Collected Stories

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“Did you notice the broken light in the bathroom? I’ll bet someone threw something at it. In a rage.”

“We could always fix the light. And the other things. And with our own furniture—”

Ivy is an accountant. Once I heard a young man in her firm describe her as a crack accountant. For a number of years now she’s been a senior partner. When this same young man heard she was leaving because of my transfer, he couldn’t help ragging her a little, saying he thought women didn’t move around at the whim of their husbands anymore, and that, out of principle, she ought to refuse to go to Vancouver or else arrange some kind of compromise life—separate apartments, for instance, with weekend rendezvous in Winnipeg.

Ivy had howled at this. She’s a positive, good-natured woman and, as it turned out, she had no trouble finding an opening in a good Vancouver firm at senior level. As I say, she’s positive. Which is why her apprehension over good or bad vibrations is puzzling. Can it be she sees bad times ahead for the two of us? Or is it only that she wants solid footing after these long years with Christopher? Neither of us is quite glued back together again. Not that we ever will be.

“I can’t help it,” Ivy is saying. “It just doesn’t feel like a lucky house. There’s something about—”

Marge Little interrupts with a broad smile. “I’ve got all kinds of interesting houses to show you. Maybe you’ll like the next one better.”

“Does it have good vibes?” Ivy asks, laughing a little to show she’s only half-serious.

“I don’t know,” Marge Little says. “They don’t put that kind of info on the fact sheet.”

The next house is perched on the side of the canyon. No, that’s not quite true. It is, in fact, falling into the canyon. I notice, but don’t mention, the fact that the outside foundation walls are cracked and patched. Inside, the house is alarmingly empty; the cool settled air seems proof that it’s been vacant for some time.

Marge consults her fact sheet. Yes, the house has been on the market about six months. The price has been reduced twice. But—she glances at us—perhaps we noticed the foundation …

“Yes,” I say. “Hopeless.”

“Damn,” Ivy says.

We look at two more houses; both have spectacular views and architectural distinction. But one is a bankruptcy sale and the other is a divorce house. By now I’m starting to pick up the scent: it’s a compound of petty carelessness and strenuous neglect, as though the owners had decamped in a hurry, angry at the rooms themselves.

To cheer ourselves up, the three of us have lunch in a sunny Broadway restaurant. It seems extraordinary that we can sit here and see mountains that are miles away; the thought that we will soon be able to live within sight of these mountains fills us with optimism. We order a little wine and linger in the sunlight. Vancouver is going to be an adventure. We’re going to be happy here. Marge Little, feeling expansive, tells us about her three children and about the problem she has keeping her weight down. “Marge Large they’ll be calling me soon,” she says. It’s an old joke, we sense, and the telling of it makes us feel we’re old friends. She got into the business, she says, because she loves houses. And she has an instinct for matching houses with people. “So don’t be discouraged,” she tells us. “We’ll find the perfect place this afternoon.”

We drive through narrow city streets to a house where a famous movie idol grew up. His mother still lives in the house, a spry, slightly senile lady in her eighties. The tiny house—we quickly see it is far too small for us—is crowded with photographs of the famous son. He beams at us from the hallway, from the dining room, from the bedroom bureau.

“Oh, he’s a good boy. Comes home every two or three years,” his mother tells us, her large teeth shining in a diminished face. “And once I went down there, all the way down to Hollywood, on an airplane. He paid my way, sent me a ticket. I saw his swimming pool. They all have swimming pools. He has a cook, a man who does all the meals, so I didn’t have to lift a finger for a whole week. What an experience, like a queen. I have some pictures someplace I could show you—”

“That would be wonderful,” Marge Little says, “but”—she glances at her watch—“I’m afraid we have another appointment.”

“—I saw those pictures just the other day. Now where—? I think they’re in this drawer somewhere. Here, I knew it. Take a look at this. Isn’t that something? That’s his swimming pool. Kidney-shaped. He’s got another one now, even bigger.”

