Waiting for Time Read online

  “There's no need for this,” Alice O'Reilly said, surveying the depressing room. She set the potted plant she was holding down on a desk and began unpacking boxes, arranging office supplies in neat, labelled piles inside the cupboards. She sent Mark off in search of another desk and something she called a credenza, which turned out to be a kind of sideboard.

  Lav recognized Alice O'Reilly at once—there are hundreds of women like her in Ottawa. Professionals, the glue that holds the civil service together. Given the opportunity, Mrs. O'Reilly could run the entire department, probably the entire nation. The minute she walks in, Mark's demeanour becomes less casual, less insolent—the room becomes an office and the maintenance staff begin to treat Lav as if she might stay.

  In front of Mark and Mrs. O'Reilly Lav is on guard, alert, attentive to detail. Although the objectives of the project seem nebulous, although she is secretly appalled by the vast amount of random, uncatalogued material contained in the pile of blue notebooks, she takes pains to sound crisp and sure.

  “We'll standardize this local material, format it into some kind of database and integrate it with Ottawa's material. Then, we'll see the shape of the Oceans 2000 report,” she announces with great confidence. She can hear the pomposity in her voice.

  Week after wretched week, three of them pour over the Newfoundland research. Mark and Lav analyze, code, transfer the information onto charts and graphs, measure figures against Ottawa baselines. Mrs. O'Reilly taps endlessly at the computer. It is the first time since university that Lav has done such work. She had forgotten how tedious it is.

  On the stained pages of the blue notebooks fisheries observers, biologists and oceanographers have recorded years of work, thousands of nautical miles of research in Zone PK3. Every imaginable measurement has been taken: currents, seasons, salinity, phases of the moon, fish tagging data and blood samples, acoustic surveys, the spawning areas and biomass of twelve species, the presence of ice, of seals, caplin, plankton, of abandoned fish netting, of plastic debris, where containers of toxic chemicals have been dumped, the levels of dioxins and heavy metals. This, and much more, on-site scientists have monitored and written into notebooks.

  Though the material numbs her, Lav is determined to finish, not to stop until they have coded the contents of every blue book into the computer. Each week she works longer and longer hours. After work she goes directly home, where she exists in a kind of timeless, mindless isolation, wandering through the house like a ghost, examining the Martins' belongings, idly speculating on what kind of family the Martins are.

  She speaks to no one, does not telephone, does not write letters—not to her mother, not to Philip, not to anyone in Ottawa. In the mail Nat Hornsby forwards that there are no personal letters. Detached from her past, Lav drifts in a kind of hiatus. This time she has disappeared.

  The only emotion she acknowledges during those first weeks is that twinge of disappointment she feels whenever she comes in contact with the town and its people. As if Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders have failed her. Nodding goodnight to the security guard—a friendly man, who, when she works late, walks her to the door and watches as she crosses the bridge to the parking lot—Lav feels judgment behind his kindness. She imagines the same suspicious watchfulness in shops, in restaurants, from Mark and even from Alice O'Reilly despite her friendly office demeanour. Sometimes she thinks she is not in Canada at all but in some dangerous, foreign country that will swallow her if she puts a foot wrong. Clearly these people do not trust her—and she must not trust them.

  By April there is barely space in the office for the stacks of computer print-outs, the miles of statistics from which, no matter how Lav assesses and cross references, no perceivable patterns emerge. There is something deeply disturbing about the sight of all these figures, spewing hour after hour onto the floor. When she tells Mark this he understands.

  “It's like a fortune cookie you can't read—a million fortune cookies,” he says, then brightens, “No—it's more like poor old Belshazzar in the Bible!”

  Seeing Lav's blank look, the young man explains that Belshazzar was a king who had to get someone out of retirement to interpret mysterious handwriting that appeared on the wall of his palace. “Maybe,” he suggests, “you should go over to the Hoyles Home and find someone to read our print-outs—ask if they got some old fisherman in there we can have a lend of.” Mark laughs at this joke.

  Lav tells him to shut up.

