by M.G. Warenycia
The overtaxed AC unit wheezed and strained against the exhalations of the fatigued, sweat-basted bodies that packed, tighter and tighter, into the already-crowded subway car. It did not offer even token resistance to the evil melange of odours accumulating with each succeeding stop. The northbound train hauled units of production away from the downtown core like a boilerman’s shovel dragging spent ashes from a still-warm firebox. Through the windows, its passengers could observe the southbound train carrying scantily but expensively clad clubbers to drink and dance, and, if they were fortunate, acquire a man who would spare them from riding the subway for a few weeks or months of Friday nights. At the end of the line, you would glimpse serried platoons of this army, advancing clumsily down the sidewalks to the gates of the great night hotspots on stilettoed feet, hoping it might be assumed that they had come out of one of the Porsches or Benzes in the parking lot, rather than a bus two or three stops away.
There was a time, not so long ago, but already seeming more of a half-forgotten dream than a tangible memory, when Angeline Boucher would have been heading out on the cusp of a sweltering summertime night like this one. Only she would not have rode the train. She could have walked, in fact, and more than one night witnessed her, with a squad of housemates, staggering home, heels dangling in the air, skin-hugging dresses and miniskirts taxed by gross quantities of poutine, pizza and artisanal burgers, which they would have virtuously shunned in the light of sober day, a good portion of which would end up in the sinks of the Edwardian duplex they inhabited – to be cleaned up by the least successful of the night’s huntresses…usually Angeline herself.
Not that Angeline was the ugly duckling – quite the opposite. Clad in yoga tights and sneaker whites, or in a winter ensemble arranged around her prized ultramarine blue, coyote-fur-trimmed parka, she was a veritable goddess among that urban tribe, sometimes loosely referred to as hipsters, though, really, the subcultural lines are blurry. A lean oval face, broadest at the prominent cheekbones, relieved of its severity by a subtly retroussé nose and shaded by an umbrella of jet black bangs; roseate lips painted crimson to contrast with the marble whiteness of her complexion, and a pair of wide, searching eyes whose tint precisely matched Holbein Manganese Blue Hue. Add to that long, supple limbs and the hands of a pianist, her comprehensible yet exotic (to Torontonians) accent and one did not wonder that so many of her classmates asked her to serve as a model for their own life drawings. When, of course, it was that they wanted a traditional Romantic, Pre-Raphaelite or Flapper-era vision of beauty and not something chosen for ‘are you avant garde enough to pretend you find this attractive?’ sorts of images.
The wheels gave a banshee screech, rending her out of her meditations. “Due to track maintenance…we apologise…” in the staid female voice of the intercom. It was almost 8 p.m. The sun stabbed in at low angles, flickering through the window frames, stinging those manganese blue hue eyes, but the heat and the soothing rhythm of the tracks lulled her once more into somnolence. She drew an old sketchbook. She did not take out a pencil. She was too tired to make art and, besides, the way people were jammed into the subway car, her elbows would get jostled something fierce. She had learned early on what people wanted to see. They wanted to feel guilty, or to be persuaded they were tyrannically oppressed so as to impart some faint degree of pathos into their lives. Insecure from childhood, she craved praise and acceptance. Had she not been both talented and consciously beautiful, this would have been enough. She had imagined the City would be a safe harbour of like minds in which she could be the Angeline Boucher she sometimes dared to daydream was her real but hidden self. Unquestionably, she had succeeded, in every objective sense…
She happened upon a sheet of heavy watercolour paper, wedged among the leaves of the sketchbook. A ‘portrait’ of one of those trees in the Sahara which are otherwise perfectly normal-looking but just so happen to be hundreds of kilometres in all directions from the next nearest living tree. It was executed with a brush and pure India ink, with an airbrush-smooth graduation of reds and oranges in the background, representing the sunset. For added interest, she had put a pen-and-ink-wash Egyptian ruin, with headless columns and rubble off to one side in the middle ground. She submitted it, two winters ago, as part of her portfolio for the semester. She’d even constructed themed series dealing with current events and cultural heritage, which she had tried to make an expression spectacle of discovering through her artistic development. Not only did her professors fail to display the enthusiasm they showed for her classmate Becky’s (‘Jake’ by third year) exploration of ‘transcendent’ sexuality through abstract expressionist acrylic paintings and junk sculptures (in a literal and figurative sense), or Zabeeha Al’Sulaiman’s crude copies of famous paintings – sometimes actual commercial prints – with hijabs drawn or painted over the female figures. Zabeeha – not that it mattered – had gingery red hair, freckles and hailed from some hinterland town not unlike Angeline’s own hometown.
