The Dancehall Years Read online

  Isn’t it a beautiful day? she says when she takes his coffee out to him. She’s said that every day since they arrived.

  Gwen, he says. It’s always a beautiful day down here.

  He’s working on some notes for a production he wants to propose to the Academy of the Arts back in the city. Anybody who can pay can go to this university, he says. No one’s going to ask about his history with the University of California. While she waited for him to finish his interview, she climbed up one hill of the roller-coastered city, down another. The slopes raised and lowered their faceted white and mirrored buildings like salt crystals. He looks up wanting more coffee. She pours it. I can’t quite get the curtsey down, she says. Oh, Gwen. What are you going to do here, love? You can’t just… He runs his hand up the inside of her thigh.

  Well, yes, I can. That’s the trouble.

  Even if what she says is true—it is—she still dreams about directing him in Artaud’s Picnic on the Battlefield.

  I don’t suppose you ever act.

  It’s been a long time.

  You wouldn’t consider…

  When he doesn’t even look up, his silence undermines the fact she’d even thought of asking.

  Dear Mom and Dad, Eugene and I went to the theatre almost every night when we were in San Francisco, but I didn’t see anything that resembled the kind of theatre I want to do. The theatre I want to create will not take place inside a proscenium. It’s something else, but I don’t know what it is.

  Thanks for writing. That’s great you’ve found the money to buy the cottage with Evvie and Isabelle. So now are you all three owners or what?

  That night in bed, her lover leaps from rock to rock in his own torn river; when he kneels close to her face, his penis gently slaps her cheek before she takes it into her mouth. She keeps expecting him to surface with a glinting rock in his hand, but he flings his hair back and dives again. When he’s done, is on his feet looking in the mirror, she catches the self-absorbed look he would present when he’s alone.

  One day out on the dappled deck, the part of her that’s deliriously lost in the landscape of her body is surprised to hear the part of herself that’s worried about making mistakes with him saying she might go up to the city on her own for a few days and see some theatre.

  Why would you want to do that? What’s wrong with here?

  Nothing’s wrong with here.

  It would be years before she’d understand that undertaking this trip by herself was a wake-up call she didn’t hear. Isn’t she happy? She’s as happy as the cat’s meow, but please will he drive her to Monterey where she could rent a car. He looks smaller and narrower sitting in the driver’s seat; maybe his confidence has something to do with her after all.

  The man behind the car rental counter at the airport is reading Proust, so he must be all right. Who was that bounder in was it Vanity Fair, something by Thackeray anyway, where the protagonist rigged up a library with classic books in the disguised wing of a brothel so the ingénue would think she was staying with her kind of people? Funny that. He has a receding hairline, a wide flushed face with something of the breadth of a frog about it. I’d like a car, she says when he looks up. Is there a way to San Francisco that’s not the highway? An alert-looking young woman with short curly black hair and white short shorts joins him. What’s your name again, Gwen, why are we letting Gwen pay a surcharge on this airport car, Rory? Didn’t you tell her we have a dealership in town that costs half of what you’ve got here? Suppose they took her to their alternate franchise, she could use what was probably her hard-earned money to rent the cheaper car—then they could all three drive to the city so they could show her the way. But first they have to pick up something at Maria’s. If you could give me me a map that marks the back roads, I’d be fine, says Gwen. But no. She gets in the woman’s car with the two of them and, next thing she knows, they’re in the middle of Monterey renting the cheaper car with a tank of gas thrown in because they’re both employees. Gwen’s to drive it.

  On the highway, she’s sandwiched between two six-wheelers that hoist her between them catamaran style. They haven’t even said which exit they’re taking. Why isn’t she safely back in her own place in the canyon? Her own place now, is it? One ratty palm replaces another; the vehicles hum beside her. Her first artichoke field. She’s six cars behind. They change lanes quickly, so she has to. Over there, over there, sidestep. Any minute they’ll turn off to what’s-her-name’s, Maria’s, house. She manages the exit: they’re slowing onto a side road, then stopping in front of a small bungalow by itself on a side street. The two of them go into the house ahead of her and disappear down a corridor. Looking for the bathroom, she passes the open bedroom door and finds another woman and Rory and Maria in bed waiting for her eyes. Rory is fingering her, Maria is looking up to watch Gwen’s face. Then she turns and eats her way up her thigh. Gwen averts her eyes astonished and aroused. Rory puts his fingers under his nose, smells them. Time to go, Gwen, he says. You girls have a good time.

