A Multitude of Sins

  “I said fuck you,” the young man said and stepped closer. “If you persist with this, I’ll arrange for something really bad to happen to you. Something you don’t want to happen. And don’t think I won’t do that. Because I will.”

  “Well. I certainly believe you,” Henry said. “You have to believe that when someone says it. It’s the rule. So, I believe you.” He looked down at his own white shirt front and noticed a tiny black decoration of Madeleine’s mascara from when she had pressed close to him by the window after crying. It made him feel fatigued all over again.

  The young man stepped back now. His face had lost its blush and looked pale and mottled. He had never removed his hands from his pockets. He could have a gun there. Though this was Canada. No one got murderous over infidelity.

  “You American assholes,” Madeleine’s husband said. “You’ve got divided inner selves. It’s in your history. You have choices about everything. It’s pathetic. You don’t really inhabit anything. You’re cynical. The whole fucking country of you.” He shook his head and seemed disgusted.

  “Take all the time you want. This is your moment,” Henry said.

  “No, that’s enough,” the young man said and looked tired himself. “You know what you need to know.”

  “I do,” Henry said. “You made that clear.”

  Madeleine’s husband turned and without speaking strode off across the festive gilt-and-red lobby and out the revolving doors where the tae kwon do children had gone, disappearing as they had amongst the passersby. Henry looked at his wristwatch. This had all occupied fewer than five minutes.

  . . .

  Back in his room he changed his shirt and arranged his clothes and toiletries into his suitcase. The room was cold now, as though someone had shut off the heat or opened a window down a hallway. Two message slips lay on the carpet, half under the door. These would be from Madeleine, or else they were new, second-thought threats from the husband. He decided to leave them be. Though some insistent quality about the message slips triggered a sudden strong urge to make up the bed, straighten the room, set out the breakfast tray, urges which meant, he understood, that his life was becoming messy. It probably wouldn’t be better until he was on the plane.

  But standing exactly where Madeleine had stood earlier, he watched the big T-shaped crane slowly lift a great concrete-filled bucket toward the top of an unfinished building’s high silhouette. He wondered again where, in this strange disjointed city, Madeleine was. Having a coffee with a girlfriend she could regale the day to; or waiting for her son to get out of school, or for the husband to arrive and some brittle, unhappy bickering to commence. Nothing he envied. On the window glass, he saw where she’d been writing with her finger; it showed up now that the air in the room was colder. It seemed to say Denny. What or who was Denny? Maybe the message was someone else’s, some previous hotel guest.

  And then, for no apparent reason he felt exhausted to the point of being dazed. Sometime, too, in the last hour, he had cracked off a sizeable piece of a molar. The jagged little spike caught at the already-tender tip of his tongue (the broken part he’d swallowed without knowing it). The day had worked its little pressures. He took off his glasses and lay down across the newspapers. He could hear a muffled TV in another room, a studio audience laughing. There was time to sleep for a minute or five.

  About Madeleine, though: there had been a time when he’d loved her, when he’d said he loved her, felt so rather completely. None of the foolishness about love or being in love. One definite time he could remember had been on a pebbly beach in Ireland, near a little village called Round Stone, in Connemara, on a trip they’d made by car from Dublin, where they’d seen investors and negotiated significant advantages for the client. They’d laid a picnic on the rocky shingle and, staring off into the growing evening, declared the lights they could see to be the lights of Cape Breton, where her father had been born, and where life would be better—though in true geography, they’d been facing north and were only viewing the opposite side of the bay. Behind them in the village, there’d been a little fun fair with a lighted merry-go-round and a tiny bright row of arcades that glowed upward as the night fell. There, that time, he’d loved Madeleine Granville then. And there were other times, several times when he knew. Why even question it?