  Her unease has returned and with it the fish that swims through her dreams. Moving inside its flesh she feels the cold, the ribbons of water, the silence. Nights and days are filled with foreboding. No word has been heard from Ottawa, she has been forgotten, shelved. Lav has seen such things happen inside government departments—setting a bothersome person to work on some pointless project with no beginning and no end.

  Mark turns grumpy, complains that he is blind with boredom. More to clear the air than with any expectation that he will find anything, Lav directs him to go track down the original statement of objectives for the study of Zone PK3.

  He doesn't come back for two days. On Friday afternoon he appears, announcing, for once in a voice Lav can understand, that he is the Lord's messenger, come bearing Ottawa's commandments—the definitive document.

  When Lav and Alice O'Reilly swing their chairs around to face the young man, Mark drops his voice, assumes what she has come to recognize as his mainland accent: “The study of Zone PK3 off the northeast coast of Newfoundland will be a coordinated marine science effort,” he drones.

  “Objectives will focus on improving government's ability to anticipate future oceans-related problems and respond before such problems reach crisis proportions. From this study the Department of Fisheries and Oceans will formulate a multi-year marine science policy paper, propose marine science programs and relate these programs to the priorities of government and the missions of line departments.”

  “Very precise, very clear! Don't you think so Dr. Andrews?” Mark stares, straight-faced into Lav's eyes as he passes her the paper.

  They look at each other for a second, then they begin to laugh. The vacuous statement delights both of them. Surrounded by the bundles of blue notebooks, the miles of print-outs, the thousands upon thousands of statistics engendered by these empty words, Mark and Lav hold each other up and laugh.

  It is the first time Lav has touched anyone in months, the first time she has laughed in months. Once started she cannot stop. Alice O'Reilly is mystified, then annoyed, but this only makes the other two laugh louder. Lav laughs until she drops, choking, into a chair and Mark has to pound her back.

  “That's better. You should laugh more often,” he says when she recovers, then he turns to Alice, “Dr. Andrews takes all this too seriously—she doesn't realize yet that down here in Newfoundland we can do anything, anything or nothing—because nothing we do counts. Not in the great scheme of things. Isn't that right Mrs. O'Reilly?”

  Alice O'Reilly will not answer him. Her face tight with disapproval, she hands Lav a glass of water.

  Lav sips and rereads the paper. Mark and Alice return to their desks. Except for the tap of computer keys, the office is silent. In other offices, telephones ring. Down the hallway there is a scraping sound, a man's voice saying sharply: “Hold her there! Steady now!” Freezers filled with specimens are being rearranged again.

  What have I been playing at all these weeks? Lav wonders. Have I been trying to turn myself into Philip, duplicating his management style, his procedures? Trying to copy the absorption with which he tackles such projects, despite the fact that I am not in the least absorbed—neither by the hodgepodge of information nor by its source—a tiny bay somewhere on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. The priorities of Government and the mission of line departments indeed!

  The entire project bores her. Mark is right, nothing done down here counts.

  She pulls on her coat and leaves without a word. Outside, even the light looks unfamiliar, pale grey and dam
p. It is the first time in weeks she has left the building before dark. Spring has come to the rest of the continent but here fingers of ice still cling to cliffs and half frozen slush covers the parking lot.

  Lav turns away from the research station, driving down, then up, up to the top of Signal Hill where she parks and sits staring out at the sluggish, half-frozen sea. She finds herself considering fish, not the mindless, boring statistics that fill her office but the graceful, lonely fish that swims nightly through her dreams.

  Lav has identified her fish—a species of salmon, the female of which drives herself to premature senility in frantic determination to lay eggs on the same bit of sand where she had been spawned. Burdened with eleven million eggs, the great fish swims slowly through endless oceans, avoiding—or not avoiding—ghost nets, trawlers, sharks—moving towards the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect other. How sensible, how dignified, how right such a search seems.

