Chapter 8
Meeting The Lover
Tulah’s Snow Journal
Tuesday, June 6, 2008 #388
The snow feels new, as if it’s a first snow in the fall. As if we skipped summer altogether. It is wet and heavy, and beautiful. The weather came from the east and that always means something weird. It’s not unheard-of, but it is strange for it to snow in June. Traffic has stopped and it is so quiet. Every now and then you can hear clumps of snow thumping to the ground, and sometimes, the sound of tree branches breaking under the weight. There are branches down across the city. Some neighbourhoods have lost power. I’ve decided not to worry about my pots. They were on sale. It’s too late to run out there and cover them up. Anyway, I read somewhere that marigolds are resilient little bastards. Not sure about potato vines, and begonias. And the violas I think are not going to do well with this snow cover.
The birds in the trees grin and bear – they must be freaked out. Most people have removed winter tires. Summer tires and all-season tires are useless in this. I can hear tires spinning all over the neighbourhood – people stuck on the side streets. The city waits for the bruised snow clouds to pass and June to force itself into existence.
There are still swatches of snow on the ground, but it’s mostly gone. There’s a story Tulah read once about a snow storm and a bush that usually blossoms in the spring – she can’t recall the kind of bush it was. This bush was budding and about to burst into bloom but a cold snap arrived and the buds died – they disappeared. A few weeks later, the weather warmed up and the buds appeared again. A monk noticed these appearing and disappearing buds and asked the questions – what has happened to those unborn buds? Were the new buds the same as the old ones? It was a story about manifesting and not manifesting. The monk decided the buds were not the same and they were not different. When conditions are sufficient they manifest and when conditions are not they go into hiding. Things wait until the moment is right to manifest. This barely recalled story seems appropriate today because the apple tree in the back yard had just come into bloom before the snow came.
Tulah steps out onto the back deck, which needs to be stained this summer, and looks at her potted plants, and at the apple tree. She takes a sip of coffee and wonders what the tree will do now. Will there be no apples? A few apples? Or will it send out blossoms again?
In the shower, she shaves her legs and does her best to curtail her pubic hair with a dull razor. She writes ‘razors’ on her shopping list, underneath ‘AA batteries.’ She’s going to meet The Lover at a hotel downtown. He’s here for two nights. She’s meeting him at 10 a.m. for coffee. Teachers never get to call in sick. At least not at this school. The night before, Tulah pulls up lesson plans, arranges for a substitute and briefs her substitute by email. She drops the girls with her mom for the day.
In the café, she sits at a corner table near the window. She likes the way the trunks of the trees along the boulevard turn black when they’re wet. It’s been drizzling, on and off, all morning.
A blonde woman sitting at a table near the bar has placed her glasses on the table next to her cappuccino, and she is reading a book. She is alone at the table but Tulah thinks the woman is lonely. There’s something about her posture that seems defeated and isolated.
Outside, a couple hug and kiss and seem genuinely pleased to see each other. The man is wearing a grey tuque. The woman has an umbrella but it is unopened. They come inside and sit at a booth along the far wall. They have to ask for the booth and the waitress seems irritated by this request.
Tulah remembers the first time she met The Lover. It was a year ago in a bar at the airport. She was going to visit her sister in Chicago. He was flying to some country in South America. He’d dropped a book beside her table and she noticed. It was a book of Zen koans. She had no idea what a koan was, but it sounded exotic. She scooped the book from the floor, handed it to him, and he smiled his gratitude.
“I’m always losing this book,” he said. “It’s like it doesn’t want to be with me. It keeps jumping ship.” She can’t place his accent. It makes his ‘b’s bigger than normal but she can’t place it.
“Do you think books have that sort of willpower?”
“No. They only have power.”
“Is this a good book?”
“Third time it’s fallen out of my bag. I’ve been reading it for three years. It’s not the kind of book to read in order. You just open it up…” He handed her the book and she followed his instructions. “Open it up, and flip until you feel like you should stop. Then read that koan.”
