Tag: Vancouver

The Same Woman (Sakura)

2018. Andrew and his wife Luisa are both seventy, their birthdays a few weeks apart. They are in good health, Andrew descended from Ashkenazi Jews, Luisa from Chippewa Quebecois Afro-Cubans. Their many friends want to throw them a big birthday party, but they decline, having suffered through a big party last year to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary and now feeling done with big parties forever.

Andrew and Luisa are writers and musicians and live ten miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia with their three children—twins Teo and Rosa, eleven, Jalecia, eight—in a large house Andrew built forty-two years ago. Also part of the family is Diana, a poet in her late forties who resides in the other house on the property and is essentially the children’s third parent.

Luisa’s daughter Lily, mother of Jalecia, is thirty-six, a movie actress living in Los Angeles. Her torrid romance with pop star Kingdom Jungle Boy and their tumultuous seven-month marriage and messy divorce were exhaustively covered in the tabloids and mainstream media a year ago and shortly thereafter Lily landed a leading role in the huge-budget remake of The King and I set in a distant solar system, Lily the earthling who comes to the tropical planet Thailorg to tutor the emperor’s many translucent four-armed children, the iconic songs updated with hip hop arrangements.

Andrew’s son Owen is also thirty-six and lives in Vancouver with his wife Miyoshi, who is thirty-nine, and their three-year-old daughter Mimi. Owen and Miyoshi recently left the employ of the movie producer and director Nicolas Thorsen and moved from Ireland to Vancouver to launch their own film company Character Driven Cinema, Owen a producer/director, Miyoshi a cinematographer.

∆

Andrew and Luisa are delighted to have Owen and Miyoshi and the darling Mimi in their midst, and they are excited that Character Driven Cinema’s first film is the metaphysical comedy Moon In Leo from an original screenplay by Andrew and Luisa to be filmed in and around the nearby town of Squamish.

Some years ago Luisa stopped writing stories and until recently was content to work with Andrew on his plays while managing the business end of things and raising the children. However, for the last several months, she has been overwhelmed by the kids and frequently depressed by the daunting prospect of parenting teenagers until she is eighty.

Andrew continues writing short stories and plays, but often goes weeks now without writing. The children and music, specifically composing for the piano, are his main everyday endeavors now.

And Diana, who has lived with Andrew and Luisa and the kids for six years, is currently the three-days-a-week drawing and painting teacher at the Vancouver Waldorf high school and is in the second year of a relationship with Simon, a singer songwriter who makes his living building stone walls.

∆

One of the main characters in Moon In Leo is Old Martha, an ancient wizard who uses her talent for shape shifting to influence the flow of events in the movie. Miyoshi’s mother, Sakura Enamoto, a well-known actress in Japanese cinema, will play the part of Old Martha, and in mid-march, a few weeks before filming begins, Sakura arrives in Vancouver to spend time with her granddaughter Mimi and to rehearse her scenes with an acting coach fluent in Japanese and English.

Two days after Sakura arrives in Canada, Owen and Miyoshi and Mimi and Sakura come to Andrew and Luisa’s for lunch. This being a Tuesday, Rosa and Teo and Jalecia are in school, which is a huge relief to Owen and Miyoshi and Luisa, and a big disappointment to Mimi who is madly in love with the big kids she knows as her cousins, though biologically Rosa is her half-aunt, Teo her half-uncle, and Jalecia no relation.

Sakura is strikingly beautiful with enormous brown eyes, long black hair, a girlish figure, and a regal bearing. Though seventy, most people assume she is much younger. She speaks somewhat broken English, understands English quite well, and has little trouble communicating with Andrew and Luisa and Owen.

Miyoshi, whose father is French, is fluent in Japanese, English, German, and French. She spent her first twenty years in Japan with her mother and then moved to Switzerland where she attended film school before becoming Thorsen’s cameraperson and eventually his cinematographer.

Sakura was unable to attend Owen and Miyoshi’s wedding in Ireland seven years ago, nor did her subsequent trips to Ireland coincide with Andrew and Luisa’s trips to Ireland, so this luncheon is the first time the three of them meet.

When everyone is seated around the dining table enjoying Luisa’s fish tacos con guacamole, Mimi sitting on Luisa’s lap, Sakura says in her deep resonant voice, “Now we can have Owen and Miyoshi wedding for parents.”

“Let this be the wedding,” says Miyoshi, laughing wearily. “This could be our only chance in the next six months.”

“Okay,” says Sakura, smiling and nodding to Luisa and Andrew. “I so honor your son marry my daughter. She so lucky to marry such good man.”

“And we are honored your daughter married our son,” says Andrew, nodding graciously. “He is very lucky to be married to such a wonderful woman.”

“I now pronounce you wife and husband,” says Luisa, raising her glass of bubbly water to Owen and Miyoshi.

Sakura raises her glass and says something in Japanese.

Everyone drinks and Luisa asks Miyoshi, “What did your mother say?”

“She said ‘May our families be joined forever.’”

∆

The sun breaks through the clouds after lunch and the three grandparents and grandchild have coffee and cookies on the deck while Owen and Miyoshi stay inside making phone calls as the thousand and one responsibilities of producing a major motion picture weigh heavily upon them.

Mimi chooses Sakura’s lap for cookie time, reasoning that Luisa will only allow her one cookie whereas Sakura might be good for two or three.

“So beautiful place,” says Sakura, gazing out over the large vegetable and flower garden, the wild forest beyond. “I read your play in Japanese before English. Very great play. I honor to be Old Martha. She strong witch but funny. I want you show me how you want me say your words.”

“I’m at your service,” says Andrew, enchanted by her. “I’ll be attending your first few sessions with your acting coach and be on the set for all your scenes.”

“You tell me how you want,” she says, nodding confidently. “I can learn.”

∆

When Andrew wrote the first draft of Moon In Leo, he envisioned Old Martha played by some great British actress, but when Owen and Miyoshi read the script they immediately saw Sakura in the role, and only now, as they are about to start filming, do they think they may have made a terrible mistake in casting Sakura as Old Martha.

Indeed, so distraught are Owen and Miyoshi, that after they take Sakura and Mimi back to Vancouver following the luncheon, Owen returns to Andrew and Luisa’s to tell them he and Miyoshi are seriously considering bringing in another actress to play the part of Old Martha.

“This has ballooned into a thirty-million-dollar movie,” says Owen, sequestered in Andrew’s office with Andrew and Luisa, the kids home from school and piqued they can’t hang out with Uncle Owen. “If Old Martha isn’t funny, the movie flops.”

“What makes you think Sakura won’t be funny?” asks Luisa, who secretly shares Owen’s doubts.

“Japanese humor and American humor are worlds apart,” says Owen, sounding utterly miserable. “Different timing, different phrasing, different emphasis on syllables, different facial expressions, different body language. Why we thought Sakura could deliver these lines as you intended, I don’t know. We just saw her in the part, and of course she’ll look fabulous, but…”

“Could you dub someone else saying her lines?” asks Luisa, making a sour face at her idea.

“No,” says Owen, anguished. “She’s a great artist. It would be like dubbing Meryl Streep. And we can’t afford to shoot the scenes with Sakura and then reshoot them with someone else if they don’t work. She’s in a quarter of the scenes.” He bows his head. “What were we thinking?”

“You weren’t thinking,” says Andrew, placing his hand on Owen’s shoulder. “And I mean that in a good way. You were feeling, and I think you felt correctly. You just have to trust in your deeper wisdom and prepare her for those scenes as well as you can.”

“As well as you can, Papa,” says Owen, looking up at his father. “Only you can teach her the timing. The Jewish timing. And we know that’s what you want. Groucho Marx in the body of a shape-shifting wizardess from Japan.”

“I’m game,” says Andrew, feeling as he always does when a creative challenge takes him over—exhilarated and full of curiosity to see what will happen next.

∆

For the first coaching session, Andrew meets with Sakura and her bi-lingual coach, a young Japanese Canadian woman named Joan, in a large warehouse Owen and Miyoshi leased for filming sequences involving special effects, though they hope to capture most of the action on location in the forest and coastal settings that figure so prominently in the story.

Sakura has loosed her long black hair from her ponytail and is wearing a dress made of rags, a prototype of what Old Martha wears when wandering in the forest and lounging in her lair in the hollow trunk of a giant Sitka spruce. Andrew is dressed in black T-shirt and baggy brown pants, Joan in black slacks and a white dress shirt with a red bow tie.

They begin with Old Martha’s first scene, wherein she walks through the forest finding various plants and mushrooms and speaking to them as she eats them, the scene ending with her sensing a crystal buried under a large fern and cajoling the crystal to emerge from the ground so she can steal its power.

Sakura has thoroughly memorized her lines and recites them as a mother might speak to her small children as she walks along and mimes plucking and eating the occasional mushroom and fern fiddlehead, with Joan correcting her few mispronunciations.

When Sakura finishes the scene, she stands silently awaiting Andrew’s critique.

“You walk with such grace,” says Andrew, smiling at her. “But we want Old Martha to have a bit of a hitch in her git-a-long.”

Sakura stares blankly at him, the phrase meaningless to her.

“A subtle limp. She is not so graceful.”

Sakura nods solemnly. “You show me.”

So Andrew demonstrates a less graceful walk with a slightly stooped posture, and speaks to the imagined mushrooms in the manner of an ironical Jewish comedian.

Joan and Sakura laugh several times during his rendition, after which Sakura says, “You do again. I shadow.”

“Shadow? You mean imitate me?”

Sakura says something to Joan in Japanese.

Joan translates, “She will be your shadow and your echo.”

“Fine,” says Andrew, wondering how she intends to do that.

Sakura comes and stands directly behind Andrew, her body no more than two feet from his, and as he enacts the scene, she follows him so closely and mimics his posture and movements so precisely she is, literally, his three-dimensional shadow. And when he speaks his lines, she quietly echoes his every word.

At scene’s end Sakura says, “You easy for me to follow. Now I do scene for you.”

“Okay,” says Andrew, breathless from their intimate enactment.

Sakura does the scene again, not so much in imitation of Andrew, but with the cadence of his speech and the gist of his mannerisms, and both Andrew and Joan are in awe of Sakura’s transformation.

∆

The next day, following their second coaching session, Sakura and Andrew go to lunch at a nearby café and share brief autobiographies.

Sakura tells of when she was thirty-two and became pregnant with Miyoshi, and the father, a French journalist, wanted her to give up her acting career and move to France with him.

“He no understand I devote to acting. I say to him, ‘I no love you. I love be actor.’ He say, ‘Then you must abortion,’ but I want Miyoshi. I pick her father because he beautiful man.” She looks into Andrew’s eyes. “I know if I meet you when I am young, I want you to be father. And husband.”

