Conversations

A piece for the Sunday afternoon writers ...


*

It’s funny, she thinks, that this is where she met him.
After it all ended. Or began. Depending how you deconstruct the timeline of her life.
Either way, it was here. Here in this red phone box on this corner on this unprepossessing street of once-fine houses that have decayed over the decades into damp and drafty flats.
Here is where she was sitting. Sort of. If perching on the edge of one of those hard, narrow wooden seats can be considered sitting. Head cradled against the cold glass, receiver held tight against her ear as if only she pressed hard enough she could draw his voice through the deafening silence of five thousand kilometres, erase the abrupt click that had cut off her lifeline.
She’d lost track of time. She was aware, in some vague and distant way, of a searing pain up the left side of her neck and an odd numbness in her buttocks.
(She’s lifted this word from the English. Likes it better than the Canadian alternatives. Ass. Butt. Rear. She much prefers her buttocks with two syllables. She’d prefer them with a stone less fat, too. But that, she reflected as she shifted in her uncomfortable seat, would hardly have been enough to change the outcome of the conversation. Or would it. Would a slimmer, sleeker, more confident version of herself have been able to find the words.)
She wasn’t upset at the time. She’s sure of this. She didn’t feel it. Didn’t think she looked it, either. She just sat there. Wondering about the intangibility of conversation. The improbability that words spoken across oceans could do so much to shape souls and alter destinies.
She didn’t cry.
Not then.
A gentle tap on the glass made her start.
She didn’t turn her head until a more commanding tap came. Followed by the creaking of the door being slowly pushed open. And him. Leaning in. Freckle-faced, with tousled red-blonde hair and an uncertain look on his face.
“Listen, um …”
“You want the phone.”
She replaced the receiver, ignoring the zap of pain that shot up her neck – the crick, as Mom would have said, in that rural Ontario vernacular that made them all laugh. She straightened, feeling awkward as she tried to pick up her purse and shuffle out of his way.
“No, no.”
He put a hand out, and for a moment she wondered a little wildly if he was going to stroke her hair.
“It’s just … I saw you in here half an hour ago when I went down to the high street. And you were still here when I came back and I …”
She just stared at him, realizing from an accent not unlike her own and the self-consciousness with which he said “high street” that he was likely even more green than she. Which was saying something, since she had become convinced that everyone could still smell the maple syrup running through her veins.
“I’m sorry. You want to be alone. You don’t need some jackass coming over here to bother you. Look, I – I’m sorry.”
He backed away from the door and turned away.
She found her voice then. “No.”
He paused and turned back slightly.
“It’s okay.” She could hear the tightness in her voice, but she tried for a smile. “It was just some bad news, but I’m okay now. Thanks, um …”
His face creased in a crooked grin that made her smile back.
“Hey, you’re Canadian too, eh?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m from Toronto. I’m Michael.”
He stuck out his hand abruptly, as if only belatedly realizing his manners.
She tried another smile.
“I’m Emily. From Orangeville.”
She took the extended hand and shook it.
That was when she started to cry.
*
Emily has no idea what time it is when they finally get back to her flat. Or how many pints of Guinness he’d brought back to the scuffed wooden table, despite her feeble protests that she hadn’t acquired a taste for it yet. Or how, for that matter, they’d made their way to the pub in the first place.
She remembers sitting there with him, babbling only half-coherently over the apparently bottomless pint glass, filling the dark bitter depths with tears as she chokes out the bare bones of the story.
She’s a cliché, she knows. Even in her hazy state she can hear the inevitability of the tale. Girl meets Boy. Girl likes Boy. Boy and Girl get together. Boy wants more. Girl isn’t sure. Run, Girl, run.
She’s not sure how Michael takes this tale. She has no recollection of him saying anything at all. She knows he patted her hand once. Tentatively. As if he wasn’t sure he should touch her but didn’t know what else to do with the stranger melting down into her pint glass across the table.
She doesn’t remember telling him her address. But she knows she must have because here they are, in front of the door with its peeling red paint.
He’s not speaking. He’s just standing there, a steadying presence at her shoulder as she scrabbles in her purse for the old iron key that opens the front door. She tries to insert it into the lock. Finds the key doesn’t fit. Jiggles it impatiently. Feels warm fingers fold around her own and insert the key gently into the keyhole, turning it with a soft click.
She turns to him, tilting her head up to smile a thank-you.
He’s tall, she realizes. Taller than she’s used to.
She sees concern in his eyes. And something else. Something that makes her reach up and stroke his cheek. Something that makes her stand on tiptoe to move her face closer to his. Something that lulls her into a trance-like peacefulness as she leans in towards the warmth of him.
She feels him there, his face moving closer to hers, his shoulders rounding as he bends towards her.
Then she feels two hands on her shoulders, pushing her gently back onto flat feet.
“Good night.”
She reaches her hand out again, seeking his face, shaking her head.
“It’s okay,” she says. “I’m fine. Come in.”
She knows he won’t. Knows there’s no point but can’t stop herself from trying. Standing on tiptoe, reaching up, lips seeking his.
The warm hands shove her back onto flat feet again, more firmly this time.
“No way. I’m not that much of a jackass.” He leans past her and pushes the door open, shoves her gently through the open doorway with one warm hand on her back. “Good night.”