  In the rented car, blackheads border the edge of his grey t-shirt. It’s good to be driving again, he says. I’ve been in prison for a while. For marijuana possession. He slowly unzips the fly on his jeans, and starts pulling at his penis. Good lord. His smile is triumphant and sneaky as he keeps on driving and keeps on coming. They’re on the outskirts of San Francisco; there has to be a traffic light soon. He spurts all over the dashboard, smiles as if he’s filling up a water pistol and starts again. He glances over to see if she’s watching, aims a shot at the floor. At the first red light, she jumps out of the car and runs. She has her purse but not her suitcase.

  Oh God, the car. She stands stock still on the pavement. It’s in her name. What if he doesn’t take it back? Maybe he never worked at Hertz. Maybe that was the scam. She asks someone at a bus stop if this is where she could catch a bus to the beaches at Golden Gate Park, finds a cheap motel with a dirty sagging curtain; the thumping of what must be laundry machines pummels from the floor below. As long as he takes the car back, that horrible man. She should phone Hertz to make sure, instead heads toward Washington Square where the tall spires and domes of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul rise to one side. A low stage has been set up on the grass, and a group of Commedia del Arte actors in patchwork costumes are working the lunchtime crowd.

  Back in the canyon—there’s a bus to Monterey after all—Eugene meets her at the station, clamps her palm to his arm as if he’d known how dodgy her trip was. He doesn’t say anything about a phone call asking about a missing rental car or her absent suitcase. Maybe that pervert is handling her clothes as they speak. Later she tells him how the troupe in the park suggested she come back for an audition.

  They’ll give you an audition, but you don’t want to get involved with that crowd, he says. Nobody gets paid. What they’d do is use everything you have to offer.

  You know them then?

  Oh sure.

  So even that is his.

  The drive back down the coast is as spectacular as ever. Turning into their own canyon, the bay leaf trees comfort her. She’s so glad to be back, her face feels bloated from the pressure of staring at him. She finally knows the trail to their place well enough not to have to leave crumbs behind. When they get home, he hands her her first joint. She holds it between her thumb and forefinger the way she’s seen him do it. Her toes hook onto the edge of a path in the forest, lever her to a standing position beside a large pine. Eugene wraps his arms around her knees, pulls himself up on her as if she’s a spar tree whose tip he must lop. A tiny star falls out of his eye. She catches it in hers. He steps naked from behind a tree picking out the star like a contact lens. She clutches her skin like a coat he’d thrown over her shoulders.

  It’s over now. I’m here, he says.

  You’ve found me? You’re here?

  I’m here.

  And you won’t let go?

  I won’t let go.

  Neither will I. Ever.

  Their f
aces peel off like masks. They stand naked, face to face, their palms turned outward.

  The next day, he asks her to marry him. What was that out in the woods last night? she says. Isn’t that what we did? Yes, he says, but I want the formality. Look how happy it would make your parents.

  So will you?

  I will. Yes.

  Back in San Francisco, they sit on the curb outside his apartment, resting from the late summer heat. She loves the brand-new light, the mass of scrabbled facets forming the roofs and terraces sloping below them. The bay windows in the living room. The striped slipcovers on the armchairs. The hardwood floors. In the afternoons, she dodges upturned wooden boxes in the narrow streets of Chinatown, buys recipe books about French Provençal cooking.