“Beautiful,” Ivy says.

“And here he is when he was little. See this? He’d be about nine there. We took a trip east. That’s him and his dad standing by Niagara Falls. Here’s another—”

“We really have to—”

“A good boy. I’ll say that for him. Didn’t give any trouble. Sometimes I see his movies on the TV and I can’t believe the things he does, with women and so on. I have to pinch myself and say it’s only pretend—”

“I think—”

“I’m going into this senior-citizen place. They’ve got a nice TV lounge, big screen, bigger than this little bitty one, color too. I always—”

“Sad,” Ivy says, when we escape at last and get into the car.

“The house or the mother?” I ask her.

“Both.”

“At least it’s not a D.H.” (This has become our shorthand expression for divorce house.)

“Wait’ll you see the next place,” Marge Little says, swinging into traffic. “The next place is fabulous.”

Fabulous, yes. But far too big. After that, in a fit of desperation, we look at a condo. “I’m not quite ready for this,” I have to admit.

“No garden,” Ivy says in a numb voice. She looks weary, and we decide to call it a day.

The ad in the newspaper reads: WELL-LOVED FAMILY HOME. And Ivy and Marge Little and I are there, knocking on the door, at nine-thirty in the morning.

“Come in, come in,” calls a young woman in faded jeans. She has a young child on one hip and another—they must be twins—by the hand. Sunlight pours in the front window and there is freshly baked bread cooling on the kitchen counter.

But the house is a disaster, a rabbit warren of narrow hallways and dark corners. The kitchen window is only feet away from a low brick building where bodywork is being done on imported sports cars. The stairs are uneven. The bedroom floors slope, and the paint is peeling off the bathroom ceiling.

“It just kills us to leave this place,” the young woman says. She’s following us through the rooms, pointing with unmistakable sorrow at the wall where they were planning to put up shelving, at the hardwood floors they were thinking of sanding. Out of the blue, they got news of a transfer.

Ironically, they’re going to Toronto, and in a week’s time they’ll be there doing what we’re doing, looking for a house they can love. “But we just know we’ll never find a place like this,” she tells us with a sad shake of her head. “Not in a million zillion years.”

After that we lose track of the number of houses. The day bends and blurs; square footage, zoning regulations, mortgage schedules, double-car garages, cedar siding only two years old—was that the place near that little park? No, that was the one on that little crescent off Arbutus. Remember? The one without the basement.

Darkness is falling as Marge Little drives us back to our hotel. We are passing hundreds—it seems like thousands—of houses, and we see lamps being turned on, curtains being closed. Friendly smoke rises from substantial chimneys. Here and there, where the curtains are left open, we can see people sitting down to dinner. Passing one house, I see a woman in a window, leaning over with a match in her hand, lighting a pair of candles. Ivy sees it too, and I’m sure she’s feeling as I am, a little resentful that everyone but us seems to have a roof overhead.

“Tomorrow for sure,” Marge calls cheerily. (Tomorrow is our last day. Both of us have to be home on Monday.)

“I suppose we could always rent for a year.” Ivy says this with low enthusiasm.

“Or,” I say, “we could make another trip in a month or so. Maybe there’ll be more on the market.”

“Isn’t it funny? The first house we saw, remember? In a way, it was the most promising place we’ve seen.”

“The one with the view from the dining room? With the broken light in the bathroom?”

“It might not look bad with a new fixture. Or even a skylight.”

“Wasn’t that a divorce house?” I ask Ivy.

“Yes,” she shrugs, “but maybe that’s just what we’ll have to settle for.”

“It was listed at a good price.”

“I live in a divorce house,” Marge Little says, pulling in front of our hotel. “It’s been a divorce house for a whole year now.”

“Oh, Marge,” Ivy says. “I didn’t mean—” she stops. “Forgive me.”

“And it’s not so bad. Sometimes it’s darned cheerful.”