The watercolours – her favourite medium, though she worked in many others – of rolling hills, bucolic farmsteads and cosy villages dominated by church steeples were taken as generic landscapes, mere technique exercises, probably assumed to have been made with wall calendars or postcards as reference photos. Actually, it was her hometown and its environs. It had been embarrassing in the extreme to stand, waiting five or ten minutes, while her favourite art-history prof, a scatterbrained ex-hippie, scrutinized her ‘masterpiece’ series: a half dozen large canvasses, depicting religious scenes taking stylistic inspiration from medieval illuminated manuscripts and Jules Breton’s paintings of devout peasant women, transposing them into modern urban environments. “Oh, wow, wow, I can tell you were really connecting with the medium…your colour balance, the way it carries the composition…” the prof gasped and mumbled in awe. Then came the let-down. The professor had been spending all that time searching for the disguised irony and subversive innuendo she was sure from the first must have been incorporated into the painting…searching long and hard because she didn’t want to appear ignorant or hurt a student’s feelings by interpreting incorrectly and therefore de facto implying the student had failed to communicate their message. “Mmmh!” Brenda – the prof’s name; everyone called her by her first name – exclaimed after a swig of steaming peach tea from the tacky mug that never left her desk. Professor Brenda proceeded to congratulate Angeline on how she had cleverly subverted traditional iconography to satirise the ways in which the Catholic Church inculcated backwards medieval ideologies into modern women, particularly marginalized, uneducated ones.
The pièce de résistance – depicting a latter-day Mary Magdalene in jeggings and a Canada Goose jacket, encountering Jesus, personified as a dreadlocked homeless man – was particularly incisive in showing the absurdity of internalized patriarchy in ‘current year.’ Angeline smiled uncomfortably. She had intended, in fact, to portray the spiritual journey of a modern young woman finding herself – and God – in present-day Toronto. The only irony was in her deliberate application of archaic styles to present-day models embodying the true sincerity of past artists who saw spiritual themes in the living world around them. Pious women in 14th century Books of Hours wore wimples and long dresses; those in Breton’s paintings were clad in the peasant garb of late 19th century northwest France. The spirit which inspired those old artists was present in their world, not frozen perpetually in the image of first century Roman Judea, to be contrasted with a pure and crass materialism for today. Angeline had occasionally started attending services at a church that still did Latin Mass on some occasions – though she did not make confession or take communion – in order to put herself in a frame of mind closer to that of the artists she meant to channel.
She waited patiently for the other passengers to clear out before attempting to wheel the tower of stacked and strapped-together suitcases and bags she was handling. She winced at the jolt coming up the stretched-up handle of the suitcase forming the base of things, winced in anxiety not for the paints, books and clothes inside, but for what was on top – a very small cat carrier, inside of which a very large cat cringed in mute terror. “It’s ok, Giselle, my baby! Mama is here for you…” she kissed soothing words of comfort to the anxious feline, but grew suddenly uneasy and trailed off. She hurried on; it was only a few blocks, and when she was standing up walking straight ahead, she could not see into those plaintive yellow orbs behind the wire grate. She could barely remember when she’d been anywhere near this far on the line, but that’s where Google Maps comes in.
The neighbourhood was mostly modest, late-20th century bungalows and split-levels, though here and there rapidly rising property values manifested themselves in massive brick edifices with cathedral ceilings and double or even treble garages, built to the very edges of their respective lots. The general quality of the place was more prosperous and confident than…what was it, four years ago? She did not remember so many eye-catching garden plantings – a lot of houses had impressive displays of peonies, as well as red and fuchsia climbing roses, presently in full bloom. The driveways no longer harboured rusty ‘beaters’ and primer-spotted Astro vans. Upscale Hondas and Toyotas stood alongside smaller members of the BMW and Benz families, lending an air of modest but ambitious respectability. The complex of 60s-70s Brutalist highrise apartment blocks looming behind the station, with their weather-stained cladding and dungeon-like, syringe-strewn stairwells had seemed to oppress the very atmosphere beyond their press-bar actuated, mesh-windowed steel doors – its character of tired gloom only enhanced by the colourful murals depicting an idealized version of the community – seemed to fade into the background; a relic of uglier times and no longer the representative face of the neighbourhood’s identity.
