Mavis Gallant - Home Truths

We sat on the screened porch of Rhoda’s new house, which was close to the beach on the ocean side of Vancouver Island. I had come here in a straight line, from the East, and now that I could not go any farther without running my car into the sea, any consideration of wreckage and loss, or elegance of behavior, or debts owed (not of money, of my person) came to a halt. A conqueror in a worn blazer and a regimental tie, I sat facing my daughter, listening to her voice — now describing, now complaining — as if I had all the time in the world. Her glance drifted round the porch, which still contained packing cases. She could not do, or take in, a great deal at once. I have light eyes, like Rhoda’s, but mine have been used for summing up.

Rhoda had bought this house and the cabins round it and a strip of maimed landscape with her divorce settlement. She hoped to make something out of the cabins, renting them weekends to respectable people who wanted a quiet place to drink. “Dune Vista” said a sign, waiting for someone to nail it to a tree. I wondered how I would fit in here — what she expected me to do. She still hadn’t said. After the first formal martinis she had made to mark my arrival, she began drinking rye, which she preferred. It was sweeter, less biting than the whiskey I remembered in my youth, and I wondered if my palate or its composition had changed. I started to say so, and my daughter said, “Oh, God, your accent again! You know what I thought you said now? ‘Oxbow was a Cheswick charmer.’ ”

“No, no. Nothing like that.”

“Try not sounding so British,” she said.

“I don’t, you know.”

“Well, you don’t sound Canadian.”

The day ended suddenly, as if there had been a partial eclipse. In the new light I could see my daughter’s face and hands.

“I guess I’m different from all my female relatives,” she said. She had been comparing herself with her mother, and with half sisters she hardly knew. “I don’t despise men, like Joanne does. There’s always somebody. There’s one now, in fact. I’ll tell you about him. I’ll tell you the whole thing, and you say what you think. It’s a real mess. He’s Irish, he’s married, and he’s got no money. Four children. He doesn’t sleep with his wife.”

“Surely there’s an age limit for this?” I said. “By my count, you must be twenty-eight or — nine now.”

“Don’t I know it.” She looked into the dark trees, darkened still more by the screens, and said without rancor, “It’s not my fault. I wouldn’t keep on falling for lushes and phonies if you hadn’t been that way.”

I put my glass down on the packing case she had pushed before me, and said, “I am not, I never was, and I never could be an alcoholic.”

Rhoda seemed genuinely shocked. “I never said that . I never heard you had to be put in a hospital or anything, like my stepdaddy. But you used to stand me on a table when you had parties, Mother told me, and I used to dance to ‘Piccolo Pete.’ What happened to that record, I wonder? One of your wives most likely got it in lieu of alimony. But may God strike us both dead here and now if I ever said you were alcoholic.” It must have been to her a harsh, clinical word, associated with straitjackets. “I’d like you to meet him,” she said. “But I never know when he’ll turn up. He’s Harry Pay. The writer,” she said, rather primly. “Somebody said he was a new-type Renaissance Man — I mean, he doesn’t just sit around, he’s a judo expert. He could throw you down in a second.”

“Is he Japanese?”

“God, no. What makes you say that? I already told you what he is. He’s white. Quite white, entirely white I mean.”

“Well — I could hardly have guessed.”

“You shouldn’t have to guess,” she said. “The name should be enough. He’s famous. Round here, anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve been away so many years. Would you write the name down for me? So I can see how it’s spelled?”

“I’ll do better than that.” It touched me to see the large girl she was suddenly moving so lightly. I heard her slamming doors in the living room behind me. She had been clumsy as a child, in every gesture like a wild creature caught. She came back to me with a dun folder out of which spilled loose pages, yellow and smudged. She thrust it at me and, as I groped for my spectacles, turned on an overhead light. “You read this,” she said, “and I’ll go make us some sandwiches, while I still can. Otherwise we’ll break into another bottle and never eat anything. This is something he never shows anyone.”

“It is my own life exactly,” I said when she returned with the sandwiches, which she set awkwardly down. “At least, so far as school in England is concerned. Cold beds, cold food, cold lavatories. Odd that anyone still finds it interesting. There must be twenty written like it every year. The revolting school, the homosexual master, then a girl — saved!”

“Homo what?” said Rhoda, clawing the pages. “It’s possible. He has a dirty mind, actually.”

“Really? Has he ever asked you to do anything unpleasant, such as type his manuscripts?”

“Certainly not. He’s got a perfectly good wife for that.”

When I laughed, she looked indignant. She had given a serious answer to what she thought was a serious question. Our conversations were always like this — collisions.

“Well?” she said.

“Get rid of him.”

She looked at me and sank down on the arm of my chair. I felt her breath on my face, light as a child’s. She said, “I was waiting for something. I was waiting all day for you to say something personal, but I didn’t think it would be that. Get rid of him? He’s all I’ve got.”

“All the more reason. You can do better.”

“Who, for instance?” she said. “You? You’re no use to me.”

She had sent for me. I had come to Rhoda from her half sister Joanne, in Montreal. Joanne had repatriated me from Europe, with an air passage to back the claim. In a new bare apartment, she played severe sad music that was like herself. We ate at a scrubbed table the sort of food that can be picked up in the hand. She was the richest of my children, through her mother, but I recognized in her guarded, slanting looks the sort of avarice and fear I think of as a specific of women. One look seemed meant to tell me, “You waltzed off, old boy, but look at me now,” though I could not believe she had wanted me only for that. “I’ll never get married” was a remark that might have given me a lead. “I won’t have anyone to lie to me, or make a fool of me, or spend my money for me.” She waited to see what I would say. She had just come into this money.

“Feeling as you do, you probably shouldn’t marry,” I said. She looked at me as Rhoda was looking now. “Don’t expect too much from men,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t!” she cried, so eagerly I knew she always would. The cheap sweet Ontario wine she favored and the smell of paint in her new rooms and the raw meals and incessant music combined to give me a violent attack of claustrophobia. It was probably the most important conversation we had.

“We can’t have any more conversation now,” said Rhoda. “Not after that. It’s the end. You’ve queered it. I should have known. Well, eat your sandwiches now that I’ve made them.”

“Would it seem petulant if, at this point, I did not eat a tomato sandwich?” I said.

“Don’t be funny. I can’t understand what you’re saying anyway.”