“I just—” Ivy takes a breath. “I just wanted a lucky house. Maybe there’s no such thing—”

“Are you interested in taking another look at the first house? I might be able to get you an appointment this evening. That is, if you think you can stand one more appointment today.”

“Absolutely,” we say together.

This time we inspect the house inch by inch. Ivy makes a list of the necessary repairs, and I measure the window for curtains. We hadn’t realized that there was a cedar closet off one of the bedrooms. The lights of the city are glowing through the dining-room window. A spotlight at the back of the house picks out the flowers just coming into bloom. There’ll be room for our hi-fi across from the fireplace. The basement is dry and very clean. The wallpaper in the downstairs den is fairly attractive and in good condition. The stairway is well proportioned and the banister is a beauty. (I’m a sucker for banisters.) There’s an alcove where the pine buffet will fit nicely. Trees on both sides of the house should give us greenery and privacy. The lawn, as far as we can tell, seems to be in good shape. There’s a lazy Susan in the kitchen, also a built-in dishwasher, a later model than ours. Plenty of room for a small table and a couple of chairs. The woodwork in the living room has been left natural, a wonder since so many people, a few years back, were painting over their oak trim.

Ivy says something that makes us laugh. “Over here,” she says, “over here is where we’ll put the Christmas tree.” She touches the edge of one of the casement windows, brushes it with the side of her hand and says, “It’s hard to believe that people could live in such a beautiful house and be unhappy.”

For a moment there’s silence, and then Marge says, “We could put in an offer tonight. I don’t think it’s too late. What do you think?”

————

And now, suddenly, it’s the next evening, and Ivy and I are flying back to Toronto. Here we are over the Rockies again, crossing them this time in darkness. Ivy sits with her head back, eyes closed, her shoulders so sharply her own; she’s not quite asleep, but not quite awake either.

Our plane seems a fragile vessel, a piece of jewelry up here between the stars and the mountains. Flying through dark air like this makes me think that life itself is fragile. The miniature accidents of chromosomes can spread unstoppable circles of grief. A dozen words carelessly uttered can dismantle a marriage. A few gulps of oxygen are all that stand between us and death.

I wonder if Ivy is thinking, as I am, of the three months ahead, of how tumultuous they’ll be. There are many things to think of when you move. For one, we’ll have to put our own house up for sale. The thought startles me, though I’ve no idea why.

I try to imagine prospective buyers arriving for appointments, stepping through our front door with polite murmurs and a sharp eye for imperfections.

They’ll work their way through the downstairs, the kitchen (renewed only four years ago), the living room (yes, a real fireplace, a good draft), the dining room (small, but you can seat ten in a pinch). Then they’ll make their way upstairs (carpet a little worn, but with lots of wear left). The main bedroom is fair size (with good reading lamps built in, also bookshelves).

And then there’s Christopher’s bedroom.

Will the vibrations announce that here lived a child with little muscular control, almost no sight or hearing and no real consciousness as that word is normally perceived? He had, though—and perhaps the vibrations will acknowledge the fact—his own kind of valor and perhaps his own way of seeing the world. At least Ivy and I always rewallpapered his room every three years or so out of a conviction that he took some pleasure in the sight of ducks swimming on a yellow sea. Later, it was sailboats; then tigers and monkeys dodging jungle growth; then a wild op-art checkerboard; and then, the final incarnation, a marvelous green cave of leafiness with amazing flowers and impossible birds sitting in branches.

I can’t help wondering if these prospective buyers, these people looking for God only knows what, if they’ll enter this room and feel something of his fragile presence alive in a fragile world.

Well, we shall see. We shall soon see.

The Metaphor Is Dead—Pass It On (#ulink_f570f5b9-46e7-52bc-8a7a-ffd48241e732)

“THE METAPHOR is DEAD,” bellowed the gargantuan professor, his walrus mustache dancing and his thundery eyebrows knitting together rapaciously. “Those accustomed to lunching at the high table of literature will now be able to nosh at the trough on a streamlined sub minus the pickle. Banished is that imperial albatross, that dragooned double agent, that muddy mirror lit by the false flashing signal like and by that even more presumptuous little sugar lump as. The gates are open, and the prisoner, freed of his shackles, has departed without so much as a goodbye wave to those who would take a simple pomegranate and insist it be the universe.