Such occasional jaunts into ‘Fordland’ had only reassured her of the wisdom of her decision to reside downtown – sometimes in Queen West, Baldwin Street for a semester and change, then Kensington Market. The number of roommates required to hold down a place there inevitably led to conflict over fridge space, toilets and showers fouled, and misappropriation of booze and other common resources. More aggravating still was the talk; the scheming, almost always clothed as well-meaning concern for a ‘gurlfriend,’ wanting the best for her. Such eye rolls, and hushed (but not so much they wouldn’t be overheard) conversation shattered fragile egos, broke up promising relationships. But striking out on one’s own, away from the cannibalistic flock of a particular roommate situation, demanded sacrifices. Sacrifices one would not even consider but for the wet bleakness of November, the anger of family-less Christmases, and the interminable, ice-bound nights of December, January, February…black nights of bone-soaking damp cold that no coat or blanket could resist; nights where a young life’s accomplishments grew dim and one had to flee from oneself to keep from suffocating out of existence.
It was always comforting to know that, tough and frustrating as things were, it was better than being out by Kipling, Finch, or, God forbid, Kennedy. She had gone out rarely, always only after receiving repeated invites, to birthday or dinner parties in such parts. How satisfying it was to sigh about the difficulties of travelling ‘all the way’ out to Scarborough or Etobicoke and to see the envy in the faces of people who merely shopped and studied where she lived. Then, when she finally had a proper spacious condo to herself – a condo practically overlooking the Lake – she was too afraid to attend any more of those parties.
She gazed up at the cuboid lowrise, a parkette on one side, a modest corner strip mall with a Shopper’s Drug Mart, florist, fish-and-chips shop, Afghan supermarket and some other typically suburban GTA shops. The sky as bright and the breeze noticeable fresher and cooler han where she’d come from, and a massive relief after the subway. Yes, this was it, undoubtedly. Beige, flush tinted glass, with chrome details and milk-white orb lamps along the flagged walkway. Always the artist, Angeline reckoned it had a sort of toned-down Art Deco revival style with a Middle Eastern palette. A fresco of winged goddesses and picture writing, maybe a pair of pharaonic sentry sculptures too – those would be a nice touch. On entering the faux-marble floored lobby, she was pleasantly surprised to find a mosaic on the walls by the empty front desk, though it was just a geometric pattern. The emptiness of the halls and elevators was mildly disquieting to someone who spent most of her days – and nights – never leaving the radius of other humans’ body heat, without a full five minutes of silence week to week, but she reasoned that the families (mostly immigrants, she suspected) were probably all in their apartments eating supper. The melange of aromas assailing her nostrils from every direction confirmed the hypothesis.
Not that she was bothered. Her lithe physique belied the fact she was something of a foodie and had sampled the cuisines of much of the known world since arriving in Toronto. Mind, there were always times – more often in the last year or so, it seemed – when she craved some old-fashioned provincial home cooking. Her grandmother made all kinds of wonders – cipaille, vitréais, pudding chomeur, the best pea soup in the world – things you couldn’t really make correctly just by following recipes off the internet…even if she’d had a proper kitchen to herself, the money for the right ingredients, and the time and energy all on the same occasion. That was all in the past, though; so far in the past she couldn’t remember much else that happened around then, or wouldn’t. You could get lots of poutine in Toronto, true. But she was reluctant to let loose into ‘hangover food,’ even if it was late and she was very drunk. She didn’t want to become sloppy, careless; lose her edge. One thing leads to another and she would end up like…it did not bear thinking now.
A beseeching, kittenish mew escaped from the carrier atop the luggage stack. “Oh, calm down…” Angeline whispered, dragging her fingers along the carrier’s grate as she wheeled her baggage along. “You’ll be out soon…” she trailed off as she came up to the end of the hall which overlooked the street above a radiator and a broad ledge decked with houseplants that looked like miniature palm trees. “Makes it easy to watch the street and parking lot,” she mused to herself, before shaking off unpleasant memories of peering through a screen of monstera and spider plants to watch for a man – or men – in a green ’93 Camry at the behest of a shitty roommate who left in the middle of the night while Angeline was at work, taking the espresso machine, a jumbo bottle of Point Pelee and a pair of Ray-Bans that didn’t belong to her. Never heard a word about that again.
“Room three-zéro-a’whun,” she enunciated, rolling her feet. She raised an arm, drew up her parachute-like sleeve with the other hand, and daintily flicked the door with the backs of her fingers, so that the stubby, green-painted nails clacked against the resonant wood. The hallway deserted. She heard a shuffling and a tinny clanking through the door; a few more seconds, then the shlick of the chain and the thunk of the bolt, and the door swung open.
The young man who opened it had not changed much from the last Angeline remembered, what, three…no, more like four years before. That was Dayna’s house party, maybe? Or at the samba studio…Even the same hairstyle. He was wearing a baggy faux-silk mandarin shirt and holding a dish towel and wooden spoon. The pair stood in silence for a moment, till Angeline giggled and asked, “You’re cooking?”
