That first night we spent together, I told Leland a lot of things, but never this dream, one that I had over and over again before I met him. The dream unfolds on a cobblestone street in an ancient town, not a city, somewhere in Europe. I am older, in my seventies, wearing a long filmy gown, a flowing India print perhaps, cool and comfortable and appropriate for the season and the place. I am walking along with a man I’ve known a long time, taking him to my home for a visit. We are, for the first time in years, at peace with each other. My partner has died. But I am at peace.
When I first glimpsed this cobblestone street in my dreams, I thought that the man beside me was my ex-husband, the father of my children. But in truth, he did not live to be an old man, he was too careless for that. When the street first appeared in my dreams, I didn’t even know Leland, and though I’d met Gray, I didn’t like him very much at all. And after that first night with Leland, I never dreamed that dream again, not once. Funny how things turn out.
When the dream comes true, it’s Leland and me, walking slowly, stately, through these ancient streets together, toward the modest little house where Gray lived out his final years with me. Leland and I sit together outside on the little beflowered deck that overlooks the sea, in the cool sunshine and salt breeze. I am wearing a long filmy dress of local manufacture, in soft fabric and soft colours. I have always wanted to dress like a gypsy and at last I can. Leland and I have a glass together and a quiet meal at the cafe down the road. And at bedtime (which comes at dusk, because we both are old) we embrace without passion and retire to our separate bedrooms. He is self-conscious about the bag concealed beneath the waistband of his trousers, and I of the diagonal scar where my breast used to be. But in the night I leave the bed I shared with Gray and pad barefoot down the hall to him, to Leland. And nestle against him like I used to, so many years ago.
Mister Sunshine finally called a few days before Christmas as she was preparing a bath. Was contrite, said, “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t expect to like you so much. I had this kind of porno fantasy about some rich bored housewife and I just — it was as if I couldn’t reconcile what I’d imagined with what I actually encountered.”
Janet listened, holding the phone to her ear, remembering the night she’d had dinner at the cabin with him, how she’d gestured to the piles of manuscript pushed to one side of the table, saying, “Yes, it’s a novel I’m working on. And it’s like a relationship in that I’m at the stage where the initial infatuation is over, and now I actually have to say, ‘okay this is gonna work or it isn’t’ and go on to the next stage. The next draft.”
She thanked Ray for the call, wished him a Merry Christmas and hung up the phone. She continued with her bath. It was late; Eric in bed, Matthew out with his girlfriend. She lay in the tub — the citrus verbena aroma of bath salts, the minor key of a Bach Adagio on the boombox, the glow of tea lights, her own body, its curves and furrows and blemishes and smoothness, its beauty and imperfection. What was missing that night, for probably the first time she could remember, was the male watcher in her mind, the one who admires and comments, who praises and disapproves. He didn’t show up that night, and she didn’t miss him at all. She was just there in the bath, her ownself, her own body. Just Janet and no one else.
I wrote to him, reader. I’m sure you know by now who I mean. The Englishman, the real writer. And he was lovely. A few emails back and forth, then he suggested a phone conference over “a few details” before he would be willing to grant me permission. Permission? To use — not him, exactly — but suggestions of his identity, in the published book. Time zones were troublesome; my weekday mornings too busy for his afternoons, and by the time I got a break in the action in Calgary, it would be after midnight where he lived. So we settled on a Saturday morning: I was to await his call between nine and nine-thirty.
So I’ve got the coffee on, kids still asleep. I should not have been surprised when the bell that rang was the front door.
I’d been anticipating the voice; now add the grey eyes and the sly smile and well . . . a miracle I got any words out at all. What I managed was, “You bastard! You set me up!”
“Ah,” he said, “the famous flannelette nightie, the tent. I just had to see it with my own eyes.”
I opened the door, set him to work making tea for himself while I dressed and combed my hair, then we sat side by side at the dining room table.
He brought his own copy of the galleys, flagged with post-its, plenty of notes in the margins. He made maybe eight or ten really potent technical points, and I was scribbling like mad, trying to get it all down. Then he said, “Now to the rather more thorny question of content.”
“Please,” I said, “tell me that all of your children are alive and well. That if you do have a mistress, she doesn’t have piercings and dreads. That you’re not going to punch me out — or Jay out, rather — for not liking your best book.”
“Thank you, my children are thriving. My love life will not be adversely affected in any way. And as to the other, well. Everyone is entitled to her opinion, no matter how stupid.”
“I’m glad.”
“No, it’s this. Here. About the sled. This troubles me. I have wracked my brain about it. I cannot understand how you got this.”
“How I got it?”
“This is not public, never has been. I can say with absolute certainty that I have never told this story to a single journalist, ever. A few people close to me, perhaps, but — it matters to me how you found this out. All of us want, I think, to hold back just a few things, in order to keep some of measure of dignity, privacy, sanity even.”
“Jesus — ”
“Oh my.” He registered it then, the look of shock on my face.
“I . . . gave it to you, to Leland I mean, but it’s mine. It is. That’s where I got it. Jay was just yakking away and I needed something for Leland so I gave him the sled story, but it’s mine. It happened to me. When I was little. Though I made up the stitches.”
“Well.”
“Did you have stitches?”
“Yes. Twelve. This is very — ”
“Yes it is.”
He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes. “Strange.”
We fell silent for a while. Then I said, “Listen. There really is a place called Richdale. Could I show it to you? I could take you there. It’s where my imagination comes from. I want you to see it. It’s about a six-hour drive. We could get there before nightfall, but we’d have to stay over in the next town and come back tomorrow. Could you delay your flight? Just for a day?”
He hesitated only a moment. “Yes. I believe I could.”
The phone calls and child care arrangements and dog-feeding instructions were accomplished in just over an hour and we were on our way. We talked very little in the car. The landscape seemed to mesmerize him; he murmured, “Where I come from, a six-hour drive ends you up in Italy.”
“Well here it just barely gets you into the next province.”
It’s a raw day, the wind is chilly, and dusk is threatening to fall as we pull into Richdale. I show him the sledding hill first, then what’s left of the town. The cemetery comes last, just as the light begins to go. We take our time, wandering separately in the small enclosure. He wants to see everything, take everything in. He finds the solitary stone inscribed for “wee Mary” that kicked my first novel into being. It’s over in a windswept corner, and he crouches and runs his hands over the blackened lettering.
I just watch him, mostly. Smelling the sage kicked up by the wind. ’til he finally straightens, tries to pinpoint the horizon. Then he walks over to where I am standing. I bend down, pick a sprig of sage from the earth at my feet. “Hold out your hand,” I say and press it into his palm, close his hand over it and twist it in my own to crush the buds. “Now smell.”
He raises his hand to his face and opens it, inhales. I see it in his eyes. He gets it, now. He knows what I know. The wind’s cold. I shiver, move toward him. “Put your arms around me . . . please.” And he steps close, lifting his hand above my head, as if blessing me. Lets the crushed sage fall, works it into my hair with his fine white hands, then he pulls me close to his chest in the raw wind.
And perhaps, just perhaps, a trucker barrelling down the highway that evening glanced over into the graveyard, and what he saw was a woman standing there all alone. Tossing her head back and laughing with joy, then dancing and waving her arms in the wind. All by herself in the waning light. And maybe he thought to himself, “Crazy broad, headcase.” So what?