*
She wills her eyes to open and feels them respond. Barely. Through the narrow slits she can see bright sunlight streaming in through the French doors that open out to the small, ragged patch of grass that the ‘To Let’ listing had optimistically referred to as a garden.
She starts to move, feels the searing pain in her neck and head. Thinks her skull may shatter into a thousand fragments of glass if she shifts position even a little.
She’s afraid to roll over. To confirm what she half knows. To let the full realization wash over her of what had happened after he tried to push her in the door.
She couldn’t have, she thinks.
She couldn’t have flung herself at him right there on the doorstep, grasping his hair with both hands, half dragging his face towards her own, seeking the warmth of his lips and tongue.
She couldn’t have reached for his shirt buttons like that, toying with the light fuzz on his chest with one hand as she unbuttoned the collar with the other, propelling him down the stairs to her small basement apartment – garden flat, she corrects herself automatically. She couldn’t have shoved him through the door and onto the lumpy, narrow single bed.
She shuts her eyes again, squeezing them closed, ignoring the pain that shoots through her temples.
She knows she can’t avoid the moment forever. She feels the warm presence behind her and knows there will have to be words. Someone will have to speak.
She opens her eyes and rolls over slowly.
He’s lying on his back, eyes closed. He’s breathing deeply, snoring a little, mouth half-open, one arm dangling off the edge of the bed, the other across his chest. In sleep he’s edged towards the other side of the small bed as if he wants to be anywhere but next to her.
She slides out from under the wool blanket, still silently, grabbing the clothes she’d shed on the floor beside the bed. Creeps to the cold bathroom and gives herself a hasty scrub before dressing.
It’s Sunday, she knows. She doesn’t have to be at the shop today. She doesn’t have anywhere to go.
She goes anyway.
*
She’s at Camden Market. It’s three weeks later. Twenty-three days, actually. Not that’s she’s counted. Not that she’s wondered every one of those twenty-three days what he was thinking. Whether he’d wondered if she read his note. Whether he’d hoped she would phone him.
No. And no.
She’s standing in front of an irritated stallkeeper, who’s shifting from foot to foot as he watches her swither between two multicoloured patchwork shirts. One has more green (which brings out her eyes, she thinks), and one has more brown (which brings out the faint red highlights in her otherwise mousy hair).
“Green.”
She hears the voice and nearly drops both. Wonders if there’s any way to pretend she hasn’t heard him. Or if she could just walk away.
She doesn’t, of course.
She turns and sees him there. Funny, she thinks, it’s the same way he looked the first time she saw him. Freckle-faced, tousle-haired and a little uncertain.
Despite herself, she smiles. She overcomes the compulsion to reach up and push back the stray lock of hair that flops onto his forehead. To stroke his cheek again.
“Thanks.”
She sets down the brown one and hands the ten-quid note to the stallkeeper, who grunts and turns to another customer.
She slings the shirt over her arm and looks at him.
“Hi,” she says.
His face creases in that same crooked grin. “Hi. I’m glad I bumped into you.”
“Yeah. Me too.” She says it by rote yet realizes with surprise that she actually means it.
His grin grows wider. “Let’s go get a cup of tea, shall we?”