“Oh?” the fellow looked at the towel and spoon. “Oh, yes, well, not much of a chef – heating food enough to make it edible, I guess, is how you might put it,” forcing a laugh and retreating back into the kitchen to lift a lid and give some bubbling, spicy goo a stir.
Angeline took this as a sign to come in and heaved her luggage over the sloped threshold with a winsome “Hmph!” then stood demurely at the edge of the open living room.
“Oh, sit down, make yourself comfortable,” the man emerged again from the kitchen, sans utensils. “Goodness, it’s a lot to catch up on. I mean, there’s Facebook and all, but you’re hardly ever online and one doesn’t always like to follow people’s business; makes for bad, erh, you know…Coffee?”
“No thanks,” Angeline bowed and looked about for a seat. “Way too much caffeine in my veins already today.”
“You can use it as a couch; that’s what I normally do when people are over – not that folks from uni come out here often,” the man motioned to a neat, post-less IKEA bed presently covered with patterned rugs and throw pillows like a Persian divan. Meanwhile, he seated himself on a battered old ottoman, racking his brains for a way to ask ‘how things have been’ without probing that which politeness does not permit to be probed. He came up blank. “Eh, you must have taken a while to reach. We should let this little fellow out, no? Cooped up there so long…” Taking Angeline’s silence as assent, he unstrapped the carrier from its place and heaved it down to the floor. “Ough! Hefty feller you got ‘ehr!” An enormous, beaver-shaped black-and-white cat shambled out of the carrier on incongruously frail-looking legs, proceeding to sniff and scout around the room.
“Mmh hmm,” Angeline cleared her through, twisting her toes together under the bed. “Her name is Giselle. Really, Ruslan, I’m so grateful, you don’t know how much…To find someone who would take…”
“Bah! It’s nothing,” Ruslan blushed. “You took in some of my furniture while I was moving house way back when. And gave me that antique sidetable. Matches the place too, Art Deco antique, not some Nordic particle board crap or ‘midcentury’ hipsterness. So, hmm, you been doing ok lately? Going to Montreal for the long weekend?”
“I like how you’ve set this place up,” the girl responded, wriggling in her seat and patting its springy surface with her palms. “You’ve got a theme going…like, adventure, silk road, Himalayas. Neat! Did you draw those?” She cocked her chin at an arrangement of framed monochromes, most depicting exotic scenes in keeping with the rest of the décor.
“Yes, actually. Pen and ink, based off the sort of illustrations you find in Victorian travel journals, which you can find online. It used to be a popular thing, before mass jet travel, the internet and convenient cameras; pretty much the only way to get an idea of what some far-off land was like, if you planned to travel or wanted to write a book set there…” realizing he might be boring the charming young lady seated on his couch-bed, Ruslan changed tack. “Have you found a next apartment yet? Just, it’s an odd time to take a vacation, no? Rentals, even in Scarbs, are getting snapped up in hours of people posting them. I have a friend from uni – you don’t know him – like six, seven places he and his girlfriend checked, and not like they are looking for a bargain basement deal. Fifteen, sixteen hundred and of course that’s not counting utilities. Heck, CAMH is moving out of their place over by U of T. Three hundred thirty-three percent rent increase, just like that. So I tell the man, best withdraw to Markham, be amongst your own people. Look me, I’m out here because I’d be homeless if I insisted on staying in ‘the Core.’ People paying a hundred-and-ten percent of their income for a rabbit hutch.” He saw that Angeline’s attention was drifting. The cat was rubbing its solid, round head against her leg, coating her tights with a clingy residue of coarse hairs, like a loveable porcupine cheerfully quilling its victim. “You live in downtown still, yes? Kensington, right?”
“Mmh,” she kept gazing about the room. “I mean, I’m moving, but, yeah.”
“Ah. And, where to…right, none yet…how did you find it?”
“Oh, it was alright. Lotta real local culture; you’ve got so much colour, diversity and all the old homes. Plus the shopping’s great. I mean, duh!” She managed to look back at Rusland and laugh; the cat head-butted her shying feet but was ignored.
“Ehh,” Ruslan sighed. “Scarborough doesn’t have diversity? It’s an ideal I guess. Yeah, I see it. Character, history, the whole Jane Jacobs mixed-use neighbourhood package. Everything Toronto is supposed to be, but that’s mostly just in people’s imaginations, or thirty years ago. I’d live there myself, but only if I had money, or else you’re sleeping in a windowless ex-laundry room. One needs a certain basic minimum of space, or else how do you paint? Have people over? Or even just pace about when you feel like it alone at night?”
“I dunno, I have a full bachelor. I cook n’ stuff. I mean had.”
