calls a taxi to take them to the station. Since the room is already paid for, she puts the key on the bed and leaves without saying goodbye to Heidi. They get to the station just in time to board their bus.
Forever afterwards Jane will be unable to remember a single thing about the return trip.
Deborah is there at the other end, waiting just like she said she would be. Jane cries briefly when Deborah puts her arms around her and says, “Don’t worry, it will be all right,” which is all a person is wanting to hear half the time anyway, but why does it always make you cry? Deborah drops them off at home. She can’t stay, she has to get back to work.
Nicholas is glad to be back and rushes to his bedroom, eager to introduce the elephant puppet to all his other toys. Jane unpacks the overnight bag and then spends the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the house.
She puts away the toys and the comic books. She washes all the dirty glasses and throws away the grease-stained pizza box, the Styrofoam Chinese food containers, the half-eaten strawberry and the three hard baking soda biscuits. She puts the empty green beer bottles in the case. She empties the bucket she used to wash the walls and puts it back under the sink. She folds the clean but now wrinkled clothes and puts the laundry basket back in the basement. The phone rings a couple of times but she doesn’t answer it. Nicholas thinks this is very funny and he says, “Go away, phone, we’re busy.”
She makes a simple supper of bacon, scrambled eggs and toast with Deborah’s homemade strawberry jam. She cleans up again and then she gives Nicholas a bath. He wants to take the elephant puppet in with him but Jane convinces him that the elephant doesn’t know how to swim. He takes in Batman and three empty yogurt containers instead. Jane sits on the toilet seat and supervises while Nicholas tries to drown Batman and splashes water all over the floor in the process. She shampoos his hair carefully (he hates this part) and helps him out of the tub.
He stands on the bathmat and pretends he’s so cold that his teeth are chattering. Jane dries him off with the big soft towel. As she rubs the thick terry cloth over his pale skin, his thin shoulders, the ridges of his little ribs, she realizes that this is the first time in a long time that she has seen him, really seen him. She realizes that this is the first time in a long time that the presence of Daniel, the all-pervasive obsession of loving Daniel, has not stood like a pane of lightly frosted glass between her and the rest of the world, between her and her very own child, between her and her very own self.
She helps Nicholas put on his pajamas and then she hugs him hard and he laughs when the water from his hair gets all over her blouse.
After the bath, they curl up on the couch with a big bowl of buttered popcorn between them and Nicholas wants to read from the Sticker Dictionary again:
C is for cloud. A cloud is white and fluffy, way up high in the sky. Clouds move quickly in the wind and sometimes they bring rain.
E is for elephant. An elephant is a large grey animal with a trunk. We fed peanuts to the elephant at the zoo.
Q is for question. A question is what you ask in order to learn something. A question has an answer.
X is for x-ray. An x-ray is a picture that shows the inside of the body. The x-ray showed that my foot was broken.
When Jane is tucking Nicholas into his bed, he informs her that he doesn’t want to be a bus driver when he grows up anymore. “Now,” he says, “now I want to be a beautiful cloud. Maybe you can be one too.” And Jane supposes she should have expected as much from a child whose first word, after “Mama,” was “light.”
After Nicholas falls asleep, Jane pours herself a glass of whisky. She puts on a tape, opens the back door, and sits down on the single concrete step. The weather is warmer but still wet. She plants her bare feet squarely in a big brown puddle and the rainwater is soft and sweet-smelling. She is singing along with the music which is so loud that she can only hope the neighbours like it too.
In the pause between songs, she can hear the telephone ringing inside the house. She knows it must be Daniel. No one else would be calling this late. She thinks about answering it but doesn’t. It occurs to her that all she wants to say to him now is: Look.
Look at me.