  Beyond the dream, overshadowing it, is the knowledge that her salmon is doomed. It has ceased to produce fluids that let oxygen filter through gills into flesh and bone. Within days the fish's jaw will lengthen—in her dream this is already happening—soon the fish will grow a great jutting snout, scales will lose their shine, tarnish and turn rusty. When the salmon reaches the goal she has been seeking so resolutely she will spawn and die—inexplicably of accelerated old age.

  The wind is strong on the hill, it pushes against the car, nudges it gently. Lav is half-asleep, lulled by thoughts of the ageing fish, by the wind and the sluggish movement of sea—wave after wave of grey, half-frozen water, cresting in white froth, retreating backward, unrolling towards some far off, invisible, English coast.

  If her salmon should turn around, begin swimming the other way, would life-fluid pump through its body again? Would the natural process be reversed? Would flesh and bone regenerate?

  Lav is jarred into reality by a loud tap on the passenger window of the car. Outside, a woman hunches forward, face pressed to glass. Her nose and cheeks are red with cold, wind is clawing at her black scarf and wispy grey hair. The apparition taps at the glass, makes an impatient gesture, telling Lav to roll down the window.

  When she reaches across and opens the door the woman hops in, pulling yards of coat behind her, folding it blanket-like around her. She sets a pile of brochures on the dashboard and blows on her hands.

  “There's only one way down—unless you're thinkin' of drivin' off the edge,” the woman gives Lav a sharp, unsmiling look. “But I'm sure you're goin' my way—so you might just as well give me a lift.” The woman's voice is brisk as the air she's brought into the car.

  Feeling as if she has been rudely awakened from a deep sleep, Lav looks down at the dark water, at white foam and icy rocks, and shudders. Could she have been thinking of driving off the edge? Certain that no such thought had been in her mind she asks the woman where she wants to be taken.

  “Oh, just let me off down by the foot of the hill—I'll be near home then. By rights I shouldn't be up here today at all—but I had to talk to Gus Whitten's grandson—he's workin' in the tower. Besides, I thought sure it was spring this mornin'—the cursed CBC crowd said we were goin' to have sun,” she glares at the vast expanse of grey sky.

  Here, Lav thinks, is a chance to talk to a real Newfoundlander, to think about something besides fish. She will kidnap this crony, take her to a restauraint, ply her with tea until she tells everything: who she is, how she fills her days, what makes her so fierce—what keeps her alive out here on the ice-crusted edge of the world.

  “Is it always like this in April?” Lav asks.

  The woman nods, “Always.” She is not interested in small-talk, hardly looks Lav's way. She is talking to herself, muttering as she sifts through the brochures—glossy scraps of paper, resplendent with sunlit sea and blue skies. She snorts, tosses the collection of tourist material onto the floor of the car, sinks into her coat and does not speak again until they reach the foot of the hill.

  “Right here!” she commands and, when Lav stops, immediately begins to scramble out. With one foot on the sidewalk she turns, “They used to hang people up there on the hill—it's a dreary place, a poor place to think things out.” The woman nods, gathers her great coat around her and plods off down a sideroad.

  The self-contained arrogance of the old woman does Lav good. On her way home she buys The Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, fresh bread and a bottle of wine.

  A pile of mail has accumulated on the floor of the front porch. Stuffing her coat into a space she's made amongst the Martins' winter garments Lav bends forward to pick up the letters. Doing so she catches an unexpected glimpse of herself in the oval mirror beside the closet. Startled, she holds her face up to the mirror and studies each feature, angling her head this way and that, eyeing the line of jaw, chin and nose—surely longer, more hooked than when she left Ottawa seven weeks ago? There is no doubt about the hair, it has turned rusty, brittle and fuzzed at the ends, no longer falls in a smooth auburn sheen around her ears. Her skin, however, is paler, finely lined, more transparent—yet she can detect no sense of movement, no urge to spawn. She turns away from the tired, defeated face—disowns it—it is not hers.