“Ugh, that’s lucky. Must cost, what, two grand, twenty-five hundred? Wah, that’s more than a barista makes in a whole month…one and a half times their income…” Even as each sentence left his lips, Rusland was inwardly berating himself; “Why did you do that? What good do you think you’ll get out of pushing things? Is it so important that she knows that you know? Probably why she hasn’t even said ‘hi’ on Facebook in years and why Teresa and Emilia and everyone no longer have any gossip to tell.” Naturally, he did not speak these thoughts aloud, though he was convinced he had been speaking in a tense, inquisitorial tone that had put his guest on edge.
As if to confirm his suspicions, Angeline turned and glanced about the room with an astonishment which seemed to spring out of nowhere. “Wow! Is that yours, too?” She pointed to a large watercolour of a calico cat luxuriating on a Louis Farouk settee.
“Yes, in fact,” the sweetness of her voice and the unaffected smile in her voice washed away his anxiety but left him quite confused. “I did that one for a friend who went to med school out in BC. His cat. It would cost a fortune to ship it out that far, so I scanned it for him to make prints if he wants. Took me an awful lot of failed attempts to figure out how to get the effect of fur without making it look rough or muddying the colours.” He frowned as he saw himself spilling accidentally into another lecture, but was again relieved as, far from being bored, Angeline’s limpid eyes sparked with unaffected delight.
“Really? Awesome. You totally killed it. Like those portraits, too…”
“Kriehuber is my inspiration for those. Parker ballpoint pen for everything, except when I needed solid-solid black, or to wash in backgrounds.”
“It’s so much more…ngh! I know what I want to say but…the word!…Like, you know, something that you can tell somebody poured a lot of attention and energy into, like art that shapes you as you’re shaping it, through the intensity of the process….raffiné, cultivé…”
“Refined? Hmm, well, it’s nothing compared to what you turn out, but I try.”
“No, for real. Like, compared to, you know, how in OCAD the number one thing is photography. Which, okay, you can take a photo that required lots of time and judgement, but anybody with a few hundred buy a digital camera or even an iPhone and photoshop, and honestly you can’t tell the difference whether they did four years studying photography in school or if they just bought a camera and started snapping pics two weeks ago – except based on what they take pics of…normal stuff or trying to gross people out, or be ironic, or make some statement that’s supposed to be all brave and shocking but is just what everyone else is doing.”
“Such as? I think I see what you mean, though…Lazy, I guess.”
“I mean, like,” Angeline’s pallid complexion flushed with uncharacteristic anger; “Say you wanna be, ‘oh, I’m so avant garde that I laugh at silly people with backwards habits and organized religion.’ So, like, this girl I know, you take some photos of people dressed as nuns or mocking some famous religious painting for attention. And if somebody complained, she’d get all outraged, like, ‘oh, how dare you, the church has been oppressing womb-myn for centuries…’ yeah, brave act of rebellion. An’ you know, one time I saw she posts on her wall asking people why there’s all these people on the streets with black marks on their faces. It was the start of Lent. You gotta ask, why such people…ugh!”
“And they’re the same people who would say the French cartoonists were asking for it,” Ruslan hoped he had grafted something onto the topic without stealing it from Angeline.
“Exactly. This girl also had one of those Himalayan salt lamps in her dorm and believed in horoscopes. People want all the street cred of being an ‘artist,’ but they don’t want to live the life.”
“You mean hipsters?” but the passion of the moment had so infused Angeline’s graceful frame that she did not notice his question.
“…They think that living at a certain address, having those ugly glasses and a fixed gear bike makes you an ‘artist.’ And if you don’t play along, you can’t be one; doesn’t matter if you can draw or play an instrument or whatever. Screw that. And you have to believe everyone who can read a book and use a paintbrush voted for Justin Trudeau and Olivia Chow…”
“Right, completely agree…”
“…They don’t want to make the sacrifices. Those neighbourhoods in Paris, you know, that the Impressionists and those modern masters lived in; people moved there because it was cheap and shabby, which meant they could devote their lives to their passion and still pay the rent. The places became special because they lived there. It’s like the total opposite here, where you pay crazy rent, which means you have to work at two or three mundane jobs and never have time for actually creating anything, just so you can live in a place that looks n’ feels like where some authentic starving artist who eats $22 burgers, and…ngh! It’s like, a product you buy: you.”
“But you lived in Queen West or Kensington Market, no?” Ruslan chimed, instantly regretting it in his head: “Stop. Why can’t you just stop?” He was doubly intrigued now, wondering what exactly it was about this topic that got her so riled up.
“…And it’s like, if you don’t play along and pretend all that stupid stuff matters, then everybody hates you. And if you seriously try to…be what they pretend to be, they’re scared to ever talk to you or laugh behind your back…! Like, joke’s on you!”