“I’m flattered,” says Andrew, imagining her at thirty-two and him at thirty-two and how well they might have fit together.

“You know me,” she says, holding out her hand to him. “I know you. In Japan we say sorumeito. Our soul know each other.”

“I think so, yes,” says Andrew, taking her hand. “Soul mates.”

∆

Andrew coaches Sakura for two hours a day for the next two weeks, and with every session she becomes more and more the master of her scenes.

But when she rehearses with the other movie actors for the first time, and Andrew is not in attendance, she is at a loss how to proceed.

Owen and Miyoshi are again convinced they made a terrible mistake casting Sakura in the role of Old Martha, and when Andrew arrives at the next rehearsal, he finds the movie’s star, a rakishly handsome Australian, berating Owen for wasting his time with “some washed up Kabuki bimbo.”

Despite the star’s kvetching, the rehearsal begins and Andrew knows immediately that the problem is not Sakura, but the other actors, their timing dreadful and their understanding of their characters completely off the mark.

“If I may show you the way Sakura learned this scene,” says Andrew, speaking up when the action grinds to a halt a few terrible minutes into the rehearsal, “I think you’ll see why we’re having trouble with the flow.”

“Who are you?” snarls the rakishly handsome Australian.

“I am the writer of this comedy,” says Andrew, bowing to the irate actor. “And I have been coaching Sakura for the last two weeks.”

Before the star can protest, Andrew strides toward Sakura and delivers the star’s opening line, I thought I’d find you here. Sakura waits for Andrew to be nearly upon her before she fires off a stinging rejoinder and deftly dances away—she and Andrew playing out an elaborate pas des deux during which they exchange rapid-fire insults and Andrew can never quite overtake her as she deftly foils his every move—the assembled cast and crew roaring with laughter as the scene reaches its denouement and Sakura shape shifts into a gorgeous young temptress (to be achieved more fully with special effects) and steps into Andrew’s arms and kisses him.

∆

With Owen and Miyoshi’s insistence, Andrew takes over the direction of all Sakura’s scenes and painstakingly trains the other actors until their timing and intentions synch perfectly with Sakura’s.

And though rehearsing and shooting these scenes—many of them extremely complicated—takes much more time than Owen and Miyoshi budgeted for, the results are spectacular.

∆

When filming wraps in June, Sakura stays on in Vancouver to take care of Mimi for a couple of months while Owen and Miyoshi work day and night to fashion a viable cut of the movie to show to distributors.

Sakura frequently brings Mimi to Andrew and Luisa’s, Mimi loving being with her cousins, and on several occasions Sakura and Mimi spend the night at Andrew and Luisa’s rather than having Andrew ferry them back to Vancouver or asking Owen to come fetch them.

∆

One such evening, the kids gone to bed, Andrew and Luisa and Sakura have tea in the living room and Sakura says to Andrew, “Why you never direct movie? You so good director.”

“I never wanted to,” says Andrew, who feels profoundly changed and inspired by the experience of directing Sakura’s scenes. “Or I didn’t think I wanted to.”

“Maybe now you do,” she says, nodding hopefully. “Maybe you write movie with part for me and be director.”

“Seems so far beyond me now,” he says, exhausted after a long day at the beach with the children. “Though I did love directing you.”

“If you weren’t seventy and raising three children,” says Luisa, vastly relieved Moon In Leo is no longer taking so much of Andrew’s time, “directing a movie might not seem so daunting.”

“I think I’ll leave the movie making to Miyoshi and Owen,” says Andrew, yawning and closing his eyes. “Barring the discovery of the fountain of youth.”

Sakura yawns in sympathy with Andrew. “Two year ago my agent say he find part for me. I say ‘What is part?’ Agent say ‘Grandmother in TV show. Your daughter is divorce, have two children, try many men.’ I say ‘What grandmother do?’ Agent say ‘Grandmother babysit children and complain daughter about be old and everything so hard now.’ I say ‘I don’t want grandmother part.’ Agent say, ‘You old now, Sakura, not so many part for you. This good part. Everyone watch. Pay high money.’ But I say no and now only have one small part in movie next year.”

Andrew opens his eyes. “After Moon In Leo comes out, you’ll have lots of work.”

“I hope so,” she says, nodding seriously. “I like work if part good. Make me feel… purpose. Yes? Purpose?”

“Yes,” says Luisa, who is struggling mightily with the same issue in her life. “Purpose.”

“Miyoshi and Owen ask me move here,” says Sakura, half-smiling and half-frowning. “I think if no part come for me, maybe I am your neighbor.”

“We would love that,” says Andrew, who makes no secret of his fondness for Sakura.

∆

Two nights before she is to fly back to Japan, Sakura invites Andrew and Luisa and Owen and Miyoshi to join her for supper at a high-end Japanese restaurant, Sakura having arranged everything in advance with the chef.

Midway through the spectacular meal, saké warming their hearts and loosening their tongues, Owen announces they have signed an excellent distribution deal and Moon In Leo will open wide in England, Canada, Australia, Europe, and Asia in September of 2019, with a limited opening in America in October of 2019, with wider distribution should the film catch on.

“And our next movie,” says Owen, gazing fondly at Miyoshi, “is going to be something much less grandiose.”

“Much,” says Miyoshi, kissing him.

Now Sakura raises her cup of saké to Andrew and Luisa and says, “I hope we be friends for rest of life.”

“I hope so, too,” says Luisa, raising her cup to Sakura.

“We will be,” says Andrew, raising his cup and smiling at Sakura. “Without a doubt.”

“Without a doubt,” says Sakura, echoing Andrew precisely.

fin

Slender Sadness

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The Same Woman (Jennifer)

Post author By toddric
Post date June 24, 2020
No Comments on The Same Woman (Jennifer)

Every so often throughout his life, Andrew meets a woman he recognizes as someone he knows, though he has never seen her before. He met the first of these women in elementary school in 1955, the second in 1962, the third in 1966, the fourth in 1970, the fifth in 1978, and he married her in 1987.

∆

In 1993, Andrew and his wife Luisa are both forty-five and have been married for six years. Their children Owen and Lily are both eleven and in Fifth Grade. They live in a beautiful house Andrew built not far from the ocean about ten miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Andrew wrote a collection of short stories when he was in his mid-twenties that launched a string of successes for him, and at the height of his good fortune he met and married Kiki, a dancer and choreographer with whom he had Owen. When the exigencies of fate removed his star from the firmament of Canadian culture, Andrew returned to carpentry to pay the bills and ceased to write.

When Owen was four and going to kindergarten, Andrew met Luisa whose daughter Lily was in school with Owen. The marvelous simpatico Andrew experienced with Luisa inspired him to start writing again. A few months later, Kiki got involved with somebody else, divorced Andrew, and gave him full custody of Owen.

The following year, Andrew and Luisa were married. When Andrew’s literary star began to rise again and his income was sufficient to cover the financial needs of their family, he convinced Luisa to give up her cooking gig at a popular restaurant and become his assistant and collaborator.

The business end of publishing books and producing plays holds little interest for Andrew, but for Luisa the commercial aspects of publishing and show biz are endlessly fascinating and she has become quite learned about the interconnected complexities of publishing, theatre, and the movie business. Indeed, her expertise regarding these interconnections has resulted in their most lucrative contract yet.

Two years ago, Andrew’s play Their Summer Holiday ended a long run in Vancouver following a successful premiere run in Montreal, and now the play is being performed in small theatres across Canada, America, England, and France.

Their Summer Holiday is a whimsical romance about a single father and his adolescent son spending a few magical weeks in a coastal village populated with colorful eccentrics and an alluring French woman with whom both father and son become enchanted.

The play was thought too quirky to be made into a movie until Luisa convinced Andrew to create with her a movie synopsis of the play focusing more on the love story and less on the eccentrics. Their elegant four-page synopsis, refined over several months, was pitched by Andrew’s agent to a select group of actors and producers, the movie rights were subsequently optioned by a big Hollywood studio, and Andrew and Luisa were contracted to write the screenplay.

∆

They finish the third draft of their screenplay on a Friday in early April, each new draft written in response to notes from the film’s two LA-based producers, a fast-talking fellow named James Skidmore and a somewhat slower-talking woman named Jennifer Zindel, both of whom will be arriving in Vancouver in mid-April to spend a few days finalizing the script with Andrew and Luisa, filming to begin in September.

∆

Most week days Andrew and Luisa wake to a 6:30 alarm, stay in bed for a while talking, take quick showers, make breakfast for the kids, and then one or both of them bicycles with the kids to the public elementary school three miles from their house, unless it’s raining or snowing or too bloody cold, in which case one of them drives the kids to school.

When Owen and Lily have been safely delivered to the halls of learning, Andrew and Luisa have coffee and breakfast over which they plan their morning and early afternoon. This planning session sometimes leads to a return to bed before the commencement of one or more of the following: writing, gardening, business correspondence, music making, beach combing, shopping, visiting friends, and going into the city for business or pleasure.

The kids get home from school by 3:30, have snacks and debrief with Luisa and/or Andrew, do their chores and homework, help prepare supper, eat supper, practice music for an hour, and gather in the living room with the adults for some sort of group activity, musical or otherwise.

Both Owen and Lily are studying piano with Luisa and both of them love to sing. Lily plays the guitar, Andrew her teacher, and Owen plays the clarinet, his teacher Chas Lowenstein who happens to be Andrew and Luisa’s renter and lives next door with his wife Betty.

Lily and Owen are both avid readers, excellent students, and aspire to be writers and musicians. They are each adept at walking on their hands, juggling three tennis balls, and throwing Frisbees with remarkable power and accuracy.

When the kids have gone to bed, Luisa and Andrew like to sit by the fire with cups of tea and talk about their children and anything else that comes to mind.

∆

One evening after supper, a week before the movie producers are due to arrive, Owen and Lily and Luisa and Andrew gather in the living room for a game of Charades and Owen says, “Today Miss Tucker gave us the choices for our final big project of the year. We can either do a ten-page report on some important event in Canadian history or…”

“A ten-page biography of someone famous,” says Lily, taking up the recitation. “Or five two-page book reports on books from her list of acceptable books or a ten-page family history.”

“We have a week to decide,” says Owen, pursing his lips and gazing thoughtfully at the fire dwindling in the hearth. “Then we have to turn in a detailed proposal and once Miss Tucker approves we have to write a first draft, a second draft, and a final draft.”

“History repeating itself,” murmurs Andrew, thinking of the three drafts they’ve done of their screenplay.

“I’ll probably do a biography of either Mendelssohn or Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald,” says Lily, wrinkling her nose. “I was going to do the book reports, but Owen and I already read all the books on her list two summers ago and she won’t let me do To Kill A Mockingbird because she says we don’t get that until high school even though Owen and I read it last summer.”