  Even then, however, there was always the “Is this it?” issue. Thinking of it made him think of his father again. His father had been a born New Yorker, and had retained New Yorker ways. “So, Henry. Is this it for you?” he’d say derisively. His father always felt there should be more, more for Henry, more for his brothers, more than they had, more than they’d settled for. To settle, to not overreach was to accept too little. And so, in his father’s view, even if all was exquisite and unequaled, which it might’ve seemed, would it still get no better than this in life? Life always had gotten better. There’d always been more to come. Although, he was forty-nine now, and there were changes you didn’t notice—physical, mental, spiritual changes. Parts of life had been lived and never would be again. Maybe the balance’s tip had already occurred, and something about today, when he’d later think back from some point further on, today would seem to suggest that then was when “things” began going wrong, or were already wrong, or was even when “things” were at their greatest pinnacle. And then, of course, at that later moment, you would be up against something. You’d be up against your destination point, when no more interesting choices were available, only less and less and less interesting ones.

  Still, at this moment, he didn’t know that; because if he did know it he might decide just to stay on here with Madeleine—though, of course, staying wasn’t really an option. Madeleine was married and had never said she wanted to marry him. The husband had been right about choices, merely wrong in his estimation of them. Choices were what made the world interesting, made life a possible place to operate in. Take choices away and what difference did anything make? Everything became Canada. The trick was simply to find yourself up against it as little as possible. Odd, Henry thought, that this boy should know anything.

  In the hall outside the room he heard women’s voices speaking French very softly. The housekeepers, waiting for him to leave. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, and so for a time he slept to the music of their strange, wittering language.

  When he turned away from the cashier’s, folding his receipt, he found Madeleine Granville waiting for him, standing beside the great red pillar where luggage was stacked. She’d changed clothes, pulled her damp hair severely back in a way that emphasized her full mouth and dark eyes. She looked jaunty in a pair of nicely fitted brown tweed trousers, and a houndstooth jacket and expensive-looking lace-up walking shoes. Everything seemed to emphasize her slenderness and youth. She was carrying a leather knapsack and seemed, to Henry, to be leaving on a trip. She looked extraordinarily pretty, a way he’d seen her look other times. He wondered if she was expecting to leave with him, if matters with the husband had gone that way.

  “I left you two messages.” She smiled in a mockingly amused way. “You didn’t think I’d let you take a taxi, did you?”

  Some of the same people he’d seen earlier were present in the lobby—a child sitting alone in a big throne chair, wearing his white tae kwon do get-up. A black woman in a brocaded fall suit, having a present wrapped in the sweater shop. It was past noon. He’d missed lunch.

  “Are we going fox hunting?” he said, hoisting his suitcase.

  “I’m taking Patrick to see the last of the fall foliage after school.” Patrick was her son. She held one arm out, extended a foot stylishly. “Don’t I look autumnal?”

  “You’re standing right where I had a truly ridiculous conversation an hour ago,” he said. He looked toward the revolving doors. Traffic was silently moving on the street. He wondered if Jeff was lurking somewhere nearby.

  “We’ll have to erect a commemorative plaque.” Madeleine seemed in gay spirits. “‘Here the forces of evil were with
stood by’ … what?” She patted her moist hair with her palm.

  “I don’t mind getting a taxi,” Henry said.

  “Screw you,” she said brightly. “It’s my country you’ve been kicked out of.” She turned to go. “Come on … ‘with-stood by the forces of dull convention.’ Alas.”

  From the passenger’s seat of Madeleine’s yellow Saab, Henry watched the big construction cranes at work—many more cranes and superstructures than had been visible from his window. The city was rising, which made it feel even more indifferent. A taxi would’ve been better. A taxi alone to an airport, never looking right nor left, could be a relief.

  “You look all beat up, though I guess you’re not,” Madeleine said. Driving too fast always put her in aggressive good spirits. Together they’d always been driving someplace good. He liked speed then—but less so now, since it threatened getting safely to the airport.