“I see, yes, I know what you mean,” although Ruslan’s understanding of the problems that tormented the young lady was intellectual and detached. As an overheated boiler venting steam, Angeline suddenly returned to her usual wistful demeanour, staring longingly at the cat which had now mounted the bed beside her and, this exertion completed, was kneading a sleeping place for itself. She stroked its dense, somewhat greasy fur, occasionally wiping her hand against the blankets to scrape off static-clung hairs. As she did this, she half-closed her languid eyes, cooing softly in joual baby talk to it, fully aware that as long as she wasn’t looking at him, Ruslan would not take his sight off her – she could guess he was envisioning her replacing the central female figure in a dozen famous paintings.
“That’s my favourite kind of cat; you could make her the star of a YouTube channel which would consume thousands of cumulative labour-hours each day!” he suggested, trying to be humorous with obviously tongue-in-cheek grandiosity.
“Ha-ha, oh, good they don’t allow pets in the studio, or I’d never get anything done!”
“Mmh, what is she? Looks like Maru, if he was black and white. Scottish fold – one of the prick-eared ones?”
“Hah, no. You’re right, this loafer could get a job, with her celebrity good looks. Actually, she’s a Laurentian Shorthair, purebred, registered and everything. Got her from a breeder’s in Hull, back in second year. Cost me twelve hundred bucks, too.”
“Oooh, precious kitty! Pricey as a Canada Goose jacket, one of the top-of-the-line ones, at that.” Ruslan darted into the kitchen to check the pots simmering on the stove. He opened the fridge and surveyed the contents shelved on the door. “Ask or don’t ask,” he debated with himself, laying hands on two bottles of wine. “No,” he concluded in his head, “Just one,” reflecting that, while the commonsense advice holds that naturally prudish and awkward persons, in social situations, especially those involving the opposite sex, ought to toss away inhibitions and try to be fun and playful, it never worked out very well for him in practice. He didn’t want to appear to have ulterior motives. On the other hand, it wasn’t like ‘keeping proper distance’ these last couple years had won any victories. And if it went badly; if he got an indignant ‘that is NOT OK,’ the worst case scenario was…more of exactly the same. He returned to the living room holding a bottle of Red Label. “Something to drink?” he asked, furtively watching Angeline’s reaction. “Been so long, you must have a lot of stories. I’d uh, if you feel like sharing…” toning things down as the embarrassment hit almost before each word had left his mouth; “Catch up on old times, I mean. I’ve always…admired your sincerity, as an artist, you know. How you live your life, determined to be what you want, not just have and act, or…” He wanted to bash his head against the coffee table.
To his surprise, Angeline responded warmly, “Ah, thanks, definitely!” taking the bottle off him and filling her cup. “Hmm, Red Label ‘wine beverage,’ Kingston, Jamaica…oooh-kay. Didn’t know they could grow grapes down there.” Things moved more smoothly than Ruslan dared imagine, as Angeline regaled him with all kinds of random anecdotes about OCAD life, gallery shows, and her attempts at learning to cook traditional French cuisine. She was also gulping back the 13.5% alcohol fortified wine with a vengeance, leaving him to strategically nurse his initial half of a coffee mug’s worth. Maybe the second bottle would have to come out. Afraid now of seeming like he was only pretending to pay attention, waiting for an opportunity for…whatever. Ruslan searched for a talking point. Alas, he had been too lost in those huge and radiant, yet icy, blue orbs, the measured movements of those tactfully bared porcelain shoulders and the slender but well-formed thighs pressing smoothly against the black leggings confining them….he could only recall with any clarity that very last thing she’d said. “Cooking, eh? I suppose, done well, it’s an art in itself. French especially. You never learned growing up?”
“What do you mean?” the passion in her face flared once more.
Caught off guard, Ruslan stumbled. “I mean, I thought you grew up in some little village, farm country… and you’re always keen on history and culture…you know, from mother to daughter, traditions, that sort of thing…thought your mom or grandma would have taught you, I don’t know. Not to stereotype or anything.”
Angeline quietly rested her eyes inside her cup for a moment. “My grandma died when I was seven. My mom never taught me how to make anything, except Kraft Dinner. She wanted to smother anything creative I ever tried to do. Like, ‘who do you think you are?’ Everything was like that.” She brooded on her words, taking a long, loud sip and pouring another cup.
“I see…I see…” The only one in the room not affected by the tension was Giselle, sitting sphinx-like, flapping her short, clumsy tail against the bed. “I thought your dad was a painter. Odd they wouldn’t support you then…”
“I dunno, if you find him you can ask. My stepdad is a house painter, which isn’t painting; just coating shit in coloured liquid.”
