That’s how it seemed when they were in university. She was an exchange student from Australia doing her junior year in Fine Arts as a painting major. He was majoring in photography. They had a seminar together, “Food in the Paintings of the Baroque Era,” which they both loved.
He wasn’t sure exactly what he had done to attract her. He was handsome in an unassuming, untidy way, but he wouldn’t have thought so. He had an ungroomed beard and his dark eyes under heavy eyebrows gave him a gruff look.
He was not used to female attention, having gone to an all-male boarding school from age ten. And he was diffident, a late only child with parents so engrossed in one another that he felt he was a basically a distraction to them. His only contact with his mother — his father only came on weekends — was summers at their island cottage up north. Being alone with her in that isolated setting, in deep silent woods by active, glistening water, Thompson learned something about women … or his own intimate version. His mother exuded care, but she was removed and he would watch her move about the cottage, on their walks, while they swam, in awe, as if she were something “other,” a mystical being. She was elegant and gentle and convivial; she treated him not as a son, but as a companion. She never hugged him, but somehow seemed to embrace him in a respectful, solicitous way. She engaged him, seemed interested in his thoughts. What he felt from her was a kind of power, an intelligent, creative, thoughtful power that reinforced his life, but did not enter it. She was unknowable.
So Meredith’s initial undisguised ardor, especially her physical overtures, overwhelmed, but also pleased him. It seemed to require so little effort on his part.
“I’m not used to so much fuss,” he said.
“You just don’t know how to deal with …”
“With …?”
“Love.”
“It’s not anything I ever imagined having.”
She took over his life.
“I’m not sure what you see in me,” he said after a session of particularly fervid sex when Meredith was so loud he was afraid the upstairs tenants, a group of earnest student teachers, would hear.
“I’m not sure, either.”
“Is it because I’m so eloquent?”
She laughed. “No, you only speak when you have something to say …”
“Which isn’t often,” he interjected.
“Which isn’t often. Right. My father is a church minister who never stops talking. He preaches and proselytizes and lectures and tells the same stories over and over and we have to listen, my sister, my mother, and I. We weren’t allowed a voice. All he had to do to get us to shut up was give us a withering, destructive look.
“He was mean?” Thompson asked.
“Oh, no, never! He was … is a gentle, kind man, but he was a stern lecturer and so boring and repetitive. And from early on, I thought what he said was such bullshit! You have no bullshit in you. I … love how grounded you seem. I always feel as if my feet never hit firm ground … as if I’m … not flying … but moving just above the surface of things, never really in contact. I feel a little as if you pin me down.”
“It’s nothing I do,” he said. “Or mean to do.”
“I know. It’s me.”
“With your father the way he was, I mean, a silencer, how did you get to be such …”
“Such a yakker? From him! Once I was out of the house I couldn’t shut up. I think I must be full of bullshit. You haven’t noticed?”
“I’ve noticed!”
“And …?”
“It’s okay. It fills spaces I can’t or don’t want to. And I can tune out.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“I don’t mind.” she replied. “Because it means the pressure’s off me.”
“What pressure?”
“The pressure to keep you amused so you’ll want to be with me.”
“I want to be with you.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said anything.”
“Well, you’ve never wanted to know.”
He senses now that she wants to know. She’s gone into retreat mode which is rare for her. Retreat mode for Meredith means she is distracted, distanced. She doesn’t talk. She goes to bed. The girls put their mouths to her ear and say, “Earth to Mom!”
He is thinking he should be jealous. That would be the reasonable — or unreasonable and instinctive — way to feel. Perhaps he should be enraged. But he just feels sad: sad at his own passivity, that in some way he has failed her, failed her enough that she has heaped her affection — that’s how he sees it — on someone else. Her affection is a loose, lavish, limitless weight. It is not in his nature to ask her what’s wrong. If something is wrong, she’ll tell him. Or so he believes. Either that or he’ll lose her. He feels that actually preventing that is beyond his power. He can only keep loving her as he always has, steadfastly, profoundly, heedfully, and hope it’s enough.
Lizbett enters the kitchen where Meredith is studying a shopping list. She and Thompson have a big contract: a five-page Christmas editorial for RARITY. She says to Lizbett, “Lovely playing, darling.”
“Thanks, Mom. It’s Schubert. It’s really hard.”
“‘The Impromptu Number two in A Flat,’” says Thompson. He is making a pile of toast and peanut butter for the table while he puts together the girls’ lunches. “It sure was hard.”
“Nan-Nan is always telling me how you never practised. How she doesn’t want us to end up like you.”
“I wish I had now.”
“I like your jazzy stuff.”
He leaves the lunch-making and goes into the next room with the piano and plays few vibrant riffs from Ray Bryant.
Meredith looks up. “Sonny! C’mon! Has anybody seen Darce? Isn’t she up yet? Lizbett, go upstairs, please, and get your sleepyhead sister out of bed.”
“Why is she so bad? Do I have to?”
“I already stuck my head in,” says Thompson.
“So did I,” says Meredith.
Lizbett enters her sister’s ocean-blue room with the red plaid curtains and opens them.
“Don’t!” yells Darcy. She buries her dark head in the pillow. Dora, Meredith’s mother, is descended from the “Black Irish” and Darcy has inherited her colouring. When they are open, her eyes are a deep brown, with black lashes — unlike Lizbett’s, whose blond lashes fringe bright green eyes. And Lizbett is pale like her mother. Darcy’s skin is olive.
She is like a sprite. Her family likes to say she is “no bigger than a minute.”
“C’mon, Darce. Mom said. You’ll be late for camp.”
Darcy whimpers, “I don’t