“Furthermore,” trumpeted the cagey professor, warming to his thesis and drumming on the lectern, “the dogged metaphor, that scurfy escort vehicle of crystalline simplicity, has been royally indicted as the true enemy of meaning, a virus introduced into a healthy bloodstream and maintained by the lordly shrewdness of convention. Oh, it was born innocently enough with Homer and his wine-dark sea (a timid offering, perhaps, but one that dropped a velvet curtain between what was and what almost was). Then came Beowulf, stirring the pot with his cunning kennings, and before you could count to sixteen, the insidious creature had wiggled through the window and taken over the house. Soon it became a private addiction, a pipe full of opium taken behind a screen—but the wavelet graduated to turbulent ocean, and the sinews of metaphor became, finally, the button and braces that held up the pants of poesy. The commonest object was yoked by adulterous communion with unlike object (bread and wine, as it were, touching the salty lips of unreason like a capricious child who insists on placing a token toe in every puddle).

“Initially a toy of the literati,” the fiery professor cried, “the metaphor grew like a polyp on the clean chamber of poetry whose friendly narrative lines had previously lain as simply as knives and forks in a kitchen drawer and whose slender, unjointed nouns, colloquial as onions, became puffed up like affected dowagers, swaying, pelvis forward, into a Victorian parlor of cluttered predicates, where they took to sitting about on the embroidered cushions of metonymy and resting their metered feet on quirky mean-spirited oxymorons.

“Once established they acquired an air of entitlement, the swag and flounce and glitter of the image boxed within another image, one bleating clause mounting another, sometimes marinated in irony, other times drenched in the teacup of whimsy. Grown fat with simile and the lace of self-indulgence, the embryo sentence sprouted useless tentacles and became an incomprehensible polyhedron, a glassine envelope enclosing multiple darting allusions that gave off the perfume of apples slowly rotting in a hermit’s cryptic cellar. There followed signs of severe hypochondria as these verbal clotheshorses stood contemplating one another and noting the inspired imbroglio lodged beneath each painted fingernail. The bell had clearly sounded. It was time to retreat.

“And now,” the professor essayed, stabbing the listening air, “like light glancing off a bowling ball, the peeled, scrubbed and eviscerated simplicity of language is reborn. Out onto the rubbish heap goes the fisherman’s net of foxy allusions. A lifeboat has been assigned to every passenger—and just in time too—and we are once again afloat on the simple raft of the declarative sentence (that lapsed Catholic of the accessible forms) and sent, shriven and humble, into orbit, unencumbered by the debris of dusty satellites, no longer pretending every object is like another; instead every object is (is, that frosty little pellet of assertion that sleeps in the folds of the newly minted, nip-wasted sentence, simple as a slug bolt and, like a single hand clapping, requiring neither nursemaid to lean upon nor the succor of moth-eaten mythology to prop it up). With watercolor purity, with soldierly persistence and workmanlike lack of pretence, the newly pruned utterance appears to roll onto the snowy page with not a single troubling cul-de-sac or detour into the inky besmudged midnight of imagery.

“But, alas,” the ashen professor hollowly concluded, “these newly resurrected texts, for all their lean muscularity (the cleanly gnawed bones of noun, the powerful hamstrings of verb) carry still the faulty chromosome, the trace element, of metaphor—since language itself is but a metaphoric expression of human experience. It is the punishing silence around the word that must now be claimed for literature, the pure uncobbled stillness of the caesura whose unknowingness throws arrows of meaning (palpable as summer fruit approaching ripeness) at the hem of that stitched under-skirt of affirmation/negation, and plants a stout flag once and forever in the unweeded, unchoreographed vacant lot of being.

“And now, gentle people, the chair will field questions.”