Ruslan had scanned old photos of childhood birthday parties, with balloons and sheetcake aplenty, and a seemingly affectionate, unselfconscious working-class family on her Facebook. If that was the stepdad, he looked an awful lot like Angeline. Then again, a small Québec village settled four hundred years ago, everyone probably was more or less related. Or relations could have soured. Pretty much nothing new had been uploaded to that page in at least a year. Too nervous now to do anything but dig himself deeper, he carried on. “I thought you visited them lots, like when you got Giselle here. And Aida posted lots of albums of you guys on road trips to Montreal.”
“Montreal is nowhere near my place.” The hot anger dissipated into cool and airy contemplation. “There’s not really hotels or anything, and nothing to do, unless they want to play dairy maid.”
“Like Marie Antoinette.”
“Hah, yeah. Plus we usually go in Aida’s car. I wouldn’t want to drag people out to the middle of nowhere and people don’t speak English…” She trailed off, lost in some melancholy reminiscence.
Mustering his courage, Ruslan moved over to the bed and sat down there, though keeping a good two or three feet down from Angeline, the cat interposed between. “You keep in touch though, right?” he asked tenderly, now petting the cat, making clicking noises, “good kitty,” and so forth, to put a thin disguise on his surely-perceived plan that their hands should come into contact, with adoring the kitty providing plausible deniability for both parties.
Angeline was silent for another moment or two – their hands brushed slowly, not staying but nor did she flinch away. “They know I’m in university, studying fine arts…” Ruslan could see her eyes in the shadow of her glossy bangs, looking vaguely at the coffee table in front of her, but seeing something far away – something which he could not see. Her lips parted, revealing the barest hint of even, gleaming teeth, but no words escaped. The foamy clatter of a pot lid startled Ruslan from his trance, and he dashed up towards the kitchen before lentil soup met stove burner and all his neighbours would be irritated by the smoke alarm going off.
When he got back to his guest after ploughing up the tarry matter on the pot bottom with a long spoon, Ruslan was dismayed to see her standing up beside her luggage, looking perfectly at ease, as if no profound sentiments had crossed her mind all evening, though her cheeks were glowing crabapple pink from the wine. “Going already?” was the best he could do. “Who are you staying with tonight? I know some ex-classmates who might help with the apartment hunting…there’s a lot of units around here, actually, seeing as it seems time’s soured you on downtown…Need help getting tubbums into her carrier?” He picked up the cat, which was purring contentedly, wrapping its paws over his chest like a sleepy, well-fed baby.
“Hee-hee! She likes you!” Angeline tittered.
“Seems so! Well, you know, I am a cat person…”
“Me too!”
“Yes, that’s pretty obvious. You know, there’s this author, horror-mystery stuff, wrote a fascinating essay on the character differences between cat people and dog people…a bit overboard sometimes, but funny…and true! Pretty much, anyway. I’ll send you the link on F-B…”
“Actually, I’ll be spending the night on the road.”
“What the?!?”
“Travelling!”
“Oh, right.”
“I’m going back home for….a while…”
“With Aida and them?”
“No…I mean home-home. Not Montreal. I’ll be taking the Greyhound.”
“Oh. How long will you be staying?”
“I dunno. A while. Anyways, I haven’t got a new place in Toronto yet, and the people on Bunz weren’t any help. Seeing how much she likes you…”
“You want me to be cat sitter for Giselle here?” Ruslan sighed.
“If you’re ok with it. Otherwise…the Humane Society…”
“Kitty Auschwitz?” Ruslan puffed with righteous indignation. “Good Lord, no, no. It can’t happen. Such a wonderful creature, but…do you have to be travelling now, then? Why not wait?…”
“Listen, things have been…” Her looks said she knew that he knew – if only intuitively and through fourth-hand gossip. “My mom is…sick. And I have to see her. I can’t keep hiding out here. I can’t run away…”
Ruslan wondered if that was the meaning of Angeline’s coming to Toronto. Running. Then hiding from what she’d fled. The lights and rush of the City did appear to be a king of anaesthetic for a lot of young people, usually from elsewhere, whether from foreign countries or Northern Ontario, the Maritimes and such places (which was essentially the same thing). It pained him to contemplate this secret muse of his as being one with the cookie-cutter hipsters; the castrated race of interns competing in obsequiousness; the hackneyed academics quoting post-modernist drivel like religious mantras to accompany vicarious lives, the coffee shop toilers with their resentful herdist attitudes; the meth-scabbed slumpartment dwellers whom three generations on welfare had stripped of all ambitions beyond the fulfilment of the animal appetites. It was inadmissible in the scheme through which he viewed the world. Wiser men that he believed it; if Thomas Hardy, Lombroso and such genius minds were agreed, surely there had to be something to it – that a vessel so exquisite, seemingly embodying so much history and culture (all the more if it was done unwittingly) should, after all, contain a soul undistinguished amid the low and level plain of millennial North American urban humanity. Were the laws of environment so ironclad that the types which inspired the poets and novelists of one or two centuries prior were now no more than stories themselves? Was it so stupid to wish that there were still real flesh-and-blood people who were ‘The Solitary Reaper,’ ‘The Tired Gleaner,’ or ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles?’ It was undeniable – he insisted to himself – that such permutations of the human character existed – even if they tended to suffer unhappy fates. If it were otherwise, where would anyone have got the idea? Though whether they still could exist in a modern metropolis…
“I’ve got to go, or I’ll miss the bus and they only come like every two or three hours. You’ll take Giselle, then?”