“I might do the family history,” says Owen, looking at Andrew, “and if I do you’ll need to remember back as far as you can and then I’ll call Grandma Gloria and Grandpa Zeke and Grandma Kaylia and ask them to remember.”

“I was gonna do a family history,” says Lily, shrugging, “but there’s only you, Mama, and you only remember Grandma Lily so there won’t be ten pages unless I write about Owen’s side and he might already be doing that.”

“Well don’t forget I also remember Grandma Lily’s mother,” says Luisa, smiling at her daughter. “Your great grandmother.”

“You do?” says Lily, excitedly. “I don’t remember you ever telling me about her.”

“I did when you were little,” says Luisa, thinking of her mother and how much she would enjoy Lily and Owen. “But not for a long time.”

“Like what do you remember about her?” asks Owen, who thinks Luisa is the most wonderful person in the world, right after Lily.

“Her name was Ziibi,” says Luisa, closing her eyes and seeing her sturdy grandmother shooing chickens into the coop at dusk. “Ziibi means river in Ojibwe. My mother and I visited her a few times when Ziibi was living in Baudette, a town in Minnesota just across the border. She had an old house on the Rainy River and raised rabbits for meat and pelts, and she rented out a room in the house to an old Chippewa man named Ray who was deaf and smoked a pipe. I stayed with her there without my mother for six weeks the summer I was thirteen. I remember she’d get the barbecue going and I’d pick ears of corn from her big garden and she’d set them on the coals in their husks, and then she’d walk out to the river with her fishing pole and right away catch a big fish, a trout or a pike or a walleye, and clean it in no time and cook it right up. Most delicious fish I ever ate.”

“What did she look like?” asks Lily, eager to know. “Was she as brown as you?”

“No and my mom wasn’t so brown either. I never met my father, but I must have gotten my darker brown from him. He was from Cuba, but I don’t know what he looked like because my mother never showed me a picture of him, though I think she had one.”

“My mom got her brown from Grandma Kaylia who was from Barbados,” says Owen, who hasn’t seen his mother in four years. “My mom’s dad was Chinese, but he died before I was born so I never got to meet him.”

“Ten pages won’t be enough,” says Andrew, knowing Owen longs to see his mother.

∆

Andrew and Luisa meet the movie producers James and Jennifer at Tangelo’s, a trendy restaurant a few blocks from the famous Hotel Vancouver where James and Jennifer have booked a suite on the fifteenth floor.

James is slender and balding and nattily dressed, has a strong Chicago Jewish accent, laughs explosively, and only grows serious when discussing the script for Their Summer Holiday.

Jennifer is short and buxom with shoulder-length bleached blonde hair and pale blue eyes. Raised in New Jersey by Yiddish-speaking grandparents, the first thing she says to Luisa and Andrew is that she hates the name Jennifer and wants them to call her J.

Luisa and Andrew both order fish and chips and beer. James and Jennifer both order gin and tonics, garden salads, and shrimp scampi, and they both give their waiter ultra-specific instructions about how to make their gin and tonics, how to prepare their salad dressings, and how they want their linguini and shrimp cooked.

As Jennifer hands her menu to the waiter she says, “If you overcook my shrimp or serve me a shitty gin and tonic, things will not go well for you.”

To which James adds, “As for my gin and tonic, when in doubt err on the side of gin.” Having said this, he laughs explosively.

When the drinks arrive, Jennifer holds her glass aloft and says, “Here’s to the best script I’ve ever worked on.”

Glasses are clinked, drinks are drunk, the gin and tonics are declared delicious, and Jennifer says, “We are so close to signing Paul Sydney to direct I can’t tell you. The only wrinkle with Paul is he wants to shoot this in Thailand, turn it into a tropical fairy tale with half-naked Asian beauties and sampans. But we really don’t want to go that way.”

“Thailand?” says Andrew, the back of his neck tingling. “You’re kidding.”

“You know what I just realized,” says James, pointing at Andrew. “This movie is a whodunit. Only nobody gets murdered.” He arches an eyebrow. “But maybe somebody should.”

“This is not a whodunit,” says Jennifer, glaring at James. “This is a brilliant coming of age story meets gorgeous mid-life crisis love story.” She pauses. “We’re thinking a few songs sung by the characters might really work in this film. One song for Leo, one for Jonah, one for Louise. Not a musical really, but quasi.”

Andrew recalls his agent Penelope Goldstein saying Have no illusions, Andrew. By signing this contract you are giving them permission to do anything they want with your story. Yes, you will write a screenplay, but they are not obliged to use it. Do you understand?”

“I’m sure you’re aware there are three wonderful songs in the play sung by those characters,” says Luisa, taking a deep breath. “But after we sent you our first draft you said nix the songs.”

“Not those cutesy folk songs,” says James, shaking his head. “We’re talking Elton John, Randy Newman. Big time movie songs.”

“A quasi-musical?” says Andrew, locking eyes with Jennifer and connecting with something deep inside her. “Is that what you want, J?”

“No,” she says, flustered by this unexpected breaching of her usually impenetrable defenses. “I want to shoot this just the way you wrote it, but my job…” She glances at James. “Our job is to get this movie made, which always means deviating from the source material. It just does. For instance, if we sign Marc Laredo, and pray God we do, he’s gonna play Jonah a bit fay, though Jonah in your script is definitely not fay. He’s a serious romantic, ultra-sensitive, thoughtful and kind, yet wonderfully masculine, too.” She laughs self-consciously. “Somebody stop me. I sound like Pauline Kael on Ecstasy.”

∆

After lunch they move to James and Jennifer’s suite on the fifteenth floor of Hotel Vancouver and array themselves on comfy chairs around a big coffee table.

“Drinks?” says James, bouncing his eyebrows. “Coffee? Brandy? Martinis? Champagne? Cannabis? Cocaine?”

“Coffee would be great,” says Luisa, looking at Andrew and saying with her eyes We’ll get through this, darling. Please don’t tell them to go fuck themselves.

James calls room service and orders coffee and cookies, scripts are gotten out, and pens are poised.

Jennifer, still a little woozy from Andrew’s deep dive into her psyche, clears her throat and says, “I wasn’t kidding when I said this is the best script I’ve ever worked on. However, there are two large problems we need to solve before we can sign the likes of Marc Laredo or Shirley Stone who, as you know, got the ball rolling when they both flipped over your pitch.”

“And what are those problems?” asks Luisa, noting Andrew’s growing disquiet.

“Leo,” says James, throwing up his hands. “He’s got more screen time than Louise. And by the way, we found a brilliant unknown to play Leo. When we tested this kid he practically melted the camera. British. Of course. Gorgeous. The young James Dean meets the young Johnny Depp. Eighteen but plays thirteen no problem, and he’s a far better actor than Marc or Shirley will ever be, but even so we can’t have him upstaging them.”

Andrew is about to say something when the coffee and cookies arrive and Jennifer makes a pretty show of serving everyone.

“And the second problem?” asks Luisa, bracing herself.

“Jonah and Louise,” says Jennifer, adding a huge amount of sugar to her coffee.

“Ah,” says Andrew, pretending to understand. “So the two big problems are the three main characters. Anything else?”

“Andrew?” says Jennifer, looking at him and pursing her lips as if wanting to kiss him. “We love the whole not-liking-each-other-at-first turning into a crazy funny love thing. It’s genius. And I don’t use that word lightly.”

“Academy Award stuff,” says James, winking at Luisa. “You can start writing your acceptance speeches now.”

“But then you leave us hanging,” says Jennifer, clasping her hands. “Do they get together at the end? We never find out.”

“What are you talking about?” says Andrew, looking at her as if she’s insane. “Jonah and Leo pull up in front of Louise’s house in their big old convertible and she comes down the walk wearing a quasi wedding dress and dragging her gigantic suitcase and Leo and Jonah jump out of the car and load her suitcase on top of all their stuff and she gets in beside Jonah, and Leo gets in beside her, and off they go and we track back into an aerial view as they speed along the coast highway and make the turn inland. How is that not getting together? She goes with them at the end.”

“Was there a love scene I missed?” says James, flipping through the script. “I can’t find it? Where is it?”

“The whole movie is a love scene,” says Andrew, horrified by these people.

“Of course it is,” says Jennifer, nodding sympathetically. “And some people…”

“One out of twenty,” says James, chewing on a cookie. “Maybe.”

“Some people will get that the whole movie is a love scene,” says Jennifer, smiling sadly at Andrew. “But most people won’t get that unless we show them Louise and Jonah sealing the deal. Kapish?”

“If this was an arty French film,” says James, smacking his copy of the script with the back of his hand, “or even an arty British film, okay, be subtle. But this is a big budget American movie. Subtle won’t fly. Big budget movies can’t afford to be subtle. At the very least we need passionate kissing and the tearing off of clothing, though much better would be the onset of hot sex and exclamations of ‘You’re the best yet, babe,’ or words to that effect.”

“Who would say that line?” asks Andrew, getting up to go. “Jonah? Who would never in million years say something like that? Or Louise who would never in a million years say something like that? Hey I have an idea. Let’s have a parrot watching them fucking and he can say You’re the best yet, babe. Are you truly not aware after reading three drafts that Jonah and Louise never state the obvious?”

“Hey,” says James, waving his hand to dispel Andrew’s outrage. “We’re on your side. But we didn’t spend all this time and money not to make a movie. Right? And though I totally respect your desire to have a movie made that is a hundred per cent true to your vision, that will never happen unless you write and direct and produce your own movie, and even then it won’t turn out the way you want it. I hate to tell you this, pal, but every movie you have ever loved did not turn out the way the playwright or the novelist or the screenwriter wanted it to. They don’t. They never do.”

“Thank you for enlightening me,” says Andrew, feeling as rotten as he has ever felt. “I think the best thing for us to do right now is go home and discuss all this and meet with you again tomorrow.”

“We’d be happy to come to your place,” says Jennifer, getting up and holding out her hands to both Andrew and Luisa. “We are truly honored to be working with you on this movie and I know we can create something fantastic together. I know we can.”

∆

Andrew is too upset to drive home, so Luisa drives, neither of them saying a word until they are free of the city.

“I wonder why they waited until we’d written three drafts,” says Andrew, wishing he and Luisa had never created the enticing synopsis, “before telling us to shrink Leo’s part, expand Louise’s, and finish the movie with sex. Couldn’t they have told us that after the first draft?”

“Maybe they didn’t know what they wanted until now,” says Luisa, wishing she’d never suggested writing an enticing synopsis. “Or maybe they thought we’d be more likely to agree to those changes if we thought a long delay would jeopardize the chances of the film getting made.”

“I couldn’t make those changes if I wanted to,” says Andrew, looking at her. “Could you?”

“No,” she says wistfully. “It would ruin everything.”