“My, haven’t you become English?” She grins teasingly at him and curls a hand around his arm as they start to walk. “Can I have a scone, too?”
*
Tea becomes lunch. Lunch becomes afternoon. In Regent’s Park. At the zoo. Walking by the pond. Watching animals. Watching people. Afternoon becomes evening. Chips wrapped in newspaper, sprinkled with malt vinegar, munching companionably as they walk. And talk. And talk. And talk.
She knows him now. Everything about him, she thinks.
How his mom cried when he left. How his sister, certifiable pain in the ass like all little sisters, cried too, and hugged him so hard she made all of them laugh at the airport. How his buddies wondered why he didn’t just get a job like everyone else coming out of university. How his dad thought he was throwing away a perfectly good education by going to work in a pub in some downmarket corner of London when he could be working on Bay Street. How he thinks Bay Street wouldn’t give him the life he wants.
“I’m such a cliché.” He laughs, but she can tell from the uncertainty in the blue eyes that he means it too. “Going overseas to find myself. Renting an attic flat and bartending at night and painting in the park in the morning.”
“At least you’re not me.” She grins up at him. “Running away from a romance and thinking I can write a novel in a horrible garden flat that must under no circumstances be called a basement apartment.”
He kisses her then. A mere brush of the lips, soft as a butterfly’s wing, so soft that she wonders later whether it happened or whether she just imagined it.
“You couldn’t be a cliché if you tried,” he says.
She isn’t sure what that means. Isn’t sure he knows either. But it makes them grin foolishly at each other.
He walks her home and leaves her at the door with another soft kiss.
*
She watches him, smiling to herself, knowing he hasn’t seen her yet.
He’s perched on his small folding stool, leaning in towards his easel, half-squinting in that way he has that makes her wonder if he should be wearing glasses. The gentle breeze is doing what her fingers itch to do, tousling his hair and pushing it away from his face.
He’s painting with swift, sure strokes, oblivious to the small crowd of people who have gathered around him to watch.
She circles silently behind them to see for herself.
She catches her breath at the life in it. The breeze that’s ruffling the woman’s hair. The light in her eyes as she tilts her head and smiles towards the watcher, oblivious to the beauty of the seascape behind her, appearing to see only the person who’s capturing this moment.
She’s beautiful, Emily realizes, ignoring the pang that gives her. Why shouldn’t she be beautiful. Why shouldn’t he paint her.
“Who is she?”
Emily is startled to hear the question that’s in her own mind being asked by someone else, a small girl in a sunhat who’s watching with a plump, slightly harassed-looking woman who must be her mother.
“Now, Jenny, don’t bother the nice man.”
Michael turns to the girl with the familiar grin that makes Emily smile despite herself.
“She’s someone I used to know.”
The sunhatted girl smiles back. “Did you love her?”
The girl’s mother looks horrified. “Jenny!”
Michael smiles up at her and winks conspiratorially at Jenny, nodding.
“Yes,” he says. “I did.”
Emily has the feeling that she’s intruded on a private moment. Wonders whether she should stay or make her escape before he sees her.
He makes the decision for her when his glance turns her way.
“You came,” he says simply.
And the crooked grin makes his face light up again.