  Do I look all right? she asks Eugene the night they’re going to Sausalito to meet his mother. Shantung sheath, hair molded into a bouffant. The dress is enough, he says. No striped scarf. They drive across the bridge to Ondine’s. They’re early so he pulls into a bar where he orders her a black coffee with brandy, which he says will put lead in her pencil. In the restaurant, his mother, René Kerr, is sitting at a table in a corner with her back to the water. Handsome salt-and-pepper hair like her son’s. A grey silk sweater set and black skirt, eyebrows arching elegantly above the deep shadow of her brow. Hello, Mother, Eugene says, kissing her on the cheek. This is Gwen.

  Hello, Gwen. Mrs. Kerr leans a wine menu card against a vase. I think this must be in Russia, don’t you, Eugene? They have silver forests in Russia. Who’s having what? Anyone for a Bloody Mary? says Eugene. René doesn’t look at Gwen, not even sideways. Where do you live, Gwen?

  Here, actually.

  She looks up. Here in the city?

  So he hasn’t told her. I live with Eugene, she says.

  Mrs. Kerr looks shocked, as if she’d only now noticed that her son’s companion has two heads. The honey locusts on the card form a sort of groved dell; licks of new grass spring in the spotlighted area. Early lady’s slippers.

  You’re a student of Eugene’s then, are you, Gwen?

  I was. All I have left for my degree now is my thesis. There’s so much on down here, in the theatre I mean. I stumbled on some actors in the park; I’d love to work with them. They can’t pay anything, but they’re very Brecht and…

  Mrs. Kerr is not listening. She’s checking today’s Chronicle folded by her side plate. Suddenly Gwen knows it was his mother Eugene was talking to on the phone that first night she drove out to Deep Cove. Eugene pulls the paper over as if he and his mother are involved in a conversation that’s been going on for years. The two of them ignore their dinners—very nice too, crab for Eugene, steak tartar for René—Gwen picks up her knife and fork and starts in on her veal scallopini.

  How’s the job hunting going, Eugene? says his mother. There must be dozens of colleges who would love to get their hands on you.

  He smiles at her gratefully. I’m working on it Mother.

  Afterward in the car, Gwen turns to him. Your mother’s beautiful.

  She is, isn’t she? Nice too.

  Gwen’s quiet the rest of the way home. She can tell his mother expected him to do better. Somebody who’d be on a par with him. Somebody American.

  A couple of weeks later, they undertake a civil ceremony at a Justice of the Peace office, and Gwen sends her parents a candid camera shot taken by a stranger. In the weeks that follow, Eugene’s not home much, but getting the meals and going to the laundromat doesn’t take that much time; it’s fun being at the market with a basket over her arm, shaking bunches of parsley. As long as she has mornings to herself. She does have a thesis to write. She’s nervous before he’s due home, though, in case she’s bought the wrong thing, like the time she bought turquoise and chartreuse paisley sheets that she could see in his eyes were all wrong. Evidently sheets are meant to be plain cotton with so many threads to the square inch. He’d stood by the bed, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and finger, frowning at her.

  The night they climb over the juniper hills of Lafayette Park and down to Pacific Heights to visit René, her mother-in-law hands her stalks of gladioli to put in a crystal vase. She feels like the ugly duckling when it was spotted by the swans. Sometimes, after she and Eugene make love, she finds herself in tears of appreciation that his mother brought him into existence in the first place. I like Eugene, her mother’d said, the night she brought him home for dinner. Even if he is a bit out of our class. Speak for yourself, Gwen’d thought at the time. She’s not so sure of herself now.

  On the way back from shopping one afternoon, she sees him in a bar talking to a man who’s silent when he’s introduced. After the man gets up to go to the bathroom, Eugene explains he’s a student in one of the new courses he’s teaching at the Arts Academy; they were discussing his program when she’d plunked herself down and interrupted. I’m sorry, she says and leaves. There’s all kinds of protocol she doesn’t understand. Half the time, she doesn’t even know when she’s stepped over the line.