Tulah stopped on a koan called: “If You Love, Love Openly.” It was about a group of twenty monks and one nun. The monks and the nun, whose name was Eshun, were practising meditation with a Zen master. Even though her head was shaved and her dress plain, Eshun was quite pretty and several of the monks secretly fell in love with her. One of them wrote her a love letter, asking her to meet with him in private. Eshun did not reply but the following day the Zen master gave a lecture to the group, and when it was over, Eshun stood up. She turned toward the monk who had written to her and said, ‘If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now.’
“I don’t know what to think,” Tulah said.
“Don’t think. Just live with it for a while. See what comes.”
They had drinks. They had more drinks and then they rebooked flights, rearranged schedules, and wound up in a hotel at the airport.
The Lover opened another bottle of champagne and filled her glass.
Tulah was curled between his legs. They fell into each other and lost track of themselves. It was constant and exhausting. They devoured each other, and the champagne. And then more champagne. She took possession of him because he was so willingly hers. He surrendered and it was as if everything he was became part of her being. She had a penis and testicles, and her arms were covered by tattoos – her right arm a snarling bear, and her left, a haloed Mary – the mother of Jesus, holding a haloed baby Jesus. These tattoos stopped just above his wrists; when he wore a suit there were no visible tattoos.
She knew this sudden sexual joining with The Lover was not public and it would never be public. It was not the open embrace Eshun was demanding of her smitten monk. It was all about secrets and deception and lies.
A little after 3 a.m. he leaned up in the bed. “I am a little in love with you, Eshun.”
“That was fast,” Tulah said. But it was what she was feeling too. And his voice was her voice anyway, so she was saying it to herself. “And this is insane. You know that, right?”
“Do you think love can be slowed down?” The Lover asked. “Do you think it sticks to a schedule? Do you think it behaves like a good brown dog?”
“No,” Tulah said. “Of course, not.”
“You know that love is insane, always. It’s a mad dog. It’s a form of insanity.”
“Good. I have a steady supply of insanity. I get it from Mexico. I have a guy who sells it to me in a baggie.”
“Yes? What’s his name?”
“Jesús,” Tulah said. “His name is Jesús.”
The Lover brushed her thigh with his fingertips and Tulah shivered. He nibbled her neck, and she let her legs fall open like a sigh. “Jesus,” she said. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the donkey.”
For a while, Tulah becomes more sexual. She enjoys her body. She meets The Lover, sporadically and with little difficulty. She arranges time because it feels good to indulge this desire. She does not question its importance. She does not want to think about what it means to have a lover. For a few hours, they are everything and anything to each other, and then she goes back to her life. And he goes back to his life.
Tulah finds that she wants Ray while this is going on. She salivates when she thinks about making love with him. The walls to their lovemaking disappear. She no longer cares about anything but pleasure – giving it, and receiving it. She feels closer to Ray, happy with him, happy with their life.
Tulah does not think about The Lover. She does not yearn. She does not crave more of him. She denies him. She creates a complex and delusional room, and she only goes there minutes before, during, and scant minutes after meeting The Lover. Beyond their liaisons, she denies all thoughts about him, every memory, and even his name. Someone will say his name – not naming The Lover, but rather, someone with the same name as his, and Tulah will be surprised. The utterance of his name will shock her because she will remember his body, her pleasure, and it comes too quickly for her to deny. It gets past her defences. She will lose her way in the conversation. People will ask her if she’s okay.
The Lover shows up, ten minutes late.
“Traffic,” he says. “Everything is backed up. They’re pruning trees at the end of the block and half the road is blocked.”
“The snow brought down a lot of branches,” she says.
“Hell of a thing.”
“Yes. God’s way of making the trees stronger.”
“Do the trees really get stronger?”
“This is what I understand,” she says.
“Part of God’s plan?”
“A consequence of weather.”