*
“Her name is Isabel.”
They’re installed at the small corner table in the teashop, sharing a plate of scones and a pot of tea. Neither one has spoken since they sat down.
Emily nearly chokes on a mouthful of scalding tea.
“Oh.” It’s a less than brilliant response, she thinks. But she isn’t sure what else to say.
“I was going to ask her to marry me.”
She watches him silently, noticing that he isn’t meeting her gaze as he usually does. He’s looking over her shoulder, staring fixedly at the wall above her head.
“She decided my best friend was more her type.”
He speaks lightly, almost ironically, but the blue eyes harden with an expression she hasn’t seen on his face before.
She reaches out and rests her hand gently on his on the tabletop.
She says nothing. Strokes his hand in silence.
He shifts his gaze and meets her eyes, his expression softening.
“It’s okay now,” he says. “I’m over it.”
Emily watches her fingers steal up and stroke his cheek, not obeying the part of her that says to flee. Now. Quickly.
She shakes her head.
“I saw your painting,” she replies. “You’re not over it.”
He captures her hand and pulls it to his lips, kissing her lightly on the fingertips.
“What can I say?” He shrugs. “Denial keeps me alive.”
“Me too.”
She’s not sure why they both find that funny. But they laugh so hard the other people in the teashop turn and stare.

*

“Your turn,” he says.
She’s lying with her head on his shoulder, his hands playing with the ends of the long hair spread out on the pillow behind her. She has an arm and a leg wrapped around him, absorbing his heat, warding off the damp early-morning chill that seems to permeate her flat.
She pushes herself up on one elbow and smiles down at him.
“My turn to what?”
He runs a hand through her hair, pushing it away from her face.
“Tell me.”
She knows what he means.
“I’ve told you everything already,” she objects.
He narrows his eyes at her and the head on the pillow rolls from side to side in an emphatic No. “You were drunk at the time, and you told me hardly anything. You didn’t even tell me why you left.”
She shifts her gaze to the wall above the bed, noticing how cracked the old plaster is, marvelling that the wall hasn’t started to crumble in on her.
She attempts a nonchalant shrug.
“It was too much.”
He’s silent, but his fingers keep stroking her hair.
“It was like my life was all figured out already.”
“A lot of people would kill to have that problem.” He laughs a little, but gently, and she knows he’s not making fun of her.
She shifts her eyes back to meet his.
“I know. Funny, huh? All my girlfriends just want to meet the right guy, and I have him and all I can think is, I’m twenty-three, I’m not ready for this, how can anybody make this decision at twenty-three?”
He’s still listening silently, and his eyes are gentle.
“He didn’t want me to come here.”
She hears the harshness of the words and corrects herself.
“I mean, that’s not true. He wanted me to come. It’s just that he wanted to come too. I said no. He said I couldn’t expect him to wait while I made up my mind. I could go or we could be together, my choice.”
She pauses. Gathers her thoughts. Decides to tell him the rest.
“That night I met you, I’d decided to call him. Just to say hi, I guess. His girlfriend answered the phone.”
She stops talking.
Michael rests his palm on her cheek. “Do you still love him?”
She starts to shake her head, No, but the movement turns into a slow nod, and she feels tears well up in her eyes.
Michael cups her other cheek with his free hand, and something in the gesture makes her lean over and plant a kiss on the tip of his nose.
He shifts on the bed, disentangling himself from her limbs, pushing her weight gently off him to the edge of the narrow bed.
“Okay,” he says. “What do you want for breakfast?”

*
“You’re quiet today.”
She speaks lightly, but she watches him carefully.
He’s sprawling on the park bench, his easel and paint box beside him, leaning back and looking up at what would have been the sun if it had decided to shine.
The silence grows as he stares at the sky and she stares at him. It expands to become something almost tangible, filling the space between them on the park bench, making it impossible for her to slide closer to him, to nestle her head on his shoulder as she usually does.
She’s still. Watching.
He sits up abruptly, and his voice is unexpectedly loud. “You have to decide.”
Decide what, she starts to say, but knows he deserves better than that.
“Yes.” Her voice is so quiet she can barely hear herself. “I do.”
“I should get back to it.” He stands up and turns, gathering his belongings to set up his station again.
She watches for a long moment, willing him to look her way.
But he doesn’t turn back, and he doesn’t say anything more.

*
It’s funny, she thinks, that this is where she is again. At the phone box. The same phone box where she sat with a crick in her neck listening to silence across a vast grey ocean. The same phone box where the worried freckled face came to find her. To save her.
The same phone box where life ended. Or began.
She feeds in her coins and dials the international operator.
There’s the ring. Again. And again. And again.
Then.
“Hello.”
The warm baritone sounds a little groggy, and she realizes she’s done the math wrong. It’s only six where he is. He isn’t even up yet.
Unbidden, the picture comes – him lying under her old blue comforter, sprawled on his back with legs splayed, arms flung out, chest rising and falling in rhythm with the gentle sound of his sleeping breath.
She feels a smile so wide it could almost crack her face in two.
“Hello.” He repeats the word slightly impatiently, and she realizes she hasn’t spoken yet.
Now or never, she thinks. This is when it happens. When it begins. Or ends.
She takes a deep breath.
“Hi,” she says. “It’s me.”