“It’s like one of those dreams where you win the race,” says Andrew, laughing despite his angst, “and then you step in a pile of shit and no matter what you do you can’t get the shit off your shoes.”

∆

At supper, Owen and Lily want to hear all about the movie producers.

Luisa and Andrew exchange looks and Luisa says, “They took us to a snazzy new restaurant called Tangelo’s and they were very particular about the proportions of the ingredients in their gin and tonics and their salad dressings and about how to prepare their scampi, and then we went to their snazzy suite in the Hotel Vancouver and talked about the screenplay, and then we came home.”

“The key word here is snazzy,” says Andrew, who is slightly drunk. “They were both very snazzy people, Jennifer perhaps a bit snazzier than James, and they want us to rewrite the screenplay so Louise has a bigger part than Leo and in the end Jonah and Louise have a big sex scene.”

“Yuck,” says Lily, disappointed with their synopsis of the movie producers. “I thought you were done writing the screenplay.”

“So did we,” says Luisa, making a mental note to check their contract about compensation for any writing they might do beyond the third draft.

“When you say snazzy,” asks Owen, frowning at Andrew, “do you mean he’s handsome and she’s beautiful? Because they sound stupid.”

“I would not say James is handsome,” says Andrew, shaking his head. “But I would say Jennifer is beautiful, though for my taste she wears too much makeup.”

“And if you meet her,” says Luisa, smiling at the children, “call her J because she hates the name Jennifer.”

“We might meet them?” asks Owen, sounding worried. “When?”

“There’s a slight chance they’ll be here when you get home from school tomorrow,” says Luisa, looking at Andrew. “We’re still negotiating the location of our next meeting.”

∆

Andrew barely sleeps that night and rises early to have a cup of tea and think about life before he makes breakfast for the kids and bicycles to school with them, the day sunny and cool.

He gets a flat tire on the way home and has to walk the last mile, and as he pushes his bike along the country road something shifts inside him and he lets go of needing to defend the screenplay.

When he gets home he finds Luisa sitting at the kitchen table, still in her nightgown, writing in her notebook.

“What are you writing?” he asks, sitting beside her.

“My dream from this morning,” she says, writing the last few words. “Want to hear?”

“I do,” he says, closing his eyes to listen.

“I’m walking behind my mother on a slender trail following a fast-flowing river through a forest of tall trees. Now we emerge from the forest and come to a corral in which there is a beautiful brown horse.

“My mother says, ‘This is the horse you wanted when you were a girl, but we lived in the city and had no place for him. He is young and wild. You can tame him or let him go.’

“‘I want to let him go,’ I say. ‘But where is the gate?’

“‘There is no gate,’ she says, handing me a saw. ‘You have to make an opening for him.’

“So I take the saw and start sawing one end of the top plank, and I hear someone else sawing and look up and see you sawing the other end of the plank, and I wake up.”

∆

Jennifer and James arrive at one, the day turning cloudy.

Luisa serves lunch on the deck overlooking the garden: chicken quesadillas with homemade guacamole and a garden salad dressed with olive oil and white wine vinegar and a splash of lime.

James raves about the food and the salad dressing and says to Luisa, “You should open a restaurant. I’ll invest heavily.”

“Luisa was the chef at a restaurant not far from here,” says Andrew, gazing fondly at his wife. “I ate her ambrosia for years before I met her.”

“Do you miss it?” asks Jennifer, wrinkling her nose at Luisa. “Working in a restaurant?”

“I sometimes miss the comradery,” she says, looking at Jennifer. “But I don’t miss the pressure. The relentless pressure to produce.”

“Speaking of pressure to produce,” says James, playing a drum roll on the edge of the table with his index fingers. “How soon can you make those changes?”

“We can’t,” says Andrew, relieved to be saying so. “We understand why you want them, but you will have to find someone else to do that for you.”

James and Jennifer exchange looks of surprise and Jennifer raises her hand and says, “Hold on now. Not so fast. We will be happy to pay you for two more drafts.” She puts her hand on her heart. “We love your characters and we love your dialogue and we want to get this right.”

“The thing is…” says Andrew, looking at Jennifer and connecting again with something deep inside her, “we are too much in love with the story and the characters to betray our love.”

“Makes perfect sense,” says James, pointing with both index fingers at Andrew. “You guys are too close to the material. And fortunately, we know some of the best finishers in the business.”

“Would you at least be willing to vet the final dialogue?” asks Jennifer, clearly upset to be losing them. “We really want the dialogue to be consistent.”

“We’d be happy to,” says Luisa, a moment before Andrew can say No.

“Mahvelous!” says James, raising his glass. “Here’s to wrapping this puppy up and signing some sexy A-list stars.”

∆

Andrew and Luisa accompany James and Jennifer to the big shiny black car they hired for the day—the driver waking from his after-lunch snooze and jumping out to open doors.

“We’ll be in touch,” says James, giving Luisa a kiss on the cheek and shaking Andrew’s hand. “You guys are special.”

“Thank you so much,” says Jennifer, pecking Luisa’s cheek and intending to peck Andrew’s, except he embraces her.

“We are of one mind with you, J,” he says, holding her for a long moment. “And we know you will represent us well in the battles ahead.”

∆

“What a wonderful thing you said to her,” says Luisa, holding Andrew’s hand as they watch the big black car roll away. “I think she probably would make the movie the way we wrote it if only she could.”

“I do, too,” says Andrew, feeling light as air. “I also think we should go to the beach now and take the kids out for pizza tonight.”

∆

The movie based on Their Summer Holiday is not filmed in Thailand or anywhere else in September because in July the American movie studio that optioned the movie rights and paid Andrew and Luisa to write three drafts of the screenplay and then paid two other writers to write three more drafts, drops the project after the overseeing studio exec reads the sixth draft and says, “By page five I wanted to vomit.”

∆

A year and a few months later, in October of 1994, a maverick Danish filmmaker named Nicolas Thorsen options the film rights to Their Summer Holiday from Andrew and Luisa for five thousand dollars, writes a new screenplay based on the original play, has Andrew and Luisa tweak his screenplay, and makes the movie for two million dollars.

A charming thirteen-year-old from Bristol plays Leo as if born to the role of a preternaturally kind and imaginative person.

A beguiling French gal with red hair and emerald eyes plays the part of Louise with an irresistible mix of innocence and savvy.

A droll self-effacing fellow from Oxford who reminds everyone of the young Rex Harrison plays the part of Jonah.

The three songs from the play are performed in the movie by the three main characters accompanying themselves on ukuleles.

And the movie ends exactly as Andrew and Luisa imagined it would, except when Louise gets in the car she gives Jonah a marvelous kiss—an unscripted kiss that turns out to be cinematic genius.

∆

Their Summer Holiday, the movie, is released simultaneously in England and France in October of 1995 and is an instant success. By December the movie is playing all over Europe, and in the spring of 1996 Their Summer Holiday opens in a hundred theatres in North America and becomes an art house sensation.

∆

That same spring, Andrew and Luisa and Owen and Lily are in the throes of mighty change. The kids are now in Eighth Grade, Lily fast becoming a young woman with suitors galore, Owen falling in love every few weeks but too shy to approach the girls he’s smitten with.

Luisa and Andrew are writing a play together, a comedy drama set in a bookstore, Andrew is working on a series of short stories about carpenters, and Luisa is writing a quasi-autobiographical novella about the six weeks she spent with her grandmother on Rainy River.

On Tuesday mornings, just for fun, Andrew and Luisa write screenplays together, acting out the parts and imagining how Nicolas Thorsen, who is now their hero and friend, might film the scenes.

∆

In the fall of 1996, Jennifer calls Andrew to see how he and Luisa are doing. Several times in the course of their conversation she refers to Their Summer Holiday as the one that got away, and though she recently had a big hit with a serial-killer flick and has a prostitute-becomes-a-princess film about to open in thousands of theatres, she insists Their Summer Holiday is the best movie she’s ever seen and would love to work with Andrew and Luisa again some day.

When she’s done dropping the names of all the big stars she’s working with, Andrew asks, “So what’s going on with you apart from the movie biz?”

And after a moment’s hesitation she says, “I wonder if I’ll ever be in a relationship with someone who really understands me, really gets me. Like you get me, Andrew. Someone like you.”

fin

One Fell Swoop

Tags Andrew, love, Luisa, movie producers, Nicolas Thorsen, One Fell Swoop, Owen and Lily, plays, Publishing, Rainy River, screenplay, short story, The Same Woman (Jennifer), Their Summer Holiday, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books, Vancouver, writing, Ziibi

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The Same Woman (Luisa)

Over and over again in the course of his life, Andrew meets a woman he recognizes as someone he has known before. He met her in elementary school in 1955, fell in love with her briefly in 1962, had a relationship with her in 1966, and lived with her in British Columbia from 1970 to 1973. The last time was in 1978 when they became pen pals for six years until she broke off all communication with him.

∆

1986. Andrew is thirty-eight and his wife Kiki is forty. They celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary, their four-year-old son Owen begins attending pre-school, both Kiki and Andrew get their first personal computers, and Andrew becomes Owen’s sole parent for long stretches of days and weeks so Kiki can pursue her burgeoning career as a modern dance choreographer.

Owen and Andrew are unhappy about Kiki spending so much time away from their home on the outskirts of Vancouver, and Andrew wishes Kiki was content to work with dance companies nearer at hand, but she is not and has signed contracts to create dances for companies in Montreal, London, New York, and Los Angeles over the next two years.

They had hoped Andrew’s success with his writing would continue and they could afford for Andrew and Owen to accompany Kiki on her various choreography adventures, but when a giant corporation took over the publishing house that had done so well with Andrew’s first two collections of short stories, his run of good fortune ended. His third collection was taken out-of-print a few days after the book was published, and then the corporation cancelled the publication of his fourth collection, after which his sales figures branded him an author who doesn’t sell.

Having spent the considerable profits from his earlier successes on doubling the size of their kitchen and building a spectacular dance studio for Kiki adjacent to their house, Andrew has taken up carpentry work again to pay the bills.

Kiki is unhappy about the situation, too, but creating dances for the best modern dance companies in the world has long been her dream and she doesn’t want to miss her chance. Knowing how quickly Andrew’s fortunes changed, Kiki is determined to strike while her iron is hot.

∆

Andrew’s best friend Cal and Cal’s wife Terry and their children Felicia and Scott live a mile away from Andrew and Kiki and Owen. Felicia is ten and Scott is five and they are Owen’s best friends and idols. Their daily presence in Owen’s life, along with Terry as a willing mother substitute, makes Kiki’s long absences easier for the little boy to handle.

∆

On a rainy Wednesday afternoon in April—Kiki in New York after a brief stint at home following seven weeks in Los Angeles—Andrew is sitting at the counter in the magnificent kitchen he built especially for Kiki, overseeing Owen and Scott and Felicia making oatmeal raisin cookies, when the phone rings.

