Red Girl Rat Boy Part 12

The neighbours Julie encountered in the elevator and by the mailbox were mostly retirees with little dogs, or young singles. Once just heading out of the lobby was a bald man in crisp s.h.i.+rt and shorts who held a placard, Out of Vietnam Now! Wasn't that an American war? He strode away. Was he old? Seeking other mums, she pushed James's stroller along the concrete walkway by Sunset Beach.

At the inadequate corner grocery she met the queers. Sam held back at first while Curly warned her never to buy the ground beef, but soon all three were picking through the faded vegetables together. Walking back, they smiled at the towers' palatial names.

One morning in The Buckingham's laundry room, Julie was giving James his bottle while waiting for the dryer to finish.

An old woman came in and smiled at the baby. "It is my lucky day! Mostly the people here have these foolish dogs. But you do not breast-feed? Is best."

Julie explained the theory of parents sharing equally in baby care. Under-thoughts about Jeremy rushed counter to her words.

In her tailored maroon dress, Mrs. Schatz moved about briskly, high heels clicking. Her wrinkles broke into new webs when she looked at James.

"So, how you like it here?" she asked. "What floor?"

The Schatzes lived on the view side of the eleventh.

"We will drink coffee. My husband will enjoy to see James. Also I invite Mr. Alexander, on the sixth. He appreciates art."

Before that happened, Julie met Sam and Curly again. This was at Sunset Beach, in the pause when the bridge's lamps begin to reflect on the greying water yet daylight still hovers over False Creek, stippling the waves pink or apricot.

Under a fine rain they ambled talking along the pebbled sands. James, held in his Snugli against Julie's warmth, kept tilting his head back to get the drops on his face. He smiled. So did Curly and Sam and Julie.

"How did you meet?" she asked as they left the beach. The bridge lamps were now shedding gold circles on the salty darkness.

The men exchanged looks and snickered, snapping the Venetians down. Both spoke. At last Curly managed, "We'd both been around enough to know what we wanted. We were ready."

As Julie with James rode up in the air she thought how the magazines said things just like that about deciding in the right way to get married.

"Where've you been? You're soaked. No umbrella again?"

She described their pleasant walk.

Jeremy made a face. "Queers are useless. That's why I don't like them."

"Is a tax accountant useless?"

"Who does Fatty work for? Other queers? And what does Pretty Boy do?'

Julie quit, though in fact Curly was the numbers guy and Sam the waiter.

"We need to get out. This isn't what I had in mind." He shoved a newspaper at her and stood waiting by the door into the master.

After skimming Houses Julie studied Furnished Suites. Some buildings said Small child accepted. What size might that be? How could she pay? She perused Board & Room. Water dripped off her hair on to the baby's smile.

"Nothing today."

The door closed. Shut out.

Now Julie did feel changed, though she still waited greedily for Jeremy to come to bed. Sometimes he slept on the sofa.

Time went on being.

James grew bigger, bigger. With pain he acquired teeth. He looked about, inquiring. He shook and pulled at his playpen's bars. Visiting the eleventh floor, he demonstrated how he would crawl soon.

Mr. Schatz chuckled. "He reminds me."

Julie silently ached to ask Of whom?

"Today Mr. Alexander is tired. He fights cancer," his wife sighed. She pointed at the tiny poppyseed pastries veiled in powdered sugar. "His favourites." For James she had baked rusks.

"He also is exile by a war," said her husband.

From the Schatzes' windows, the distant Olympic Mountains s.h.i.+mmered aquamarine. The stereo was playing cla.s.sical. Nearer, Mount Baker shone like pearl. Victoria was clouded in drifts of white, invisible.

On leaving, Julie felt revulsion at the prospect of entering the apartment where she lived. She pressed James's thumb on L for Lobby.

By the mailboxes stood the bald man. He held a map.

"An impossible city," he said. "Vancouver's a simple place, the mountains are always north. Even New York's mostly a grid."

He was Julie's age. So thin in his sharply pressed Bermudas, paler even than bone. The map showed London, England.

"Are you going there?"

"Paris too. New York on the way back, if I'm not arrested." He tucked the map into a travel agent's folder. "See the galleries one more time."

"Are you Mr. Alexander?"

"Gary."

"Julie. This is James."

"Dear Mrs. Schatz," he said, "always wanting to feed me. Their sadness is unbearable, but I'll see them before I go."

"I hope you have a good time." What else could be said?

"Thank you." He inspected the baby. "Such sharp teeth! A little animal. So Julie, where are you off to?"

After a moment she said, "I have no idea."

Gary's eyebrows went up. "Better get one! Up and down, to and fro, then suddenly it's all over."

They shook hands warmly.

Soon after this, Jeremy began again about the oral contraceptive.

"You have to. We can't risk it. I insist."

Three things just like that with no breath between.

"You know it makes me sick." In disbelief she heard the shaking voice.

"Then I won't have s.e.x with you."

After that there was only the morning dialogue before he departed for office or court.

"Will you?"

"No." Again, again. "No." Julie gripped James so he howled and shoved his head into her armpit.