“Yes, yes. I’ll look after her till you get back. Oh, I don’t have your address or phone in Québec. I mean, if I needed to get in touch with you…”
“It’s ok. I’ll probably be staying at a hotel in Montreal while I’m there, not at my parents’ house.”
Ruslan wanted to ask how that possibly made things ‘ok,’ since he’d be equally at a loss how to reach her. He knew how little she came on Facebook and emails…he’d feel cheated, since he’d never know if she read them or not. Before he could find the words, though, Angeline had slipped nimbly outside. He managed to catch a glimpse of the hall-end door swinging shut on its pneumatic hinge. He had the cat and a suitcase full of sketchbooks, painting supplies and canvasses to ponder upon in the sleepless hours after midnight.
The leaden white paint clung like a curse to the clapboard walls of the bungalow, grudgingly conceding, flake by flake, to the age and decay which had eaten away at the rest of the house. The mesh screens of the small-paned sash windows, kept open because there was no AC, were holed and gashed by squirrels’ teeth and errant songbirds. The grass around was green and lush from the summer rains, but unmown. An old navy blue LTD, stuffed with random items like an impromptu storage shed sagged to the wheelwells under an open carport. A Chevy van in marginally better condition rested in the gravel drive. The asphalt shingles of the roof were peeling up at the edges like the petals of burnt pinecones. It was not a farm; there were houses on either side and across the road, spaced not that much farther apart than in a typical suburb. For all that, though…perhaps it was the contrast with throbbing, bustling downtown Toronto, or perhaps it was other memories…the bungalow might as well have been in a different postal code from its neighbours. The property had an atmosphere common only to itself – though how much of that was due to its physical condition and how much to other, less quantifiable factors could not be easily determined.
The CBC news wooshed and crackled on an elderly CRT television. A sluggish retriever was dumbly gnawing a rubber kong, inherited from a predecessor, lolling on the brownish-olive carpet whose pile was cropped and felted with years. The syrupy savour of sausages crisping in a well-greased skillet wafted out of the kitchen. A stiff-faced, knob-jointed woman prodded and turned the blackening meat logs with a two-pronged melamine fork. “Christ, you don’t haftah burn them ta ashes! The money’s gotta last till the first. Gawd, half of everything you gotta throw away, even the daag won’t eat it,” a beefy armed, square-headed man in a rough patterned cardigan shouted from the sofa in the living room.
“Well, if you were workin’ instead of on pogie…”
“Don’t come at me with that crap. It’s my pension; they won’t give me anything else ‘cause I worked too damn much. If it wasn’t for me doing twenty-seven years in the mill, how much d’ya think you’d get?”
“I’m just sayin’…”
“When you get out and earn it for your goddam self, then you can say whatever you like. Hmph! Yeah, you’d haftah work a lot ‘a overtime, the way thing’s lookin’ now, ya would.”
At first she had not noticed it above the scrape of the fork and the clatter of dishes. But after the sink was full of hot and soapy water, she paused and listened. Had she really heard anything? The TV was getting in the way. “Turn it down!”
“Whaaat?”
“The TV. I heard somebody knockin’ at the door.”
The man grumbled, but complied.
“A minute ago,” she considered, glassy-eyed; “I heard someone knocking at the door. Knocking real light. A couple of times, now that I think of it.”
Probably Jo-hos. Or somebody sellin’ something.” The man turned the volume back up and returned to watching the news, but the woman was gripped with a curiosity – almost a compulsion. It made her uneasy. She went to the front of the house and flung open the rickety screen door, stepping in her socked feet onto the sagging porch. She looked searchingly, left and right, down a long and empty road.
終
Copyright © 2017 by M.G. Warenycia
Snow to Sand: Poetry, Stories and Musings from Canada, the Caribbean and Ukraine 