Before he picks up the phone, Andrew prays the caller is his literary agent Penelope Goldstein calling from Montreal with good news, though he hasn’t heard a peep from Penelope in three years.

“Hello,” he says, imagining Penelope sitting at her desk piled high with manuscripts, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

“Hi,” says a woman with a musical voice. “May I speak to Andrew Ross, please?”

For a flickering, Andrew thinks the caller is Carol Savard, his great friend and correspondent who two years ago severed all ties with him because, as she wrote in her final letter to him, “The intensity of my desire to be in a relationship with you makes it impossible for me to sustain a relationship with anyone else.”

“This is Andrew.”

“My name is Luisa Morningstar. My daughter Lily is at the Montessori school with your son Owen, and she asked me to make a play date with him. Is that something we might arrange?”

“Probably,” says Andrew, struck by how much she reminds him of Carol Savard, though she sounds nothing like Carol. “Can you hold on a sec?”

“Happy to. Or you can call me back.”

“Good idea,” says Andrew, flustered by the feelings arising in him. “He’s currently baking cookies.”

∆

“So O,” says Andrew, speaking to his son at bedtime, “I got a call from Lily’s mother today wondering if you’d like to have a play date with Lily.”

“I’m playing with Scott and Felicia after school tomorrow,” says Owen, pursing his lips and shaking his head exactly as his mother does. “We already planned it.”

“Right, but there are lots of days when you don’t play with Scott and Felicia. Maybe you’d like to play with Lily on one of those days?”

“Would you be with me?” asks Owen with a touch of worry in his voice.

“If it’s at our house, of course I’ll be with you,” says Andrew, knowing Owen doesn’t like going new places without Mama or Papa or Terry or Cal. “And if it’s at Lily’s house I will definitely be with you the whole time for the first few times you go there.”

“Okay,” says Owen, nodding.

“You don’t have to have a play date with her. Only if you like her.”

“I love her,” says Owen, gazing at his father. “She’s so nice and she’s the best dancer you’ve ever seen.”

“Better than your mother?”

“Maybe a little,” says Owen, pouting. “When’s Mama coming home?”

“In two weeks,” says Andrew, fighting his tears. “And this time she’ll be home for a good long while.”

“How long is a good long while?”

“Lots of days,” says Andrew, his heart breaking. “Lots and lots of days.”

∆

The next morning on his way to the beach house he’s building with two other carpenters, Andrew drives Owen to the Montessori kindergarten that occupies a former Methodist church four miles from their house. Owen puts his knapsack and jacket in his cubbyhole and he and Andrew wave to the head teacher Mrs. Chandler who is on the phone in her office.

A sturdy middle-aged woman with short gray hair and rosy cheeks, Mrs. Chandler waves back to them and mouths the words, “Good morning Owen. Welcome to school.”

“Want to introduce me to Lily?” asks Andrew as he accompanies Owen out the back door of the schoolhouse and through the children’s vegetable garden to the large playground.

“Okay,” says Owen, who is usually among the first children to arrive at school in the morning. “She’s always on the swings when I get here. Unless it’s raining.”

And sure enough, on the middle swing of three, the two other swings not yet taken, is a beautiful four-year-old girl with dark olive skin and big brown eyes, her long black hair done in four intricately woven braids, swinging higher than most children dare to go and singing Frère Jacques.

∆

On the following Saturday at ten in the morning, the sky full of dark gray clouds, Luisa brings Lily to Andrew and Owen’s house for a play date.

Luisa’s exquisite face and her dark olive skin remind Andrew of the famous bust of Nefertiti. She is exactly Andrew’s height, five-eleven, and exactly his age, thirty-eight, and she wears her glossy black hair in a ponytail—her movements and gestures full of grace.

Following a quick tour of the house, during which Owen and Lily stay in Owen’s room to look at his stuffed animals and books, Andrew and Luisa sit at the kitchen counter and share a pot of tea.

“You have my dream kitchen,” she says, gazing around the splendid room. “This is bigger than the kitchen at the restaurant where I cook.”

“Which restaurant?” asks Andrew, mystified by how much she reminds him of his former friend Carol Savard, though she looks nothing like Carol and sounds nothing like Carol, and yet…

“The Crossroads,” she says, looking at her watch. “I’ve been the breakfast and lunch chef there for nine years now. I drop Lily off at Montessori at 6:15 and pick her up at 3:30. I have a special arrangement with Mrs. Chandler.”

“I’ve eaten your delicious food many times,” says Andrew, who usually drops Owen at school a few minutes after seven, which is officially the earliest a child is supposed to arrive. “Do you pay Mrs. Chandler?

“Yes,” she says, nodding. “Only way I can manage.” She looks at her watch again. “Speaking of which, would it be okay with you if I left now and came back at two? I know I said I’d stick around for the first date, but I am so far behind on so many things at home, a few hours alone would be a godsend.”

“Sure,” says Andrew, disappointed not to have a longer visit with her. “If Lily’s okay being here without you.”

“Oh she’s used to me leaving her with people she hardly knows,” says Luisa, getting up. “But I’ll check with her to make sure.”

Andrew accompanies Luisa to Owen’s room where they find Lily and Owen sitting side-by-side on Owen’s bed looking through a big picture book of Australian marsupials.

“I’m going now, honey,” says Luisa, smiling at the sight of her daughter with Owen. “I’ll be back at two.”

“Okay,” says Lily, looking up from the picture of a mother koala and her two babies. “See you later.”

“Good luck with your catching up,” says Andrew, escorting Luisa to her little old Toyota station wagon. “We’ll see you at two. Or thereabouts.”

“You’re a prince,” she says, beaming at him as she gets into her car.

∆

At three-thirty, while Owen and Lily are giving each other impromptu concerts on the piano in the living room, Andrew calls Luisa and gets her answering machine. He is more than a little peeved she took thereabouts to mean an hour and a half late, but when he hears her answering machine message, he’s glad he felt the need to call her.

She sings in her gorgeous voice, “Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky, stormy weather,” and follows those words by saying, “but I do know I want to talk to you, so please leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

Andrew saunters into the living room, waits for Owen to finish his improvised piano piece, joins Lily in applauding and asks, “Is your mom a singer, Lily?”

“Yeah,” she says, taking Owen’s place at the piano. “I am, too.”

∆

When Luisa finally shows up at 4:15, Andrew is too angry to accept her apology and she bursts into tears as she leaves with Lily.

“Papa?” asks Owen, watching the little station wagon drive away. “Why was Lily’s mother crying?”

“I don’t know,” says Andrew, still seething.

“Can we go to Cookie’s for pizza?” asks Owen, smiling hopefully at his father. “With Lily and her mother?”

“I think you’ve seen enough of Lily for one day,” says Andrew, fixing himself against the idea of asking Lily and Luisa to join them for pizza.

“What do you mean?” says Owen, frowning. “We weren’t tired of each other.”

Andrew closes his eyes and breathes deeply to calm himself.

“Please Papa?” says Owen, taking Andrew’s hand. “Can we ask them to come with us?”

“Okay,” says Andrew, opening his eyes. “I’ll call and see.”

He leaves a message on Luisa’s machine and she calls back fifteen minutes later. “We’d love to meet you at Cookie’s,” she says breathlessly. “At six?”

“Six,” he says, resisting his impulse to add and don’t be late.

∆

Andrew and Owen arrive at Cookie’s at ten minutes past six, the place jammed as always on a Saturday night, the din fantastic. Luisa and Lily are already there, Lily wearing a pretty white dress with red polka dots, Luisa wearing a beautiful turquoise shirt and a long black skirt and looking fabulous.

“We’re under-dressed,” says Andrew, sitting beside Luisa in the booth—Owen and Lily on booster seats across from them.

“You look fine,” says Luisa, watching his face. “Are you still mad at me?”

“About what?” says Andrew, studying the menu.

“Oh good,” she says, smiling. “I’m dying for a beer. Want to split a pitcher?”

∆

Along with their extra large deluxe vegetable pizza with extra mushrooms, the children have lemonade and the grownups enjoy their beer.

“So tell me how you came to be the renowned chef of The Crossroads,” says Andrew, enjoying Luisa’s company. “Spare no details.”

“I thought you might ask me something like that,” says Luisa, smiling shyly. “So I rehearsed my answer. The first part of it anyway.”

“How prescient of you,” he says, giving her his full attention after confirming that Owen is happily devouring his third piece of pizza.

“I was born in Toronto,” she says, exchanging smiles with her daughter. “My mother, who died seven years ago, was part-Chippewa, part-French Quebecois, and she was a fantastic cook. She worked in a hotel kitchen and had a brief liaison with a man from Cuba. He was an engineer working on a dam north of the city and was staying in the hotel where my mother worked. He was unaware he had conceived a child with her until she wrote to him in Cuba, and once he knew, he sent her money every few months for as long as I lived at home, which was until I was sixteen.”

“Papa?” says Owen, politely interrupting. “Can we go look at the fish?”

“Can we, Mama?” asks Lily, nodding hopefully.

When the children are safely stationed at the big aquarium and gazing in wonder at the neon tetras and swordtails and goldfish, Luisa continues her story.

“I started working in restaurants when I was thirteen,” she says, nodding in thanks as Andrew pours her a second glass of beer, “and I’d been playing piano and singing since I was a little kid, so… to make a very long story short, my life until I had Lily was always some combination of singing and working in restaurants. And now my life is entirely restaurant work and taking care of Lily, though we do sing together and I’m teaching her to play the piano.”

“And Lily’s father? Where is he?”

“He was a guitarist I used to perform with,” she says softly. “And after a few years of successfully resisting his advances, one night I didn’t resist and Lily was made, though I didn’t want to believe I was pregnant until I was almost three months along, and by then her father had moved to Seattle.”

“Did you tell him you were pregnant?”

“No, because I was planning to get an abortion. But then I had a vivid dream in which my mother came to me and begged me to keep the child, so I did and named her Lily after my mother. And then when Lily was two, I decided to contact her father and tell him, partly because I needed money and partly because I thought he should know, and that’s when I found out he had committed suicide after a lifelong struggle with depression.”

∆

The children return from watching the fish, ice cream is ordered, and Luisa asks Andrew, “So your wife is a choreographer and you are a carpenter. How did you meet?”

“At a party in Montreal,” says Andrew, remembering the moment he met Kiki—love at first sight—at the height of his success.

“Were you living in Montreal?”

“No, but Kiki was. She grew up there.”

“So what were you doing there?”

“Oh… visiting friends,” he says, in no mood to rehash the rise and fall of his writing career.

She arches her eyebrow. “Why don’t I believe you?”

