“She’s a doctor.”
“You said that.” Clemence is done here, for once Clemence is winning, and on that note she heads up the steps to the porch. “I’ll keep collecting for the jumble,” she calls over her shoulder, but no way is she going back to church.
Twelve
Alvin Puddicombe wrote poems about the black eyes he’d administered to his wives, how they pained him, comparing the shades of bruising to ever-changing twilight, and he blamed the drink, he blamed himself, he blamed the women, too, the raging fires that burned inside them, and Clemence thinks that the Mrs. Puddicombes didn’t rage enough, and surely all of them ganging up to kill him would have been a fitting end to his most storied life. His fifth and final wife, Dolores, was seventeen when they met and twenty-five when Puddicombe met his demise at the age of eighty-seven. She’d nursed him on his deathbed. Dolores published three volumes of poetry herself, plus an autobiography calledMemoirs of a Muse, which Professor Edmund Fairfax does not reference in his own book, whose index Clemence is contractually obliged to finish within the next two weeks. She’d looked up Dolores Puddicombe’smemoir online, and it had not received favourable reviews.
The cat comes in again and jumps onto Clemence’s lap, his bushy tail in her face, so she is unable to work, but it’s time to make another pot of tea, anyway. Just an excuse—Puddicombe’s book is getting her down; he’s so loathsome. She’d read some of his poems in anthologies back in high school, albeit not the one about the black eyes, and she recalls finding all of it romantic at the time, the tortured artist, the women touched by his genius, and she used to think that this was what love was.
Clemence opens up a can of tuna, spooning out half for the cat, and they sit side by side on the floor splitting the snack, except Clemence’s is mixed with mayonnaise and she eats it with a fork. She is troubled by how much she wants the cat to stay around, how much she likes his presence. She also listens out for other people in the house, the sounds making her feel less lonely, and she is forever anticipating the sound of somebody, anybody, coming up the stairs. What does it mean to be this dissatisfied by her own company? Has she utterly failed in being an excellent woman already?
Clemence is still dying inside about her conversation with Mrs. Yeung, and even more about how despondent she’d been ever since. She’s been separated from Toad for no time at all, and she’s already hung up on another man. Charles, the least suitable unsuitable attachment Clemence could imagine, and yes, why does she require an attachment, anyway? Naomi doesn’t. It’s not impossible to be without one, but then Clemence is weak-willed. This is her defining characteristic. For example,she should be continuing her work on that misogynist bastard’s biography right now, but she’s sharing a pack of protein with a cat with three unopened letters from her husband’s lawyer piled on the table before her. She doesn’t want to think about her husband, and this cat doesn’t even belong to her.
“Somebody’s taking care of you,” she says, rubbing under his chin, and now she feels self-conscious again, even if only the cat is listening. “And Imean, that’s cool,” she continues. “But there is something to be said for caring for yourself.”
Bailey examines Clemence with his single eye. No doubt he knows all about that, a strong-willed, solitary feline who goes where he wants to go, and Clemence is worried she’s insulted him, implying he’s codependent, or unable to stand on his own four feet. But the cat isn’t bothered, since he stays by her side, permitting her to continue petting his length. His long hair sheds all over the floor, but she doesn’t mind, because sweeping it up again is so satisfying and the hair is beautiful, iridescent, blue. It’s a chore so different from the indexing or from her tasks at the bookstore, which never seem to be finished, where every step forward leads to another mess of things still to be accomplished. This she especially likes about living alone, that the only messes made are her own. Or the cat’s. No one else’s drinking glasses are left by the sink, or clothes on the floor, and she doesn’t mind the ring around the bathtub, because one’s own filth is so familiar.
Other people are a lot of work. Prudence is no longer speaking to her, Clemence has heard from her mother.Grace told Prudence that Clemence had reported that her pregnancy was not necessarily good news—which wasn’t what Clemence had saidexactly—and Prudence hadn’t received that well, unimpressed at hearing her ambivalence expressed third-hand.