  In Ottawa Lav had gone regularly to a place called The Beauty Boutique, a spa located in a mall directly below the DFO building. Each Tuesday and Friday she would leave the office early, have a swim, a sauna. Then, wearing a snow-white robe monogrammed B.B., she would have her nails, hair and face done. The attendant would usher her into a little room decorated to look like the inside of a jewel case, bring freshly brewed coffee which Lav would sip while sitting on a soft chair, listening to the soft music and the softer hum of voices from the other side of the wall.

  Everyone at The Beauty Boutique knew her. The shampoo girl, when she came, would call her Dr. Andrews, make chirping sounds as she covered Lav's shoulders in a silk cape and gently eased her head back onto the cushioned edge of the peach-coloured sink.

  This girl, whose name was Kyra, had dangerous-looking varnished nails but only the soft pads of her fingertips ever touched scalp. Kyra's fingers moved in hypnotic circles, circles within circles along Lav's hairline, back to the crown of her head, around her ears, down her neck, as oil, shampoo, warm water, conditioner and, finally, auburn gold rinse, anointed her head. Twice each week Lav would lie in this steamy, sleep-filled haze, the smell of crushed apricots scenting the air, mixing with the music, misting the birds and flowers that danced on the walls and ceiling.

  Amazing, really, how such rituals comfort, contribute to one's total happiness. Thinking about it, Lav is convinced she misses Kyra as much as she misses Philip.

  Resolving that on Monday she will ask Alice O'Reilly about fitness clubs and hairdressers, Lav picks up the mail, goes through the living room and up three steps into the big kitchen at the back of the house. She places the mail face downward on the kitchen table, pours herself a glass of wine and searches for a tin of Vienna sausage she remembers seeing somewhere in the tall old-fashioned cupboard.

  Lav's eating habits have deteriorated along with her grooming. She takes wine, bread and the tinned sausage over to the stuffed chair by the kitchen window. With her back to the table and to the mail she eats supper.

  Lav has always liked the worn, commonplace parts of cities, places like Dugan Street in Ottawa where she grew up—family houses such as the one the Petrassi family lived in, churches and grocery stores, repair shops and delis, book shops like Saul's, all crowded together. She likes the enclosed feeling of narrow streets, of sidewalks owned by people who live along the street.

  From the Martins' kitchen she can look down on the backs of such streets, on a clutter of snow -covered roofs, at chimney pots, pigeons and sea gulls, down into tiny back yards where cats pick their way among rusting bicycles, discarded barbecue stands, car tires and baby carriages.

  Between the chimneys and down across a back alley Lav can see the corner of Crotty's Convenience Store. In the window there
is a sign saying, “Watered Fish For Your Brewis.” Mysterious, hand-lettered words like those she used to watch Charlotte inscribe on Saul's store window. Tonight Lav cannot see the words but knows they are there since she often walks around the block after dark.

  Most of the houses in this neighbourhood are built right at the sidewalk's edge. When people forget to pull their drapes Lav can look into kitchens and living rooms. If I were an artist, she thinks, I would want to paint these people, surround them with colour, with light and shadows. The families eating supper lean towards each other, towards the food which is heavy, earth coloured, unlike anything in supermarkets. Everything, the milk-white arms of women w ashing dishes, blue-faced lovers curled together in front of unseen television sets, the tired young mother who night-after-night spoons food into a baby's pink, smiling mouth, all seem from another century. Even the children, immovable as rocks, slumped on sofas, their eyes never leaving television screens, might be watching a cock-fight in some medieval marketplace.

  Each lighted window is a picture, almost nothing changes from night to night, the colour of a shirt, a tablecloth, the arrangement of children watching television. The very monotony lends dignity to the mundane scenes. Lav herself is invisible. Only cats, surveying their street from window ledges, follow her progress with green gold eyes.

  On these walks she passes Crotty's store window, reads the mysterious words, watches the clerk. Sometimes the woman is talking to a customer but more often she leans on the counter, a Vermeer, her placid round face cupped in her hands, engrossed in a magazine. Lav has considered going in to find out what the clerk reads with such deep, absorbing interest—and to ask what brewis is.

  Far down beyond the store, beyond the houses and streets, Lav can see a scrap of harbour. It gleams steely grey in the cold April light.