“I don’t know,” he says, caught off guard. “Why don’t you?”

“Because you looked away when you answered. As if you were ashamed to tell me.”

“Ashamed,” says Andrew, considering that as he finishes his third glass of beer. “Yeah maybe I am a little, though not about why I was in Montreal.” He makes a disparaging face. “It’s a long boring story.”

“I’m sure it’s not boring,” she says, splitting the last of the beer with him. “Maybe next time you’ll tell me.”

“Next play date?” he says, liking her very much.

“Yeah,” she says, liking him very much, too. “Next play date.”

∆

That night, after Owen falls asleep during the bedtime story, Andrew sits at the kitchen table with the intention of writing a letter to Jason Moreau, the director of the Montreal production of Extremely Silly Ariel Gets Wise, a play based on two of Andrew’s short stories that was a resounding success nine years ago and helped launch Andrew’s writing career.

But instead of a letter to Jason, out comes a story about a man and his young son who spend a week at the beach one summer in an old falling down house, and the fascinating people and animals and birds and curious conundrums they encounter there.

He writes for five hours without stopping, uses up two Bic pens and most of the ink in a third, and finishes the seventy-page opus at one in the morning barely aware of what he has written.

∆

After breakfast the next day, Andrew walks with Owen to Scott and Felicia’s house, and while Owen and Scott build towers of wooden blocks in the living room, Andrew has coffee with Cal and Terry in the kitchen—Cal a strapping fellow with curly black hair who has known Andrew since they were in high school together in California, Terry a pretty redhead who fell in love with Cal the day after he got to Canada seventeen years ago.

“What news of Kiki?” asks Cal, who is a professor of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University, his specialties Ethics, Skepticism, and Socrates.

“She’ll be home in a couple weeks,” says Andrew, weary from his long night of writing. “We spoke a few days ago and she said everything was going gangbusters and she loves New York and misses us, but she’s glad she’s doing this, and… like that.”

“How long will she be home for?” asks Terry, a fine art photographer who makes most of her money shooting weddings.

“Little less than three weeks,” says Andrew, smiling bravely. “And then she’s off to LA for seven weeks.”

“You gonna take some time off while she’s home?” asks Cal, who dearly loves Andrew and worries about him.

“No. She’ll be working seven days a week on the new dances for LA, so there’s no point in my taking time off.” He bounces his eyebrows. “But guess what?”

“You started writing again,” says Terry, nodding excitedly.

“How did you know?” asks Andrew, laughing.

“I can hear it in your voice,” she says, getting up to make a fresh pot of coffee. “What are you writing? A play?”

“A story,” says Andrew, having yet to read what he wrote last night. “First thing I’ve written in… God… three years.” He frowns at Terry. “What about my voice is so different?”

“You seem calmer,” says Cal, nodding assuredly. “Happier.”

“You sound like you again,” says Terry, smiling fondly at him. “The old sweet you.”

∆

Leaving Owen to play with Scott for the day, Andrew returns home and sits on the living room sofa reading the seventy pages he wrote last night.

When he finishes, he takes a deep breath and reads the whole thing again.

Now he gets up and goes out into the garden and lifts his arms to the sky and says, “Thank you. Thank you for coming back to me.”

∆

That night Andrew writes for another four hours and produces another fifty pages. Again he has only a vague notion of what he’s writing, but he is filled with joy to be the conduit for whatever so urgently wants to come through.

∆

Monday night, after a long day of roofing the beach house, Andrew reads the pages he wrote last night, and is again filled with gratitude for the story he has wrought.

Now he takes up his pen and writes for another three hours.

∆

Tuesday night, pleased with the previous night’s creation, he finds the flow of words has ceased, so he takes up his guitar and plays a lovely pattern of chords he has never played before, and after playing the pattern a dozen times, he sets down his guitar and writes a chorus and four verses as if copying them from a page hanging in the air before him.

Now he plays the pattern of chords and sings the words, and loves the song more than any song he’s ever written.

∆

Wednesday night, no words come, nor music, so he wanders into the kitchen to put a kettle on for tea and thinks I should call Luisa and set up a play date for Saturday or Sunday and the phone rings and it’s Luisa.

“I was just thinking of calling you,” he says, sitting down at the counter.

“Really?” she says, smiling into the phone. “Why were you thinking of calling me?”

“Well… to set up a play date for Owen and Lily.”

“Saturday or Sunday?” she says, her voice a salve for his lonely heart. “Either or both work for us.”

“Then Saturday,” he says, picking up a pen and writing on the notepad he keeps by the phone they called each other simultaneously and each got a busy signal. “You want to come here again or…”

“Yeah we like your place much better than ours. And this time I’ll stick around and we can have a visit.”

“Oh good, and I can tell you what I was doing in Montreal when I met my wife.”

“And I can tell you my Montreal story,” she says, her kettle whistling in the background. “When I was singing with a band from hell. Shall we do ten o’clock again?”

“Perfect,” he says, his kettle whistling, too.

The date made, Andrew brews a cup of chamomile tea, fetches his notebook, takes up his pen, and writes like a madman until well after midnight.

∆

Saturday is a marvelous and scary day for Andrew, his five hours with Luisa confirming what he already knew but dared not admit: she is undoubtedly the inspiration for the best stories he’s ever written and the best song he’s ever composed, and most terrifying of all, he’s in love with her and she with him.

Yet neither of them makes the slightest attempt to seduce the other, and at visit’s end they both honestly express how happy they are to have found a new friend.

∆

By the time Kiki arrives home from New York in early May, Andrew has completed and rewritten eleven long short stories, composed four new songs, and written two drafts of a play based on the longest of the new stories entitled Their Summer Holiday.

After a weekend of family fun, Kiki gets to work on her new dances, Andrew resumes his carpentry gig, Owen goes to preschool for six hours every day, and everything seems to be fine.

A Saturday play date is arranged for Lily and Owen, Luisa brings Lily over for the day, and Kiki and Luisa immediately hit it off, though a few minutes into the play date Kiki has to take a call from her producer in Los Angeles and Luisa has to hurry away to The Crossroads to fill in for the weekend lunch chef, and Andrew is left to supervise the children.

Walking with Owen and Lily in the nearby woods, Andrew thinks about Kiki leaving again in two weeks, and he is overcome with sorrow.

∆

On a Saturday night two days before Kiki departs for Los Angeles, Andrew and Kiki throw a small party. Cal and Terry bring Felicia and Scott, and Luisa comes with Lily. The five dancers Kiki has been employing to help refine her new dances come with their partners, and Andrew’s old pal Joe Ganz and his wife Melinda come—Joe the editor and Melinda the art director of the free weekly The Weekly Blitz in which Andrew first published the seventeen short stories that eventually became his first and most successful book The Draft Dodger and other fables.

After much eating and drinking, the party goers move en masse to Kiki’s studio where Kiki and her five dancers perform several minutes of the two dances destined for the stage in Los Angeles—a thrilling display of strong limber people doing amazing things with their bodies in time to thunderous polyrhythmic music.

Following the dance show, everyone returns to the house where Joe Ganz requests Andrew read one of his new stories. Andrew is reluctant to comply until Kiki nods encouragingly, and Andrew says to the assembled host, “Well… the new stories I’ve been writing are all quite long, but I think the first ten pages of one of them makes a good little story within the larger story, so… I’ll fetch those pages.”

Everyone finds a seat and Andrew stands on the hearth and says, “So this is the first part of a story I’m calling Their Summer Holiday.”

Now for the first time since the collapse of his writing career, he reads to an audience and feels again the thrill of deeply connecting with others through his words, his final sentence eliciting loud applause and shouts of Bravo and Joe Ganz saying, “Oh please let me run that, Andrew. It’s so fucking good.”

∆

Two days later, Kiki flies to Los Angeles, and this time her going barely disturbs Owen, perhaps because he has adjusted to the new reality of her coming and going, and no longer fears she might never return.

But for Andrew this is the hardest time yet because he knows that after seven long weeks without her, she will return for a scant few days before flying to London where she will stay for two months before returning for a few weeks before going to Montreal for seven weeks, and then to Los Angeles again, and New York again… on and on for another year and a half.

∆

With her every success—and Kiki’s dances are most successful—more offers come, and when Kiki returns in mid-September after her two months in London she proposes they expand the two-year plan to a four-year plan.

“Are you serious?” says Andrew, aghast at what she’s suggesting. “What about Owen? What about me? We’re in the prime of our lives. Our child is about to turn five. Is this what you want? To live apart from us for another three years?”

“What I want,” she says, taking a deep breath, “is a divorce. And for you to have custody of Owen.”

They are standing in the kitchen when she says this to him—Owen and Scott in the driveway racing around on scooters.

“Divorce?” he says, stunned. “What are you talking about?”

“I met someone, Andrew,” she says, trying not to cry. “I never in a million years thought something like this would happen. I never ever wanted to hurt you. But it happened. And now I need to go this other way. I’m so sorry.”

“You need to go this other way,” he says, sitting down to keep from falling over. “Is that what you’re gonna say to Owen?”

“I will explain it to him,” she says, her eyes brimming with tears.

“Oh good for you, Kiki,” he says bitterly. “And of course he’ll understand because he’s four-years-old and a four-year-old can easily understand why his mother would abandon him because she needs to go this other way.”

Kiki leaves the kitchen.

Andrew bows his head and closes his eyes and hopes to wake from this terrible dream.

∆

At the end of September, two weeks after Kiki asked for a divorce, she oversees the loading of her belongings into a moving truck to be driven to her new partner’s house in Los Angeles while she flies to Montreal. Her new partner, a composer of music for movies and television, is in his early sixties and has five grown children from his three previous marriages.

∆

In the wake of Kiki’s going, Andrew takes a month off from carpentry work to be available to Owen all day every day, and during this break from work he has the idea to convert Kiki’s dance studio into a two-bedroom rental unit.

To pay for the conversion, he takes out a fifty-thousand-dollar loan on his house and hires two excellent carpenters to help him do the work, which involves adding a kitchen, expanding the bathroom, and putting up internal walls to make two bedrooms and a living room out of the big open space.

∆

A month into the transformation of the dance studio, a few days after Thanksgiving, Andrew comes within a tiny fraction of an inch of cutting off his thumb with a circular saw, and this terrifying brush with disaster makes him realize he needs to take time off from carpentry and get some therapy.

In order to afford this, he does something he has never done before. He calls his parents and asks them for a loan of five thousand dollars. They are happy to oblige and do him one better by volunteering to drive up from California and stay with him and Owen for a month or two.

“Makes sense to me,” says his father Zeke, seventy-four and recently retired after fifty years of landscaping. “Why else did I stop working?”