“Ispent a whole afternoon stripping her wallpaper,” Clemence protested to her mother on the phone.
“Oh, Pru will come around,” says Bonnie. “You know how she is. Plus the hormones.”
But Ihave hormones, too, thinks Clemence. Especially if “hormones” means “feelings.” This wasn’t fair. She’d done nothing wrong. Grace had misconstrued things, as usual, and then blabbed it all to everyone.
Clemence gets up off the floor and brushes the cat hair from her hands. Sitting on her bed is the copy of the book that Charles has lent to her,Minor Feelings, essays about being Asian in America. His name is inscribed on the inside cover, and she studies his handwriting, the neat and tidy letters:C. Yeung. And even though his pen does not appear again inside the book, she’d starts imagining coded messages between the lines, something personal, as though this is a book intended for her eyes only. Like an invitation into Charles’s soul—would she think the same if Toby made her read one of his seventeenth-century plays? But he wouldn’t. Toby doesn’t care what Clemence reads one way or another. This book that Charles pressed into her hands resonates on a deeper level. Essays about art and poetry, and friendship, growing up as the child of immigrants, and about race, recontextualizing the familiar in her mind. Clemence loved the book, and thatCharles had loaned it to her without an agenda, when he had a wife—it only made her admire him more. Affection was a trap.
She would have to returnMinor Feelings. Or did she have to, really? Feasibly, couldn’t she keep the book and never speak of this again? Moving on from the humiliation of her conversation with Charles’s mother—there might come a day when Clemence would see the book on her shelf and not remember where it came from. Though this was unlikely. His name was on the inside cover and Charles had made her promise not to use it as a coaster, so clearly the book matters to him. Clemence isn’t making something out of nothing. She absolutely has to return it.
And for better or worse, Clemence knows a route to make this happen. She puts the cat out, shuts up her apartment, and heads downstairs, book in hand, to knock on Mrs. Yeung’s door. Maybe with something to prove, to show this woman that there had been a connection between Clemence and her son after all, something tangible enough that you could hold it in your hand, which was what Clemence was doing now, like an offering. “It’s Charles’s,” she says, “and Iwanted to make sure it got back to him.”
Mrs. Yeung takes it, suspiciously. “He gave this to you?”
“Just to borrow,” says Clemence. “Iread it. It was very good.”
Mrs. Yeung is unconvinced. “He has too many books already.”
“Ithink this one is important,” says Clemence.
Mrs. Yeung shrugs, and tosses it onto the table behind her in the hall. She says, “We’re sorting tomorrow. You coming?” For the jumble sale. Clemence thinks it’s curious that her whole life lately has become about sorting through junk in search of treasure. But she remembers Reverend Michelle, and the church roof, and the lineups for the food bank, and this seems like one way to make a difference. To make up for the self-indulgence of the rest of her day, lumpy bed aside.
Mrs. Yeung says, “How’s your boyfriend?”
“My boyfriend?”
“You said it. ‘Ihave a boyfriend.’ But you have no boyfriend?”
“Not everyone needs a boyfriend,” says Clemence.
“They do if they say they have a boyfriend,” says Mrs. Yeung. “Unless they’re lying.”
She was lying. “Iwasn’t lying,” says Clemence.
“Iwant to meet him,” says Mrs. Yeung. “Your boyfriend. Ihaven’t seen you bringing him by here. Because you’re sneaking him in?”
“There’s no sneaking,” says Clemence. She should have kept Charles’s book. “We work together. At the bookstore.” It was convenient. Why not? She gets paid to talk to Toby anyway. Two birds, one stone.
“You’re not sleeping together?” The question is preposterous. And not only because they’re supposed to be talking aboutToby. “It’s okay,” Mrs. Yeung waves her hand in the air like magic. “None of my business. You’re not my daughter. Young people can to do what they like, even if they live under my roof. Iam a very open-mindedlandlord. Just don’t be disturbing the neighbours.”