  There was nothing to say about looking “all beat up.” He knew her, yet also now he didn’t quite know her. It was part of the change they were enacting. When they were in the thick of things, Madeleine couldn’t drive without looking at him, smiling, remarking about his excellent qualities, cracking jokes, appreciating his comments. Now she could be driving anybody—her mother to the beauty parlor, a priest to a funeral.

  “Do you realize what the day after tomorrow is?” Madeleine said, maneuvering skillfully through the traffic’s changing weave. She was wearing some sort of scent that filled the car with a dense rosy aroma he was already tired of.

  “No.”

  “It’s Canadian Thanksgiving. We have it early so we can get a jump on you guys. Canada invented Thanksgiving. Canada invented Thanksgiving, eh?” She quite liked making fun of Canadians and didn’t like it at all if he did. He had never really thought of her as Canadian. She just seemed like another American girl. He wasn’t sure how you considered someone Canadian, what important allowances you needed to make.

  “Do you observe it for the same reason we do?” Henry said, watching traffic. He still felt slightly dazed.

  “We just have it,” Madeleine said happily. “Why do you have it?”

  “To solemnize the accord between the settlers and the Indians who might’ve murdered them. Basically it’s a national gesture of relief.”

  “Murder’s your big subject down there, isn’t it?” Madeleine said, and looked pleased. “We just have ours to be nice. That’s enough for Canada. We’re just happily grateful. Murder really doesn’t play a big part.”

  The old buildings of the French University were passing below and to the left. The little Frogs-only fantasy world. He considered how he and Madeleine would function together after today. He hadn’t really thought about it. Everybody, of course, had a past. It would be a relief to the people who knew about them to have this be over with. Plus, not having him in her life was going to be easier for her. Clear her mind. Open the world up again for both of them.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” Madeleine said, both hands firmly on the leather steering wheel.

  “I probably already know what it is,” Henry said. His tongue sought the sharp little spike of his broken molar. The flesh was abraded and sore from going there. He could get it fixed in San Francisco.

  “I really don’t think you do,” she said. A big white Japanese 747 descended slowly out of the pale sky and across the autoroute in front of them. “Do you want me to tell you?” she said. “I don’t have to. It can wait forever.”

  “That guy wasn’t your husband,” Henry said and quietly cleared his throat. The thought had just come to him— why, now, he didn’t know. Lawyer’s intuition. “Did you think I was stupid? I mean …” He didn’t care to finish this sentence. It finished itself. So much that was said didn’t need to be.

  Madeleine looked at him once, looked away, then looked again. She seemed impressed. She seemed happy about feeling impressed, as if this was the best of all outcomes. The enormous jet sank from sight into an unremarkable industrial landscape. No big ball of flaming explosion followed. Everyone safe. “You’re guessing,” she said.

  “I’m a lawyer. What’s the difference?”

  She liked this, too, and smiled. He understood it was impossible for her not to like him. “How’d you know?”

  “Among other reasons?” The freeway traffic was standing back now for the airport exit. “He acted more serious than he felt. Something he said … ‘divided inner somethings’? That wasn’t right. And he looks like an actor. Are you sleeping with him, too? I don’t mean ‘too.’ You know.”

  “Not currently,” Madeleine said. She touched her silver hair clip with her little finger and cocked her head slightly. She appeared to be realizing something. What that might be, he thought, would be worth knowing. “I knew you’d go down there,” she said. “I knew you couldn’t resist it. You always want to be so forthright and brave. It’s your disguise.”

  Henry watched the pleasureless freeway ambience pass slowly along—freight depots, trucking companies, car rentals, gas stations. The same all over. The green sign was visible. AEROGARE/AIRPORT. An exertion saying everything twice.

  “He’s an American,” Madeleine said. “His name’s Bradley. He is an actor. We worried you’d know he wasn’t Canadian.”

  “Not a worry there,” Henry said. She took the AEROGARE/AIRPORT SORTIE/EXIT and looked across at him. She seemed slightly undone now. Perhaps, he thought, she was thinking about patting her cheeks when they were in the room, or saying, I’d pictured something more poignant. That could seem excessive now.