∆

On a rainy afternoon, two days before Christmas, his parents having arrived in early December, Andrew gets home from a revelation-filled three-hour session with his psychotherapist and finds his mother Gloria in the kitchen making supper with Luisa: spaghetti with a seafood sauce, sautéed vegetables, and a big green salad.

“Who knew she was a gourmet cook?” says Gloria, pointing at Luisa. “I invite her to stay for dinner and she turns out to be Julia Child.”

“Did we have a play date today?” says Andrew, sitting down at the counter and gazing at Luisa. “I completely forgot. I’m so sorry.”

“We didn’t have a play date,” says Luisa, filling a glass with cold beer and setting it before Andrew. “But your mother called and said Owen was pining for Lily, so we came over and… is this okay we’re here?”

“Of course,” says Andrew, downing the beer in a single gulp. “I’m delighted to see you. I never get to see you enough. And how did you know I was pining for a beer?”

“Maybe she’s clairvoyant,” says Gloria, stirring the noodles in a big bubbling pot. “And maybe you don’t see her enough because you don’t call her enough. Not that it’s any of my business.”

“I would have called her enough, Mom,” says Andrew, taking on his mother’s New York Jewish accent, “but I’ve been very busy having a nervous breakdown. So sue me.”

∆

After supper, while Gloria and Zeke play Go Fish and Slap Jack with Owen and Lily in the living room, Andrew and Luisa do the dishes together, Andrew washing, Luisa drying.

“So how have you been?” asks Andrew, smiling at Luisa. “You never stay to visit anymore when you bring Lily for a play date, so now I’m hopelessly out of touch with you. Have you fallen in love with someone?”

“Yeah,” she says, drying a dish. “I fell in love with a married man.”

“Oh Luisa, don’t do that,” he says, wincing.

“Don’t do what?” she asks, stopping her drying.

“Have an affair with a married man. You’re fantastic. You’re beautiful and smart and talented and… there are thousands and millions of unmarried men who would love to be…”

“Who said I was having an affair with him? I said I’m in love with him. And until recently I have been studiously avoiding him because he was married and I didn’t want to… you know… be a home wrecker.”

“Oh,” he says, dropping the scrubber into the soapy water. “I see.”

“You do?” she asks, setting the plate down.

“I do,” he says, opening his arms to her. “Now I see.”

∆

They make love for the first time in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1987, hoping not to wake anyone with their ecstatic communion.

But Gloria wakes and rejoices her son has found such a lovely partner.

∆

Luisa and Lily move in with Andrew and Owen at the end of February just as Andrew completes his work on the rental unit and rents it to Chas and Betty Lowenstein, retired schoolteachers who become instant grandparents for Lily and Owen.

∆

On a rainy Friday morning in early April, the kids at kindergarten, Luisa cooking at The Crossroads, Andrew is sitting at the kitchen table writing a new story when the phone rings.

Feeling certain this is Luisa calling to say she loves him, he picks up the phone and says, “I love you.”

“How sweet of you, Andrew,” says a familiar voice he doesn’t immediately recognize. “How did you know it was me?”

“Penelope?” he says, wondering if she still thinks of herself as his agent. “How nice to hear from you. I’ve been meaning to call you and see if you got the stories I sent. And the play.”

“I not only got them,” she says, pausing portentously, “we have an offer from Smith & Harte to publish the collection. And Jason has arranged for a staged reading of your play at the Ovid and possibly a production if the reading goes well.”

“We have an offer to publish my book?” says Andrew, trembling. “What about the data base that says I don’t sell?”

“Oh Smith & Harte don’t care about that,” she says, laughing. “They’re now the play thing of the wife of some incredibly rich computer person, and she’s desperate to publish your stories. They’re offering a ten-thousand-dollar advance, which is less than I’d hoped for, but that horrid database is a problem with most of the other houses so I think we should take their offer and hope for good reviews and a nice fat paperback sale. Yes?”

“Yes,” says Andrew, his tears flowing.

“She wants to fly you out here to meet you and introduce you to your editor, a young woman named Candace Wollitzer who looks like she’s not yet out of high school, but apparently she’s a huge fan of Draft Dodger and says Extremely Silly Ariel changed her life. You can stay with us or with Jason. He’s so looking forward to seeing you. He’s been terribly depressed since Freddie died, and your new play has revived him. Oh Andrew, I’m so glad you’re getting another chance. I think these new stories are your best yet.”

“I’ll be coming with my new partner Luisa and her daughter Lily and my son Owen,” says Andrew, looking out the window as the sun cracks the overlay of gray clouds and sends a heavenly beam to bathe the room in golden light.

fin

song

Tags Andrew, carpentry, Kiki, Montreal, Owen, plays, short stories, short story, The Draft Dodger and other fables, the same woman, The same Woman (Luisa), Todd Walton, Under the Table Books, Vancouver

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The Same Woman (Carol)

Several times in the course of his life, Andrew meets a woman he recognizes as someone he has known before. And though the woman never recognizes Andrew as anyone she knows, she is always drawn to him.

He met her for the first time in elementary school in 1955, and again in the summer of 1962 when they were both thirteen. Then in 1966 he was in a relationship with her until she left him for someone else. And from 1970 to 1973, he lived with her in British Columbia before she moved to Los Angeles.

∆

In 1978, Andrew is twenty-nine and living ten miles north of Vancouver in a spacious two-bedroom house he built on three acres not far from the ocean. He recently became a Canadian citizen and has been in a relationship with a woman named Leslie Revere for seven months.

Leslie is thirty-eight, an aspiring playwright who makes her living as a secretary in the biggest talent agency in Vancouver. She just started dying her brown hair auburn and is determined to get her weight down to 125, though she looks fine at 140. Desperate to get out of the tiny apartment she shares with another woman in a noisy part of the city, she wants to marry Andrew, get pregnant, and quit her job.

Andrew, however, does not want to marry Leslie. They were good friends before they became lovers, but now whenever they spend more than a few hours together, he feels invaded and overwhelmed and creatively squished.

So why doesn’t he end his relationship with her?

Because two years ago she introduced him to the playwright Mark Kane who adapted two of Andrew’s short stories, Ariel Gets Wise and Extremely Silly, into a play that had a critically-acclaimed run at the Kleindorf Theatre in Vancouver and was subsequently staged with great success in Montreal, which success led to Andrew’s first book, a collection of stories entitled The Draft Dodger and other fables being published in Canada and England, and soon to be published in America.

Thus for the first time in his life, he has enough money to devote himself entirely to his writing and music, yet he cannot write or compose anything because he is consumed with the dilemma of how to end his relationship with Leslie without seriously damaging his new connections in the theatre world, a world he greatly enjoys being part of.

Inspired by the success of Extremely Silly Ariel Gets Wise, Andrew has started writing plays along with his short stories, Mark Kane is nearly finished with a new play combining two more of Andrew’s short stories, and several eminent Canadian directors are eagerly awaiting anything Andrew writes.

But what makes Andrew’s dilemma even more difficult is that Leslie has written twenty plays over the last fifteen years, none of which have been produced despite her tireless efforts to convince actors and directors and theatre companies to take them on. This makes Andrew’s success both a source of pride for Leslie because she introduced him to Mark, and a thorn in her side because Andrew was so instantly and hugely successful in contrast to her many years of failing to have a play produced.

∆

To get some distance from Leslie, Andrew decides to fly to Montreal to meet his literary and theatrical agent Penelope Goldstein in-person for the first time, and to visit Jason Moreau, the director of the Montreal production of Extremely Silly Ariel Gets Wise.

Despite Andrew arranging his trip on the spur of the moment, Penelope says she’ll throw a party for him at her townhouse in Griffintown, and Jason says he’ll throw a party for Andrew at his beautiful old house in Little Italy.

Penelope and her partner Judith Perlman, also a literary agent, insist Andrew stay in their guest room for the night of the party, and Jason and his partner Frederick Holmes, a choreographer, insist Andrew stay in their guest room for as long as he likes.

Leslie is terribly upset Andrew didn’t invite her to accompany him to Montreal, but she hides her displeasure for fear of slowing the momentum she hopes will carry them into marriage and pregnancy, not necessarily in that order.

∆

Andrew’s best friend Cal drives Andrew to the Vancouver airport on a cloudy morning in May. Cal is about to get his PhD in Philosophy from Simon Fraser University and lives with his wife Terry, a photographer, and their two-year-old daughter Felicia in a house not far from Andrew’s. Cal and Andrew were pals in high school in Redwood City, California, roomies at UC Santa Cruz, and came to Canada together in 1970 so Cal could evade the draft and not go to Vietnam. Andrew then fell in love with a Canadian woman named Yvonne and ended up staying in Canada, too.

“I’m surprised Leslie’s not going with you,” says Cal, glancing at Andrew as they drive through a sudden downpour. “She lives for this kind of thing, doesn’t she?”

“I didn’t invite her,” says Andrew, testily. “I don’t want to be in a relationship with her anymore but I can’t seem to work up the courage to tell her. So I thought I’d run away for a week or two and see if that might empower me to break her heart.”

“You don’t owe her anything,” says Cal, giving Andrew a doleful look. “She didn’t write your stories. She introduced you to Mark who was already a big fan from reading you in The Weekly Blitz. You went to a party with her and she knew Mark because she knows everybody and he took things from there. Right?”

“It’s more complicated than that, Cal,” says Andrew, shrugging painfully. “She was my great advocate and…”

“Oh bullshit,” says Cal, tired of listening to Andrew rationalize staying in a relationship with someone he doesn’t love. “You’re just afraid she’s gonna badmouth you to her theatre friends if you break up with her. So what if she does? Your success comes from what you write, not from who you know.”

“I wish that were true,” says Andrew, wistfully. “But it’s not. My stories helped me get into the castle, but now that I’m in, believe me, it is all about who you know among the chosen few. And if the chosen few don’t like you, it doesn’t matter if you’re the greatest playwright in the world, they won’t have anything to do with you.”

Cal grimaces. “But your own experience disproves that. Your stories won the day, not Leslie.”

“If not for Leslie, I would never have gone to the party where I met Mark.” He gazes out at the rain. “No. They lowered the drawbridge for her and let me in because I was with her.”

“I’ll never believe that,” says Cal, shaking his head. “I will always believe you flew over the ramparts on the magic carpet of your wonderful stories.”

“Which is one of the many reasons I love you,” says Andrew, smiling fondly at his dear friend.

∆

The truth is Penelope and Judith love Andrew’s short stories because they are great stories. And they love the play that sprang from two of those stories because Extremely Silly Ariel Gets Wise is a great play. They very much hope Andrew’s success continues, but they have no expectations it will.

Penelope and Judith attained their success as agents by working incredibly hard for decades, and though they know as well as anyone about the potency of personal connections in the publishing business and the theatre world, they are of a generation of agents—both of them in their fifties—who represent uniquely talented writers regardless of who those writers know or don’t know.

