“But without the love,” Clemence insists. “JustEat and Pray.”
“Pray,” Charles repeats, gesturing toward the steeple above the treetops at the end of the block. “So you’re a churchgoer. My mom might come around to you after all.”
“Achurchgoer,” says Clemence, trying out the words. She really wants this living arrangement to work. “Well, Imean, it’s possible.” An awkward silence hangs in the air, especially because what Clemence has just said is a lie.
“Well. Iguess I’ll be seeing you around …” Charles says, his voice trailing off as he starts walking away, down the steps to the sidewalk.
“Clemence!” Jillian’s shrieking after him as they watch him go. “Her name isClemence.”
And now Clemence is doing the punching. “What are you doing?” she hiss-pers.
“He totally likes you,” says Jillian, way too loud, perhaps the reason that Charles is looking back over his shoulder, offering a smile and a wave.
“He totally doesn’t. And even if he did, it wouldn’t matter.”
“Oh, you’re going to be fighting them off,” says Jillian. “There is nothing more irresistible than a woman who’s unavailable. Just you wait.”
Unfortunately, Jillian is usuallycorrect about most things. For example, Clemence observes, surveying her surroundings once she’s back upstairs, her new place really does have a certain charm, in spite of the dinginess, because the light through the doors acts like a filter that softens everything, making it easy to ignore the stainson the wall from where the roof leaked, or to notice that the kitchen is makeshift to the point of depressing. The furnishings, at least, are definitively hideous—one saving grace. The armchair reupholstered with mismatched prints, the particle-board coffee table missing a chunk on one side. The daybed, which would be her bed and sofa at once, was probably pretty once upon a time, a young girl’s princess dream, but the spindles are tarnished now, the mattress lumpy, uncomfortable.
“You’re sure you’re going to be able to sleep on this?” Jillian had asked.
But the effort to do so would be the point. In her new life, Clemence will learn to adapt and make do, and to not succumb to her every urge or desire. She will learn that she is stronger and more resilient than she thinks, more than everybody thinks, proving that she is tough and has grit. That she hascharacter, unlike the sort of woman who wimps her way through seven years of marriage and then ends it all in a most craven act of betrayal.
She’d heard it in the sound of his voice. “Ijust don’t understand,” Toad kept repeating, unbearably. It took so long for his shock to wear off. He was like a zombie for days. “You knew Iwould be coming home. Icome at the same time every single day.”
“But Iwas just so sick of hiding,” said Clemence. And waiting. It had been the only way she could think of to light the fuse.
“You should have said something,” said Toad, for the six hundredth time. “We could have found a way to kick things up a notch.Together.”
“But you wouldn’t have been listening if Idid,” said Clemence. “And Ithink that Iwas … already gone.”Maybe Iwas never here, but she wasn’t so cruel as to say that. And why is it only after she’s hurt Toad that she feels any tenderness toward him? No one can build a relationship on that, though certainly, she’s tried.
But now it’s over. And perhaps what she’d always suspected isn’t even true, that everybody in love has those same doubts, that everybody is simply going through the motions. What if “going through the motions” isn’t life at all? Because hers hadn’t been a life, instead, an illusion. Clemence had created the kind of life you might order out of a catalogue, and it had proved, in the end, as two-dimensional as that.
What will happen now, she wonders, in her new life, one that’s less a catalogue than a yard sale, or one of Barbara Pym’s jumble sales, constructed of odds and ends, other people’s discards? Clemence would never have selected any of these items, or this room in which she finds herself, but this is the point. Mild depravity and lumpy beds—could this be the road to excellent womanhood?
Two
Clemence Lathbury has never lived alone. Born the second of three virtuous daughters, bookended by Prudence and Grace, Clemence grew up comfortable and happy enough in the bosom of family. Her parents had celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary the summer before, Clemence and Toad flying across the country to be there, posing for gorgeous family photos that are now out of date because Toad no longer belongs to them. Roger and Bonnie Lathbury are the type of people who make a good marriage seem easy, so in sync without even trying. They even look alike, and dress alike, sometimes, mostly for tennis, which is their favourite game, and they’re a perfect pair. They met in high school and have never dated anybody else; neither of them have even kissed anybody else, if Bonnie’s stories are true. And Clemence had grown up taking for granted that she’d find her way into a similar situation, that she would find herother half, and he’d call her his “better half,” and while he’d not altogether be joking, really, they would be equals, partners in every way.
And when she met Toad, it had seemed like the threads of her life were unspooling, just as she’d imagined they would, into the same tapestries her mother had woven, and her mother before her. As they’d been woven for her sister Prudence, mother of four, and as they also would for Grace, who’d come out as a lesbian in high school, creating a bit of a hullabaloo, but everything settled down and she’d been married the summer after Clemence, clearly making a more successful run of it.