“Not God?”
“It’s just an idiomatic quirk. It’s just the weather,” she says.
They have a glass of wine. He seems distracted. He can’t seem to look at her and Tulah asks if he’s okay.
“It’s been a long week,” he says.
“It’s Tuesday,” Tulah says, giggling a little.
“Work is difficult right now.” He stops. “But we don’t talk about stuff like this. Tell me something you care about right now. Tell me about what you’re reading. Let’s have another glass of wine.”
They swing into a banter that is serious but avoids anything resembling the routines of their daily lives. But she senses something is wrong. This meeting has none of the joyful dance. It seems forced and prodded. As if this affair, which is supposed to be an escape from the reality of their lives into something only about pleasure and bliss, has become an obligation. They make love in his hotel room with afternoon light slanted through the windows. It seems as if they’ve just begun when The Lover stops and rolls to his side and looks at her. “Do you know what Chaucer called this?”
“My vagina?” she says. She’s confused.
“Yes. In his Canterbury Tales he called it la belle chose. It means the pretty thing, or the lovely thing.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t know. I just remembered it and thought you ought to know, if you didn’t already know.”
“I didn’t know,” she says. “But my belle chose would like some attention just now.”
Afterward, she does not feel weightless – like the times before this one – but rather, weighed down. She looks at The Lover. He is dressing, slowly, as if he is deep in thought. He picks up his coat, kisses her on the cheek and pauses. He sits at the end of the bed.
“Do you ever feel depressed?”
“Depressed? Yes. Sometimes.”
“What do you do about it?”
“Are you depressed, my dear? I’m sorry. I thought something was off. I’ve been thoughtless.”
“No. I’m fine. I’m just tired. I was wondering about you.”
“Oh. Well, yes. Sometimes I get depressed.” She wonders why he’s asking.
“And how do you handle it?”
“I count my blessings. I drink a glass of champagne that I can barely afford. I watch my daughters sleep. I get up in the morning and smile and breathe and move forward.”
“Does this happen often?”
Tulah smiles. “Do you mind me asking why you’re curious about this?”
“I just wondered. I have a sister…I have a sister who struggles with darkness.”
“Darkness? Darkness is not what I’d call my depression. I have periods of time when grey is everything. Nothing is defined. Everything is dull and grey. Which is different than darkness, I think.”
“Yes. Darkness is more serious. A bigger thing.”
“Is your sister okay?”
“Most of the time. It comes and goes.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister…”
“I have to get going,” he says, standing up.
When he is gone, Tulah looks at the shadows on the wall. She thinks about the lightness of a shadow – she would like to be a shadow of something beautiful – comprised of the absence of light, the negative of mass, the ephemeral shape of something solid.
They put the girls to bed and meet on the front deck. It’s cool and humid. The snow has dragged the temperature down and even though it’s mostly melted, it’s still chilly. Tulah puts on a khaki green jacket and Ray finds a grey sweater at the back entrance – it’s grey and ripped at its armpits but he can’t bear to throw it out.
“I do not understand this woman,” Tulah says. “She won’t let it go. I mean school is done for the year. You’d think she’d give it a rest.”
Ray smiles. He has no idea what she’s talking about.
Tulah can see his confusion. “That woman who wants creation taught in a science class,” she says.
“Oh, her,” Ray says. “What’s she doing, besides being irrelevant?”
“She’s presenting at the next School Board meeting. They’re giving her ten minutes.”
“And?”
“And it’s horrifying. This woman is going to spew her bullshit, flawed logic as fact and it will sound sane, because she’s just a caring mom. And more importantly, she will make it seem harmless.”
“And if she breaks it down to the unanswerable question of what was there before the Big Bang?”
“She won’t. For her, it was God. It was all God. Everything is God. God is the way and the answer to everything. This makes me want to drink. What do we have?”
“There’s a bottle of pinot-something in the fridge but I can’t remember how long it’s been there.”