upon her tongue. She plugged in the kettle to boil water for a cup of tea, resolving to cut back on the alcohol intake, at least until Easter.
Suddenly she ached for Easter and the springtime. As she waited for the kettle, her gaze shifted to a calendar on the kitchen wall. December.
Long gone
, she thought. She removed the page andstared at January 1999, trying to remember why there was a circle drawn in ink around the sixth, a Wednesday. What about the sixth? Then it came to her. Duncan had made that mark in May. The Epiphany, he said, a benchmark of some kind, a reference to her and JC Campbell.
They had made it through the summer, the ecstasy of summer, and through the blissful fall all the way to the Epiphany and then beyond. There were challenges, of course, but the basics were intact. She found great comfort in the small gestures, his sorrowful apologies, all the signals that he needed her.
She felt reassured, but she couldn’t shake a feeling that was close to dread, and she remembered Duncan’s words when he briefly visited in September—epiphany or catharsis, and that sometimes it’s easy to confuse them. The kettle squealed.
The mug was hot, the fragrance of the tea refreshing, but she couldn’t get the sight of JC Campbell off her mind. It was how forlorn he seemed. She was well aware of how defeat reshapes a man, restructures neck and shoulders, tips the face. And she saw it in the lonely-looking man on Jarvis Street, only slightly less pathetic than the spectacle she’d seen just south of there, moments earlier: a woman, or maybe just a girl, huddled in a cheap imitation leather jacket, thighs and knees pressed together below a foolishly short skirt, a hungry face lit briefly by the futile ember of a cigarette.
She listened to the silence of her home. She told herself again that there was comfort in the silence. The nurturing silence of a hard-won solitude. Autonomy. She raised the slowly cooling mug.
two
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know
.
T.S. ELIOT, “BURNT NORTON,”
FOUR QUARTETS
5
M onday morning she was up with the dawn, quickly lost in essays, once again lamenting how the carelessness of language can devalue creative insights and original ideas. She found the sloppy spelling, the lazy syntax, to be deeply irritating. But it was, she acknowledged, an improvement over when she also had to deal with almost indecipherable handwriting.
She stared out a window, momentarily transported back to a shabby little schoolhouse, felt the ache of isolation, the craving for escape, and reminded herself:
This is it, this is the escape
.
“
Huh???
” she underlined with three firm strokes of the red pen. She scratched another cryptic marginal comment and then reviewed it guiltily, wondering how much of her criticism was a projection of a mood that had nothing to do with students, scholarship or literacy.
Her workspace was a small bedroom that overlooked the street, and she was accustomed to early-morning traffic, especially on a Monday. But the taxi slowing down as it approached was unusual. She watched as the driver studied numbers on the houses. Then the taxi stopped at her front step and a rear door swung wide.There was a long pause before JC emerged. He stood as if briefly unsure, carrying the travel case they’d purchased for the cat.
When she opened the door, she smiled bleakly. “Oh. You.” The taxi was idling at the curb, vapour swirling in the frosty air.
“I know,” he said. “I should have phoned. There was half a plan that Duncan would look after him, but he called late to say he didn’t think it would be such a good idea where he’s living now. With the street people. A bit rough there for a well-bred cat.”
He smiled. “To be truthful, I didn’t have the guts to call. Me all over, right?”
This diffidence was new, she thought, and disconcerting, as was the long scratch running down his cheek, starting just below his
Suddenly she ached for Easter and the springtime. As she waited for the kettle, her gaze shifted to a calendar on the kitchen wall. December.
Long gone
, she thought. She removed the page andstared at January 1999, trying to remember why there was a circle drawn in ink around the sixth, a Wednesday. What about the sixth? Then it came to her. Duncan had made that mark in May. The Epiphany, he said, a benchmark of some kind, a reference to her and JC Campbell.
They had made it through the summer, the ecstasy of summer, and through the blissful fall all the way to the Epiphany and then beyond. There were challenges, of course, but the basics were intact. She found great comfort in the small gestures, his sorrowful apologies, all the signals that he needed her.
She felt reassured, but she couldn’t shake a feeling that was close to dread, and she remembered Duncan’s words when he briefly visited in September—epiphany or catharsis, and that sometimes it’s easy to confuse them. The kettle squealed.
The mug was hot, the fragrance of the tea refreshing, but she couldn’t get the sight of JC Campbell off her mind. It was how forlorn he seemed. She was well aware of how defeat reshapes a man, restructures neck and shoulders, tips the face. And she saw it in the lonely-looking man on Jarvis Street, only slightly less pathetic than the spectacle she’d seen just south of there, moments earlier: a woman, or maybe just a girl, huddled in a cheap imitation leather jacket, thighs and knees pressed together below a foolishly short skirt, a hungry face lit briefly by the futile ember of a cigarette.
She listened to the silence of her home. She told herself again that there was comfort in the silence. The nurturing silence of a hard-won solitude. Autonomy. She raised the slowly cooling mug.
two
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know
.
T.S. ELIOT, “BURNT NORTON,”
FOUR QUARTETS
5
M onday morning she was up with the dawn, quickly lost in essays, once again lamenting how the carelessness of language can devalue creative insights and original ideas. She found the sloppy spelling, the lazy syntax, to be deeply irritating. But it was, she acknowledged, an improvement over when she also had to deal with almost indecipherable handwriting.
She stared out a window, momentarily transported back to a shabby little schoolhouse, felt the ache of isolation, the craving for escape, and reminded herself:
This is it, this is the escape
.
“
Huh???
” she underlined with three firm strokes of the red pen. She scratched another cryptic marginal comment and then reviewed it guiltily, wondering how much of her criticism was a projection of a mood that had nothing to do with students, scholarship or literacy.
Her workspace was a small bedroom that overlooked the street, and she was accustomed to early-morning traffic, especially on a Monday. But the taxi slowing down as it approached was unusual. She watched as the driver studied numbers on the houses. Then the taxi stopped at her front step and a rear door swung wide.There was a long pause before JC emerged. He stood as if briefly unsure, carrying the travel case they’d purchased for the cat.
When she opened the door, she smiled bleakly. “Oh. You.” The taxi was idling at the curb, vapour swirling in the frosty air.
“I know,” he said. “I should have phoned. There was half a plan that Duncan would look after him, but he called late to say he didn’t think it would be such a good idea where he’s living now. With the street people. A bit rough there for a well-bred cat.”
He smiled. “To be truthful, I didn’t have the guts to call. Me all over, right?”
This diffidence was new, she thought, and disconcerting, as was the long scratch running down his cheek, starting just below his
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