One
Anun’s cell: this is what Clemence had been expecting. She’d signed the lease on the basis of blurry photos with resolution so low it was hard to make out the details. Astudio flat with a meagre kitchen comprising a mini fridge and a hot plate all at the top of a tumbling-down house off Roncesvalles Avenue in a neighbourhood described as “in transition.” She’d have her own bathroom, at least, though the bathtub had no shower, but she has visions of washing her hair in that tub, pouring tepid water over her head from a chipped ceramic jug. She even has the jug, one of the few things she has brought with along from her old life, packed in a box in her best friend Jillian’s cherry-red Audisuv.
Jillian’s car is parked down on the street, and Clemence can see it from the window, that one small window she’d noted when she’d first seen the ad. Mostly insufficient for natural light, not to mention ventilation. Because whylive in an attic that wasn’t fusty and stale? It’s the spirit of the thing, and Clemence has become intent upon spirit, intent upon making deliberate and meaningful choices, coming—as she is—off the tail end of nearly a decade during which little meant much or was deliberate at all.
But the balcony—Clemence had not been forewarned. The ad had given no hint, and the photos must have been taken at the worst time of day, conveying nothing of how the room would be filled with light filtered through French doors, the white walls adorned with prism rainbows, and how the balcony itself was tucked into the ripe boughs of a maple.
“It feels like a treehouse,” says Jillian, who’d been put off by the squalor at first, but is starting to come around. “You’ll be living in a treehouse.” And Clemence considers this, its precedent, as her heart sinks. The Berenstain Bears, and Swiss Family Robinson. No, a treehouse isn’t in keeping with the spirit of the thing at all. This attic is far from the one she had in mind, and perhaps it’s not too late to flag the mistake, to turn around and run.
But where would Clemence go? She has been staying in the spare room at her friend Naomi’s condo in Liberty Village, but Naomi’s parents are flying in from Japan tonight. And Naomi is the only person Clemence knows in the city with a spare room, because most people’s apartments and condos are too small for such things, and everyone who owns an actual house has filled their extra rooms with children.
Which is why it had been so hard to find the listing in the first place. Abasic furnished room, Clemencehad supposed, quite naively, would be easy to come by. She wasn’t asking for much, certainly for nothing like luxury or comfort. But it turned out that all these big, old houses—places where, decades before, working men and maiden aunts were able to make their lives in modest rented rooms—were being converted back into single-family dwellings. On this very street, three houses each feature a dumpster out front, evidence of this societal shift occurring before her eyes. And Clemence wonders how long this house will remain a holdout—Mrs. Yeung, the landlady, could easily sell and pocket two million, or maybe less because the place needs work, but the building has good bones. Clemence can feel it. The maple tree outside is swaying in the breeze, but the house is solid, as it has been for well over a century.
“Ithought you were a man,” Mrs. Yeung had declared upon greeting Clemence on the porch that afternoon. “Your name. It’s a man’s name.” She said, “Idon’t usually rent rooms to women. Too much drama.”
And this is another reason why Clemence has to stay, why she isn’t going to flee down the stairs and out the door, away from the balcony and all that gorgeous light, not a ray of which she deserves. Clemence doesn’t want to live up to Mrs. Yeung’s worst expectations. The spirit of the thing also is to prove—to her landlady, to everyone—that she is not like all those other female characters, that she herself is a sensible person.Becoming, finally, is the point of this exercise.
Jillian is walking around now, peering at the nearly right angle where the wall and ceiling meet. “It’s reallynot so bad,” she says. The whole way up the stairs, they’d been overwhelmed by the smell of other people’s meals, mixed with the cloying scent of lemon cleaner. “It’s not bad at all.”
“Iknow,” says Clemence, disappointed.
And Jillian hears it in her tone, turns her attention back to her friend, comes over to put an arm around her shoulders. They stare out the French doors together, out to where the tree is lush and verdant in all its June glory. “Idon’t understand why you’re punishing yourself,” Jillian tells her. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Clemence says, “Well, a little bit.” She doesn’t want to be pandered to. She needs to know that she’s strong enough to take it.
“Yeah, okay,” Jillian says. “But don’t drag it out forever. You don’t need to be a martyr, Imean. How does that help anyone?”
“I’m not a martyr,” says Clemence. “It’s more like a shift, a journey. I’m thinking of it as research.”
“For, like,My Year of Living Grimly?”
Clemence says, “I’m going to have to think of a better title, but I’ve certainly got time.”