In the mirror, her lipstick looked wrong for the face she had now.

She still longed for s.e.x with that changed man. Or had the persons called Julie & Jeremy not ever recognized each other? Had two others used their names to get married? She winced.

Daily his mother pushed James for hours through the West End to see the lines of bright windows in high-rises, low-rises, and to imagine their views. The Buckingham, later, seemed like nowhere she'd visited before.

Gary had reached London now, to stand alert in front of paintings. On the postcard he sent, a stern man wore olive and brown. Why was he painted? She did not show the card to Jeremy.

Mrs. Schatz said, "That is Bacon."

James stayed with her once while Julie went out to walk alone, a novelty. Along Denman and Davie she examined closely what was on offer in each store window.

On her return the child's lips were red with happy jam.

"Must he go?" asked Mr. Schatz. Julie didn't tell that either.

Every day she and Jeremy did the dialogue.

Every day she feared saying, "All right, I'll do it."

And his loud voice shook. "I'm never having s.e.x with you." Was the a.s.sertion wearing thin? Fear grew. She tried to imagine telling this. Who could hear? Mum, unthinkable. Her high school friends in Victoria knew nothing, were only engaged. In that too she'd led the way.

One morning Julie was so terrified that she pulled a dress over her head and gathered up James and went barefoot down to the beach.

The tide was ebbing; the water went west in a silver rush. The baby she held strove to move freely. Every pebble had a different shape. They hurt her feet. Why had she got married? When would Gary die? A dog chased sticks, plunged in and out of the water, shook rainbows. Julie waded. Cold first, then refres.h.i.+ng. She held James so his toes dangled in the waves. He kicked, chuckled. A long time went by, a short time.

Back at the palace, Julie pressed B and prayed.

She was folding her husband's socks.

"How is Mr. Beautiful?" Mrs. Schatz inspected Julie. "Rose is a good colour for you. Also it is a shade never out of style. But you do not wear shoes today?"

"In a hurry." Julie couldn't articulate.

"To leave. I see." Mrs. Schatz's manicured fingers stroked James's hair, tenderly. "Sometimes is best."

Julie carried the wicker laundry-basket out to the elevator.

"Thank you, my dear. You know where to find me." Today her smart outfit was in navy. Every curl lay in place. How could she and Gary look so neat?

Julie whispered, "I do."

"Be careful," said Mrs. Schatz, and disappeared.

Jeremy had gone to his work.

James banged and grumbled in his pen while Julie did hers. With Dutch Cleanser on a toothbrush she toured the base of the toilet. At the sink, her Q-tip winkled out guerilla dirt-specks crouching where faucet met porcelain. She emptied the medicine cabinet, washed each gla.s.s shelf. A hand took up a remnant disk of The Pill. Seven/pink, twenty-one/blue, each pellet snug in its cell. Then the other hand held a gla.s.s of water.

"Can't risk it," she told James, who screamed from behind his bars. "We must be careful."

Soon Julie visited her doctor. Graciously he renewed her prescription but gave her a critical look.

Jeremy asked later, "Can't you even b.u.t.ton your blouse right?"

The card Mr. Alexander sent the Schatzes from Paris showed a sculpture of a pregnant goat. She looked l.u.s.tful and witty.

Mrs. Schatz said, "He says he will go home very soon. His lady-friend from before has a place in Ithaca, New York. He can be ill there."

War, love, art, cancer. How did someone her age get such a history?

Though swallowing eagerly, Julie still defied her husband. His daily shouts seemed an omen of rape. Were they both crazy? She had no answers, only a baby.

In James's room stood a chaise longue for night feedings. Julie now slept there. Once crying woke her, but James was asleep, her own cheeks dry. Another time, getting up to pee, she saw Jeremy p.r.o.ne on the sofa. Their own double bed was smooth, its pillows plump. None of this could appear in any magazine.

Julie took James to visit her old workplace.

Wanting to look well, she wore her rose dress. Its length was out of style, she saw on reaching the office.

Julie told various lies while she and the girls had their happy time catching up in the coffee-room, the table a cosy dither of cookies and doughnuts and James's applesauce. Julie's replacement was friendly. They giggled together over the manager's limited Dictaphone skills.

He himself was amiable, tickling her boy under the chin. "You got a really important job here, Julie!"

Then the girls must get back to work.

The bus stop was across the road that once led to sunny Kits bach. Headache. Exhaustion. No umbrella. The bus was slow to arrive, slow crossing the bridge. James squalled and flailed as they neared The Buckingham, not the right place, Julie knew that at least, though in the downpour she couldn't find her keys, scrabbled in her purse again, couldn't, was spiralling into a tizzy when Sam and Curly appeared.

"Come up to our place."

The Kensington's murals showed Mediterranean waters of a sultry indigo not possible to imagine in English Bay.

"What's in The Windsor's lobby, I wonder?"

"We got in, to look. South-west," Curly answered. "Reds, pinks."

"Your elevator's quiet too," Julie remarked.

"Yes. Hard to tell if it's up or down."

As they started along the hall, Sam gestured towards their door but stopped himself. "Of course you know your way, Julie!"