  He reached and took her hand and held it loosely. She was nervous, her hand warm and moist. This whole business had taken something out of her, too. They had been in love, perhaps were still in love.

  “Is someone filming all this?” he said and glanced to the side, at a pickup truck following along beside them on the highway. He expected to see the truck bed full of cameras, sound equipment, smiling young cinéastes. Everything trained on him.

  “For once, no,” she said.

  Up ahead, d’EMBARQUEMENTS/DEPARTURES was jampacked. Cars, limos, taxis, people loading golf bags, collapsible cribs and taped-up coolers from the backs of idling vans. Policemen with white oversleeves were flagging everyone through in a hurry. He had only a suitcase, a briefcase, a raincoat. It had become a wonderful autumn day. Clouds and haze were being cleansed from the sky.

  He continued holding her hand, and she grasped his back in a way that felt important. What would it be like finally, he wondered, to grow uninterested in women? Things he did— going here, there, deciding this, that—he’d always had a woman in mind. Their presence animated things. So much would be different without them. No more moments like this, moments of approximate truth vivifying, explaining, offering silent reason to the choices you made. And what happened to those people for whom it wasn’t an issue? Who didn’t think about women. Certainly they achieved things. Were they better, their accomplishments purer? Of course, when it was all out of your reach—and it would be—you wouldn’t even care.

  On the curb side, amid skycaps and passengers alighting and baggage carts nosed in at reckless angles, a family—two older adults and three nearly grown blond children—were having a moment of prayer, standing in a tight little circle, arms to shoulders, heads bowed. Clearly Americans, Henry realized. Only Americans would be so immodest about their belief, so sure a fast amen was just the thing to keep them safe—at once so careless and so prideful. Not the qualities to make a country great.

  “Do you think if we asked, they’d include us in their little circle?” Madeleine said, breaking their silence as she pulled to the curb, right beside the praying Americans. She meant to annoy them.

  “We’re represented already,” Henry said, looking at the pilgrims’ hefty, strenuous backsides. “We’re the forces of evil they think so much about. The terrible adulterers. We worry them.”

  “Life’s just a record of our misdeeds, isn’t it?” she said. He couldn’t open his door
for the pray-ers.

  “I don’t think that.” He held her warm, soft, moist hand casually. She was just letting the other subject go free now—the lying, tricking, having a joke at his expense. Though why, for God’s sake, not let it go free?

  He sat a moment longer, facing forward, unable to exit. He said, “Have you decided you don’t love me?” Here was the great mystery. His version of a prayer.

  “Oh, no,” Madeleine said. “I wanted us to go on and on. But we just couldn’t. So. This seemed like a way to seal it off. Exaggerate the difference between what is and what isn’t. You know?” She smiled weakly. “Sometimes you can’t believe the things that are taking place are actually taking place, but you need to. I’m sorry. It was too much.” She leaned and kissed him on the cheek, then took both his hands to her lips and kissed them.

  He liked her. Liked everything about her. Though now was the wrong moment to say so. It would seem insincere. Reaching for too much. Though how did you ever make a moment be worth as much as it could be, if you didn’t reach?

  Outside, the Americans were all hugging one another, smiling big Christian smiles, their prayers having reached a satisfactory end.

  “Are you trying to think of something nice to say?” Madeleine said jauntily.

  “No,” Henry said. “I was trying not to.”

  “Well, that’s just as good,” she said, smiling. “It might not be good enough for everybody, but I understand. It’s hard to know how to end a thing that didn’t completely begin.”

  He pushed open the heavy door, lifted his suitcase out of the back, stepped out into the cool fall light, then looked quickly in at her. She smiled at him through the open doorway. There was nothing to say now. Words were used up.

  “Wouldn’t you agree with me about that, Henry?” she said. “That’d be a nice thing to say. Just that you agree with me.”

  “Yes, okay,” Henry said. “I do. I do agree with you. I agree with you about everything.”