  Later that evening, she tells him that she wasn’t on an ordinary walk. She’d been to the doctor, and she’s pregnant. Think of it. A small smile down there mirroring her own. Who cares if she puts the rug back at the wrong angle after she vacuumed? Flung pine nuts and sage into the cheese tortellini without thinking about the flavours? Soon she’ll evolve into a swollen balloon with flat cardboard feet that no one can push over because it’ll whap right back up.

  Dear Mom and Dad, It’s good to hear you two are going to the Cariboo together this year. My big news is that we’re pregnant. We’re thrilled, and I bet you are too, eh? Eugene’s teaching work is going well; and I still love San Francisco.

  The first three months, she’s queasy and her breasts hurt. The fourth month, she feels better and says maybe she could get a bit of subbing work to build up their coffers for later when she’ll be looking after the baby. She folds back the paper. Eugene, did you know that immediately after the Japanese surrendered in World War II, Vietnam declared independence? They had no idea the French would try to take over. She looks up. Well, why wouldn’t they? There was all that rubber.

  One day, she’s called in to teach at Mission High School which turns out to be a white spacious building with a domed tower, lots of black and Hispanic kids. Her class—a double block of English and Socials—saunter in nonchalantly as if they don’t mind going through the motions of being students. Is she the sub? She walks around the room looking at their work. These look interesting, she says. Book reviews, eh?

  Eh? Are you Canadian? Yeah, we have to do our good copy, eh?

  Good copy? Isn’t that the routine of writing the same paper in better handwriting? How about an actual improvement?

  Like what?

  Find somewhere you’ve made a generalization and give us a detail. If you were writing about someone and said “she was insane,” does that create a picture in your mind?

  Not really.

  But if you said “she plucked at her hair as if she heard something in it”? A light bulb goes on in the reader’s mind, ah, she’s a bit bonkers.

  A bit bonkers. Is that Canadian?

  Flannery O’Conner wrote that I think, someone like that. Sometimes you can’t remember where you read things. Everyone’s talking about Vietnam these days, aren’t they? She sits on top of a desk in front of the room, surprisingly at home. Why are we over there anyway?

  We already did this in world affairs, Mrs. Kerr. Let’s do something fun, a boy in the back row says belligerently. The US has to fight in Vietnam to keep communism from spreading, he goes on. Otherwise, Russia and Communist China are going to get the power and nuke us. The North Vietnamese are controlled by Russia and China, and they give the Vietcong lots of munitions. He says this measure by measure, as if parodying what another teacher said. Then he laughs nervously and looks around.

  Do both the us and Russia have nuclear weapons now? Gwen asks.

  They think so.

  So Russia could set of
f a bomb whether we’re in Vietnam or not?

  It could.

  Someone else says it would be better to pull out, find a way to keep the peace. And they’re off: hands up all over the place. People turn in their seats to look at those answering from the back. They look at each other for acknowledgement, and she realizes that any moment the discussion could collapse into their own agenda of trying to ascertain who likes who and all the rest of it. Keep it going, she says to herself. This is the hard part. She leaps in again. Did you know that Vietnam’s been at war since the French occupation, back to 1890? Why would the French want to be in Vietnam in the first place, class? Why would one country want to control another? Go to war over things?

  Economics, power, says the same boy in the back. Why was she bothering, his look says. She persists anyway. Say we’re in that country, and we’re flying over. A lot of bombing noises, rrrrraaaattttt—boys still make those noises even if they’re fifteen? There would have been village after village and endless rice fields, right? During the French colonization period, the French and a few privileged Vietnamese replaced miles of jungle with rubber trees. Maybe there’s a French businessman here who has an idea about how to make a lot of money. Does he make a lot of money? says the same boy from the back swaggering down the aisle. I’ll be that guy. He plunks himself in the teacher’s chair, puts his feet up on the desk. She steps to the side of the room.

  What’s your plan, Sir? What’s your business plan?

  I’m going to import a lot of rubber and sell it at a profit. I’ll get a bunch of peasants to work for me cheap. I’m going to be a rich man and buy me a Cadillac.

  What about the people here working the rubber plantations? How do they feel? Are there workers here? A few hands go up.