“Ididn’t pilfer! You gave me permission.”
“Igave you codswallop,” says Crampton, and then she faces Clemence head-on. “What Iwant to know is, what did you do to Toby? Because either something’s going on, or he’s been attacked by a vacuum cleaner.”
Clemence tries to keep a poker face. “Ihave no idea what you’re talking about.” She really doesn’t. Mostly.
Crampton actually cracks a smile. “Ihave to say that you’ve impressed me. Your nerve at demanding to reorganize my bookstore was really something, but that you’ve somehow compelled Toby to be intimate with another human being.” She shakes her head in amazement. “They should give out prizes for that.”
Clemence is not sure how to take this, if Crampton is mocking Toby, but also is it so far-fetched that Toby might find Clemence desirable? He’d practically dragged her into the closet. She feels like telling Crampton this, but restrains herself. “IlikeToby,” is all she says.
And Crampton says, “Then you’re smarter than Ifirst took you for, because Toby is brilliant, and gentle, and good. The world needs to be a kinder place for strange people. So many of us would benefit. Idon’t know anyone who wouldn’t.”
“Toby’s not so strange,” Clemence says, if only to be polite.
Crampton says, “Then you don’t know him yet. He only gets stranger the more that you do, but beyond thatsickly exterior, he’s got the most surprising vitality. And you must be a fairly substantial person yourself if he’s put his book down.” Looking at Clemence narrowly now. “Hedidput his book down, right?”
“He did.”
Crampton’s tiny eyes actually sparkle with glee, and she rubs her hands like an evil sprite. “And so this is the reason Ilet you put your poster in my window,” she says, “even in violation of a decades-old grudge. Idon’t violate my grudges for just anybody, you know.”
That weekend Clemence isforced to take an afternoon off from her usual practice of lounging in her daybed eating apple slices and blue cheese off a chipped china plate while fantasizing about her body being ravaged by someone who is kind of Toby, but a little more John Keats, complete with Charles Yeung’s biceps. She’s currently steeped in the erotic poetry translation, and she’s actually glad to have a reason to shift her mind to other things, although her sister’s twins’ fourth birthday party probably wouldn’t have been the diversion she would have chosen.
But the birthday party is the diversion she has, and it’s such common knowledge her days are wide open that she could hardly make excuses. “Iwould prefer to stay home alone with my filthy thoughts” wouldn’t go over well, and while filthy thoughts are a movable feast, it’s impossible to think most of them in the midst of a children’s birthday party. When Clemence arrives home again atthe end of the day, she will write three paragraphs about how remarkable it is that the presence of one’s siblings’ offspring can quell any urges toward activities that lead to reproduction.
But right now in the middle of the party, she’s been fixed up with sangria, so she’s doing all right, and with so many grandchildren to occupy her, Clemence’s mother leaves her alone. The children are risking their lives on a bouncy castle that’s been squeezed into Grace and Allison’s tiny backyard, their screams at ear-splitting levels, and Clemence’s dad is sitting beside her, but she’d have to yell to talk to him, so she doesn’t, and they both prefer it this way, the only peace for miles around. Bonnie and Prudence are hiding bags of candy for a treasure hunt, and they’re arguing because Prudence’s kids aren’t supposed to have sugar and so she wants to hide the treasures too well. And Grace and Allison are arguing because this is what happens whenever they have people over, Grace getting all stressed out and anxious, ending up yelling at everyone, which nobody minds too much because Allison is a professional caterer, so the hors d’oeuvres alone are worth it. Even if Allison smokes, that remarkable thing, and Clemence is always a little afraid she’s going to uncover a bit of cigarette ash dropped in her sausage roll.
Jarvis has shimmied up the top of the bouncy castle now, and is perched on the roof, which Clemence suspects isn’t meant to be part of the play area, but no one’s going to call him out, not just because it’s his birthday, but because his parents don’t believe in constraining their children’sspirits. “The most dangerous thing a child can be exposed to is too much ‘Be careful,’” is one of Grace’s favourite axioms, also convenient because it serves as a dig at Bonnie, who was a very nervous mother. And this is why Clemence decides to get up and distract Bonnie before she realizes what Jarvis is up to, partly to keep the peace but also because she is tempted to screech, “Be careful!” herself. Putting down her glass, she takes Bonnie by the elbow, leading her inside, out of one chaos into another kind, because there is music blasting from the living room, that incessant song about a horse on the old town road.
She locates the speaker and turns the volume down, just as her mother says, “So you’re seeing someone.”
Clemence is caught off guard. “How did you know?” she asks, instead of denying outright, which would have been more accurate, anyway, because it’s not like she and Toby have some kind of formal arrangement. “Seeing somebody” implies a person she isn’t kissing the dark, someone who isn’t Toby and so prone to rashes and outbreaks, which she can’t explain in a way her mother would understand.
And then Prudence walks in as this exchange is happening, just to make everything more complicated. “Iknew it!” she screeches, clutching her virgin cocktail to her burgeoning belly whose burgeoningness is so unremarkable after all these years. And Clemence is sometimes grateful that her sister is always pregnant, because of how it takes attention away from the fact that Clemence never will be. Fingers crossed. Her favourite thing about no longer being married is that nobody asksabout it anymore. Prudence easing her body down onto the couch—she’s already huge, and she has months to go. “Spill the beans,” she instructs.
But there are no beans. Not really. “Imean, it’s complicated.” It always is for Clemence, her family expecting her stories to map onto their preconceived notions of how a woman’s life should go, but Clemence keeps disrupting the narrative. “I’m not seeing somebody exactly.”
“Polyamory!” Prudence claps her hands in delight. “Sandro called it. He saw the whole thing a mile off. He and Mom had a bet.”
“Abet?”
“Not about polyamory,” says Bonnie, who’s made visibly uncomfortable by the word. “He said you looked like you were in love.”
“He said you looked like you were getting boned,” Prudence corrects her. “Sandro is usually right about these things. He said it’s in the complexion. So who are they?”
“They?”
“Your, um, partners,” says Bonnie, who finds the vocabulary awkward, but will embrace her daughters’ happiness wherever and with whomever they find it. She just doesn’t want to be left out of the loop.
“Tell us why you’re glowing, Clem,” urges Prudence.
And should she tell them it’s oily fish? Coupled with plenty of sleep? Or should she tell them it’s Toby, though she’s sure it’s not that. The only thing Toby has done to her skin is to irritate where the parts of his beard he missed shaving had rubbed against her neck.
“It’s not really anything,” she tells them, but they don’t believe her. She imagines if she’d brought Toby with her, what they’d make of him. What he’d make of them, how long he might last in the midst of this chaos. Toby is impossibly incongruous. She cuts her mother off before she goes to speak again, “And Ipromise it’s not polyamory.” One Toby is enough. But her mother and Prudence are waiting, demanding to know more. “It’s this guy who works with me at the bookshop. But Imean, it’s nothing. We kissed once. And that was all.” But yes, the whole experience has been running through her mind on a film reel ever since then. “No one’s getting boned,” she promises.
“Maybe no one’s getting bonedyet,” says Prudence. “It’s like Sandro has a sixth sense sometimes.”
“Well, he is European,” offers Bonnie, thoughtfully. “And now Iowe him twenty dollars.”
“Ithink it’s healthy,” says Prudence, as they all get up and move into the kitchen to help with the cake. “It’s good that you’re starting to move on from—”
