“Iguess.” Clemence won’t, but then one never knowswhat’s around the corner, where she might end up flying to next.
“You like the air conditioner?” her landlady asks. Useless in the corner.
“Yes, Imean—” She hadn’t asked for it, in principle it ran counter to her desires, and it didn’t even function.
Mrs. Yeung says, “Ibought it for you.”
This is oddly moving, though. “Thanks.”
Mrs. Yeung says, “You tell your friend that you’ve got someone looking out for you. Some people who aren’t too busy with work. You tell her.”
Though what Clemence tells Naomi in the end, via text message, is thank you, and that she’s doing okay. Naomi’s love language is sending deliveries of outlandish things, and now because of her gift, even without the pomelo, Clemence has another week before she’s at risk of getting scurvy. She’s still buying tinned meats from the miserable lady in the grocery store, who hasn’t warmed to Clemence as much as she’s ceased to be so actively hostile, but Clemence counts this as progress.
“And Ihave a job interview this week for an indexing gig,” she reports in a follow-up text to Naomi who, Clemence knows, has been feeling guilty since bailing on a lunch date the week before. Hence the Edible Arrangement. And it feels good to have news to report, just to keep everybody’s worries at bay. It’s strange that during the years Clemence was miserable, nobody was concerned, but now that she’s broken free, everyone seems to be on her case.
• • •
When she meets Jillianby the Christie Pits playground the next day, takeout coffees in hand, Jillian already knows about the job interview. Naomi told her. Her friends are texting behind her back, and Clemence wonders if their messages are generous, but she gets it, she’s been on both sides, and Jillian is so generous in all the other ways, such as buying her this giant latte, and that counts.
They sit together on a bench while Jillian’s daughters stalk the perimeter of the wading pool. Chloe and Hannah are six and eight, and Clemence feels she knows them better than she knows her own sisters’ offspring, mostly because Jillian posts their entire lives on social media and just two kids are easier to keep track of. Jillian is also extremely fastidious, and as a result her children are better behaved than Clemence’s nieces and nephews. Jillian is so fastidious that she has white sneakers, and so do her children, and all three pairs are spotless, lined up neatly in a row beneath the bench, Jillian’s still on her feet.
“It’s for a English professor,” Clemence explains about the interview. “His wife had always done his typing and indexing, but then she died.”
“You’re sure he’s not looking for a wife?”
“Imean, only for clerical tasks.”
“Well, there’s a market for it Iguess,” says Jillian.
“Less than you’d think,” says Clemence, “because women live longer than men, and all the old womenprofessors certainly never counted on their husbands for such things, if they had husbands in the first place. ”
“So this is part of the spinster project,” says Jillian.
Clemence says, “Iguess so. And to pay the bills. My severance is almost over, but I’ve saved a lot, and my rent is cheap.”
“Ishould hope so,” Jillian says. “It’s working out, though? The house is a little rough around the edges.” Jillian lives in a beautiful Victorian house in the upscale Annex neighbourhood just east of the park, and has redone the kitchen three times since moving in.
Clemence says, “It’s exactly right. Ilike it there.” Aroom of her own. Maybe it wouldn’t matter where or what it was.
Jillian says, “And how is it? Imean, with leaving Todd.” Jillian is one of the few people who refuses to ever call Toad by his nickname. Clemence turns to face her, but Jillian is looking out, not meeting her eyes. “Was it one of those things?” Jillian asks her, “Where you couldn’t imagine going through with it, and then one day you finally did?”
Clemence considers what her friend might really be saying. She says, “Actually the opposite. Not going through with it seemed like the most impossible thing, continuing on in perpetuity—but Ikept putting it off, over and over. Ididn’t want to rock the boat.” You had to tread carefully with Jillian. If Clemence went in too hard, Jillian would retreat.
“You know, Ienvied you a bit,” Jillian says. “That day Imoved you in. Wondering what it would be like to justbe absolutely free.” Her sunglasses are up on her head, and she flips them back down over her eyes. No one renovates their kitchen three times in a decade if they aren’t yearning for something.
But also this is Jillian and Jeremy, who’ve been together forever, whose own marital arrangement was how Clemence had known her own was so faulty in comparison. Clemence loves Jeremy in a way that none of her friends had ever loved Toad. Clemence couldn’t imagine Jillian without him, or vice versa.
“You and Jeremy,”—Clemence stumbles to find the words—“are you okay?” She needs to believe that love is possible. She may be ready for divorce, but not for cynicism. Not yet. One or the other, but she can’t do both.
Jillian sips her drink. “Oh yeah.” With sunglasses on, her expression is inscrutable. “Just makes you think a bit, about other roads one might have travelled. Ithink you’re brave, that’s all, to be so deliberate in your path.”
“Idon’t think I’ve ever been deliberate in my life,” Clemence admits. “This is really just meandering.”
“But isn’t that deliberate, too?”
And it is. To be so deliberately meandering, and Clemence appreciates that Jillian gets that, and maybe even understands. That someone like Jillian might be envious of her situation right now is something Clemence has never imagined.
Jillian sits up straighter and pushes her sunglasses back on top of her head, waving to a woman who has entered the park with two children. One of Jillian’s mom friends. Clemence has been so far away for so long that she’s nevermet one of these friends of her friends before, and she’s prepared to be alienated, because else what do you expect when you don’t have kids, and you’ve come to visit the playground?