Six weeks have passedsince Clemence’s marriage exploded, or, more accurately, since Clemence exploded her marriage, accidentally on purpose, by being discovered by her husband, Toad, in bed with Larry and Lisa, the couple next door with a fondness for tanning beds and leopard print. And afterward, a normal person, a goodperson, would have been able to explain to Toad that it had been a mistake, a one-time thing, except it had been happening for months. Clemence had even orchestrated Toad’s discovery, timing it right down to the minute she knew she’d hear his key in the door. Agood person, afterward, would also have been able to promise her husband, “It’s not you, it’s me.” To tell him she’d just been looking for something different, something to spice up their lukewarm love life … except Toad was the problem in its entirety. Clemence hadn’t even liked being in bed with Larry and Lisa, which in its physicality was basically overwhelming and confusing, like having sex with an octopus, but sex with Toad was so much worse.
And maybe she had always known. This is the part she feels guiltiest about. Clemence still remembers the first time she’d gone out with Toad, walking down the street, arm in arm, listening to his grating voice, and thinking,At some point I’m going to have to find a way to get out of this. But she never did, because it was easier not to, because their bodies fit, because Toad was tall enough for her to lay her head against his chest when he wrapped his arms around her, and she’d listen to his heartbeat, her fondness for its solid consistency more than making up for the fact that he never made hers leap at all. Or so she thought. She hoped.
Clemence wrote for wedding magazines, and being one half of a couple had been the goal for as long as she could remember, and maybe this could be enough to build a life upon—certainly others had done more with less—and Clemence crossed her fingers and kept hopingas things progressed, as she moved into his place, and they got married, and bought a house, the years adding up. Through all of this, Clemence feeling as though she was playing a part, and she wondered if maybe everyone felt like this in love, but nobody had the nerve to admit it.
Everything changed on that evening last July, almost a year ago now, when Toad arrived home after work, the slam of the door and slap, one, two, of his shoes hitting the wall as he shook them off, the same sounds he brought home every single day. And Clemence did what she always did, which was brace herself to be in his presence—Toad was petty, boring, and small-minded, but so benignly that she couldn’t even be mad about it—and then she realized that she would be listening for these sounds and bracing for the rest of her life. Which could turn out to be a long time, if she was lucky, something she hadn’t properly understood when she got married at age twenty-five, a point up to which she’d basically been measuring time in four-year increments. Getting married had simply been the next step, and it would have been unnatural to resist her life unfolding in that direction, to not go with the flow.
But the flow was untenable, she’d finally realized, and now how was she supposed to bring that to Toad’s attention? He really had no idea. Toad had spent their marriage quite sure that everybody’s wife was periodically reticent and hostile; supposing it went with the territory, which meant he permitted Clemence her space, and she liked it that way, or so she thought—until she started actually fighting with him and he didn’t notice.
“Do you realize that Ihaven’t said a word to you in three days?” she asked him one evening, finally cracking under the strain. He didn’t see her. He never listened to her. Sometimes she’d look for her reflection in the mirror just to confirm that she existed.
“Ithought it seemed quiet,” Toad answered, not looking up from his phone.
It was in September, however, after the publishing conglomerate Clemence had worked for her entire career went bust and she was laid off and started hanging around the house all day, that things started getting out of hand. The weather was still warm, and she’d see Larry and Lisa having breakfast on their little back deck just over the railing from hers, kind as ever, their oiled skin like leather. Soon they’d invited her to join them, have their coffees all together, for a soak in their hot tub, one thing leading to another, and Clemence had been so bored and desperate for something to happen, for any excuse not to keep travelling down the same road forever that she’d gone off course, veering straight into Larry and Lisa’s jungle.
Those months had been a strange, unreal time, and she’d felt as though she were someone else altogether, watching it all from outside of her body. Like she was a character in a book, and she kept turning the pages to see what happened next, everything leading to the inevitable climax, to the day Toad would come home to find her in their bed with the neighbours, because there would be no going back after that.
But when it finally happened, there had been no relief, because Toad was so devastated, which she’d notanticipated. And it was infuriating, too—that she’d had to go this far to move him, to actually get through to him. He’d started crying, which knocked Larry and Lisa right off their game, though they’d quickly pulled it together, asking him to join them, but Toad had already collapsed into the fetal position—sonot sexy. They’d gathered their loincloths and tiptoed out around the heap of Toad in the bedroom doorway, still weeping. Wailing that he hadn’t seen it coming, that this might possibly destroy him. Though maybe, he supposed—he was moving through all the emotions, and here he’d found hope—they might be able to salvage things. Toad paused to snort, and then suggested they go back to counselling, or take a holiday. Maybe the whole throuple deal, he said, was something Clemence needed to get out of her system, and could be something they’d pursue together. Toad was willing to be adventurous. He could change. Do whatever it took to get them out of this rut. He would do it, he said.
So Toad loved her! He really loved her! And he was even willing to fight for her—but it was so far from enough.
Clemence told him straight. “Ithink it’susthat Ineed to get out of my system.” They were over, they should’ve never even started, and she was most disappointed in herself for dragging Toad into this life in the first place when she’d never been properly invested. Could she learn to trust herself and follow her instincts after having steered her life so wrong?
• • •