So no, independence was not celebrated among the many Lathbury virtues. After completing her media studies degree, Clemence moved straight from the student house she’d shared with Jillian and Naomi into Toad’s condo—three years older, he had his own place already—and nobody raised an eyebrow. Not long after, she would follow him across the continent to Seattle, where he’d located for a new job, and settling down this way was as much an accomplishment as landing a dream job of her own, which she had also done about the same time, writing features for one of the more prestigious American bridal magazines. Magazines’ online platforms still held some possibility then, and personal narratives were setting the internet on fire, which timed perfectly with Clemence and Toad’s engagement, so she’d pitched a blog series—My Journey to “IDo”—that readers were wild about, whether they considered Clemence a bridezilla (she learned not to read the comments) or had boughtinto her fairy-tale fantasy. Clemence was something of a starlet in those corners of the online world obsessed with layer cakes and tulle.
Her marriage at least, Clemence thinks, had been good for her professionally. Toad didn’t mind the attention, plus the wedding had cost them nothing, the entire event an advertisement for an array of vendors, from the picturesque vineyard venue near the Niagara Escarpment to the photographer who’d transformed picturesque-ness into actual prints. The whole thing such a deal that they’d been able to blow a small fortune on a honeymoon in Tahiti—and they’d even found an airline to comp their flights.
The honeymoon had been where the comedown began, however. Clemence had supposed that marriage, the fact of the ring on her finger, would have solidified her bond with Toad, creating an effortless connection like her parents’, a spark that would enliven them both, but, sitting across from Toad at a bar on the beach, sipping fancy cocktails, and with all the wedding planning over, she realized that they’d run out of conversation and there was nothing between them at all. Toad had never felt so far away, the gulf only stretching wider as the years went by.
And here she is now in a place where Toad doesn’t factor. Finally, a room of her own. The sun is beginning to set, the day’s radiance retreating, which makes the apartment less charming, but Clemence likes it that way. Because she is tired of charm, and charms, and Prince Charming, or the idea of such a thing, all of which have managed to lead her astray. Clemence wants to see thingsfor what they are, to connect with solidity, with reality, and items that don’t disappear at midnight, transformed back into pumpkins and mice.
Although it’s still early for that. Late for dinner, though, and Clemence is hungry. Heading out, locking her own door behind her for the very first time, feeling the weight of that key in her pocket as she heads back downstairs, breathing in the curious odours of other people’s lives, that blend of lemon cleanser and fried onions. Are the men who live here cooking on their hot plates all day? This seems unlikely from what Clemence knows of men, and hot plates. She pauses halfway down to the ground floor and listens—it’s so quiet. Who would her neighbours turn out to be? Did Charles live here with his mother? What a thing to have moved into a house full of men, absolutely an accident, happy or otherwise.
It is a short walk to the main street, with the church on the corner, a small independent grocery store across the road. The neighbourhood has been improving, as the lawn dumpsters would suggest, and now there is also a cheese shop and a boulangerie among the payday loan shops and dollar stores. But Clemence knows if she starts frequenting the more fashionable establishments, she’ll be out of money in a matter of weeks. She’s been living off her severance, and she has to make it stretch, and so it’s the plain old corner grocery store she heads for in search of something simple, the bell on the door jangling pleasantly as she steps inside.
Clemence recognizes immediately that the woman behind the counter is one of the excellent women ofher aspirations. The woman is wearing tweed, along with a sour expression, and no doubt she’s been sitting behind the counter since midway through the previous century. Surely she lives above the shop with her cat. All the staunch and silent lives, Clemence thinks, of these women living among us unnoticed. And yet without such women, from whom would we buy our tinned fish?
Clemence likes the idea of tinned fish, ever sensible. Economical and rich with protein, a most substantial essence. Everything in this store is dusty, but tinned fish are as such that they’re likely still in their prime in such a condition, and Clemence particularly loves the keys on the top of the sardine cans, the satisfying way the lids peel off and curl up on themselves. It’s a good choice for a woman who has just moved into her new apartment and is pretty sure she failed to pack a can opener when she fled her marital home.
Clemence and Toad had their groceries delivered. They must have made a list once and then the groceries kept coming, an algorithm making adjustments based on the season and availability so she never had to think about it. They didn’t cook much, anyway, both of them busy with their jobs and usually arriving home late for dinner, so there was always too much in the fridge, a veritable bounty. Clemence was perpetually scrambling to find ways to work overripe produce into salads and shakes. Thinking now about the decadence of mangoes and kumquats, all the avocados she’d discarded for being too soft. There were infinite varieties of lettuce these days, but you’d never think so here in this corner grocerystore’s modest produce section, a head of sad iceberg brown at the edges.