Forty people come to the party at Penelope and Judith’s townhouse, mostly middle-aged editors and middle-aged writers, a few younger editors and younger writers, and a handful of theatre people. Penelope and Judith take turns introducing people to Andrew, and eventually he meets everyone. He is praised many times for his story collection and for Extremely Silly Ariel Gets Wise, eats his fill of fabulous hors d’oeuvres, and is beginning to long for the end of the party when a couple of latecomers arrive, the man middle-aged and heavyset, the woman Andrew’s age and the doppelgänger of Andrew’s last great love Yvonne, a beautiful woman with olive skin and lustrous brown hair.

They are Larry and Carol Savard, Larry a successful actor, Carol a novelist.

“I am in awe of your stories,” says Carol, who Andrew immediately recognizes as another manifestation of his soul mate. “I’ve read The Draft Dodger and other fables three times and I’m about to start again.”

“Oh I’m so glad,” says Andrew, looking into her eyes. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”

“There’s talk of a movie being made of your Silly Whosit play,” says Larry, surveying the room. “My agent says most likely made-for-television, but possibly a cute little feature. I’d love to play the silly girl’s father. Keep me in mind.”

“I will,” says Andrew, laughing, “though this is the first I’ve heard…”

“Hate to cut you off,” says Larry, half-snarling and half-smiling, “but I must say hello to Jim and Kathy. Haven’t seen them in ages,” and off he goes leaving Andrew alone with Carol.

“Did I say something wrong?” asks Andrew, looking at Carol.

“No, that’s just Larry,” she says, smiling bravely. “A busy bee visiting many flowers.”

“Ah,” says Andrew, not really understanding what she means.

“So how are you handling your sudden success?” she asks, sounding as if she really wants to know.

“Well…” he says, deciding not to tell her she could be the twin of Yvonne who was the twin of Laura and so on back through the great loves of his life, “I haven’t made tons of money from the play or the book so my life hasn’t really changed much except I get lots more mail and I don’t have to pay my bills with carpentry work for the next year or so.”

“Or maybe never again,” she says, her voice and Quebecois accent identical to Yvonne’s. “I think there are at least three really good movies in your collection and before long you’ll be writing the screenplays.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” says Andrew, bowing to her.

“Are you Jewish?” asks Carol, smiling quizzically.

“I am descended from Jews but not raised in the religion,” he says, returning her quizzical smile. “Why do you ask?”

“My Jewish grandmother says from your lips to God’s ears all the time. And so does my mother who gave your book to everyone she knows for Hanukkah and Christmas.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t read your novels,” he says, amazed by how much she reminds him of Yvonne. “But I will. What are their titles?”

“Oh I’m not published yet,” she says, blushing. “Getting closer, according to Judith, but no takers yet.”

“What are your novels about if I may ask?”

“Love,” she says simply. “And the myriad impossibilities therein and thereof. I think you’d find them kin to your stories only much more convoluted, which is probably the problem.”

“I’ve never written a novel,” he says, sensing her sadness. “Started a few but they either turned into short stories or trailed off into nothingness.”

“Oh yes,” she says, laughing a beautiful hearty laugh. “I know all about things trailing off into nothingness. And now if you’ll excuse me, I better go be with Larry before he becomes apoplectic with jealousy.”

“Of course,” says Andrew, looking across the room to where Larry is loudly telling a man and a woman a story involving lots of gesturing. “A pleasure to meet you.”

∆

When the last guest has gone home, Penelope and Judith and Andrew sit in the living room sipping brandy from crystal snifters and Judith asks Andrew, “Did you get a chance to talk to Carol Savard?”

“Briefly,” he says, relieved the party is over. “She seemed very nice.”

“She’s a doll,” says Judith, the child of Yiddish-speaking parents. “And a very good writer, too. She was a waitress before she married Larry. Shared an apartment with two other women and wrote like mad on her days off. And then… oh never mind.”

“Tell, darling,” says Penelope, pouring more brandy into Judith’s snifter. “Andrew won’t gossip. Will you, dear?”

“Never,” says Andrew, smiling mischievously. “Though I might put this in a story. Well-disguised of course.”

Judith sips her brandy and says, “She’s hasn’t written a word since she married Larry two years ago. And I know I could sell her novel if she’d do one more draft.”

“I wonder why she doesn’t,” says Andrew, in his tiredness confusing Carol with Yvonne who was a prolific songwriter.

“Married the wrong man,” says Penelope, swirling her brandy. “Scared away her muse.”

“I remember the day she told me they were getting married,” says Judith, sighing. “We were having lunch and strategizing about who I should send her novel to next, and she said, ‘After I’m married I’ll have lots of time to write.’ But then the problem of not enough time became the problem of too much Larry.”

“Always tricky when we make a pact with the devil,” says Penelope, wagging her finger at Andrew. “Don’t you do that. Promise me.”

∆

The next day, a Thursday, Penelope and Judith take Andrew to breakfast at an eatery around the corner from their townhouse, and while they wait for their food to arrive, Judith says, “We would ask you to stay on with us, but we have a dear friend coming in from England today. But next time you come to Montreal you must stay with us for at least a week.”

“You’ll love your room at Jason and Freddie’s,” says Penelope, signaling their waitress for more coffee. “We know their house very well because we were each other’s beards for twenty years until we all came out two years ago.”

“Beards,” says Andrew, frowning. “You mean…”

“We posed as heterosexual partners,” says Judith, sipping her coffee. “I with Freddie, Penelope with Jason. But now, thank God, we don’t have to do that anymore.”

“Much to our surprise, coming out didn’t hurt our business at all,” says Penelope, waving to an acquaintance being seated at a nearby table. “Or Freddie’s. Dance, you know. But Jason can’t get television gigs anymore. No one cares in the theatre world, of course, but television and movies are way behind.”

“You can’t be gay and direct television shows and movies?” asks Andrew, finding that hard to believe.

“It’s not about being gay,” says Judith, enjoying Andrew’s innocence. “It’s about being openly gay.”

∆

The party Jason and Freddie throw for Andrew on Saturday night is very different than the party at Judith and Penelope’s. The music is louder, the air is heavily scented with cannabis smoke, and many of the hundred people filling the house and spilling out into the backyard are in their twenties and thirties. There are dancers and actors and musicians and theatre people, many of them making no secret of their homosexuality and only a handful of them interested in meeting Andrew.

Freddie, a handsome fellow in his early sixties, notorious in his youth for supposed liaisons with famous ballerinas, introduces Andrew to a striking young woman named Kiki—long black hair, carob brown skin, wearing a black skirt and red sandals and a green T-shirt with juxtaposition of elements in tension writ in white letters across the chest—a former ballerina now a modern dancer, her mother Afro-Caribbean, her father Chinese.

Kiki and Andrew take to each other instantly and Kiki suggests they gravitate away from the loud music to the backyard where they stand under a lantern suspended from the branch of a maple tree talking about Montreal and Vancouver and finding each other splendid.

And Andrew thinks I would love to have a child with this woman.

He has never had such a thought about any woman he’s ever known, and he wonders why he never wanted children with Yvonne or Laura, both of whom he loved with all his heart.

“Are you free at all in the next few days?” he asks, holding out his hand to Kiki. “I’d love to see you again.”

“Yeah, I’m free,” she says, smiling brightly and giving his hand a squeeze. “We could have lunch tomorrow. Or supper. Or…”

“Let’s start with lunch,” he says, feeling a gush of joy.

“I’ll give you my number,” she says, rummaging in her handbag and bringing forth a notebook and pen. “How long are you here for?”

“Not sure,” he says, imagining moving to Montreal and courting Kiki. “Jason and Freddie said I could stay with them as long as I want to, but I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

“Tell me again how you know them,” she says, tearing a page from her notebook and handing it to him. “I was too busy gawking at you when Freddie introduced us. Are you an actor?”

“No, I’m a writer. I wrote a couple stories that were made into a play Jason directed.”

“Oh my God,” says Kiki, putting a hand on her heart. “Did you write Extremely Silly Ariel Gets Wise?”

“I wrote the two stories it was based on, but I didn’t write the play.”

“I went four times,” says Kiki, putting her other hand atop the hand on her heart. “Gave me the courage to end a very bad relationship I was stuck in. Thank you so much for writing those stories.”

“You’re welcome,” he says, finding her impossibly lovely.

At which moment, Carol Savard emerges from the house and makes a beeline for Andrew and Kiki.

“Andrew,” says Carol, as she comes near. “We met at Penelope and Judith’s party a few nights ago.”

“I remember,” he says, surprised to see her again. “Do you know Kiki?”

“No,” says Carol, shaking Kiki’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” says Kiki, sensing Carol’s urgency to speak to Andrew. “I have to go, Andrew. Call me in the morning?”

“I will,” says Andrew, exchanging quick kisses with her.

∆

Alone with Carol, Andrew asks, “Larry here?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “He’s in England for three weeks. Making a movie.”

“Ah,” says Andrew, nodding. “So you have lots of time to write.”

“Yes,” she says, clearing her throat. “I’m wondering if… I’m wondering if you’d like to spend some time with me. I felt a very strong connection with you at the party and…” She starts to cry. “I’m not talking about having sex. I just need to talk to you.”

“I’d be happy to spend some time with you,” he says, feeling the deep and inexplicable bond he has with her.

∆

At breakfast the next morning with Freddy and Jason in their sunny kitchen, Jason opines, “How could anyone be married to Larry Savard?”

“No one can be,” says Freddie, shaking his head. “He was married four times before Carol and none of them stuck for more than a few years.”

“Let me rephrase that,” says Jason, striking a thoughtful pose. “Why anyone would want to marry him, I can’t imagine. And don’t say for money. No amount of money would be enough to live with that horrible narcissist.”

“We were stunned when Carol told us she was marrying him,” says Freddie, grimacing. “We frequently dine at Baskerville’s, the restaurant where Carol used to be the star waiter. We always requested her and I often said to Jason if I liked sleeping with women I would marry her in a minute if she would have me. So sweet and kind and funny and smart and very sexy. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” says Andrew, nodding. “Very.”

“Beware of her,” says Jason, pointing at Andrew. “You’ll fall in love and try to save her and stop writing. And I need you to write a new play for me. The sooner the better.”

“Speaking of narcissists,” says Freddie, laughing.

“I am not a narcissist,” says Jason, indignantly. “The world is dying for good plays and Andrew is one of the few people I know who can write them.”

∆

Kiki takes Andrew to lunch at a café a few blocks from Jason and Freddie’s house, their attraction to each other growing by leaps and bounds. For dessert they split a piece of pumpkin pie and share a cup of coffee, black, and Andrew presents Kiki with a signed copy of his book The Draft Dodger and other fables, to which Kiki responds by bringing forth a copy of his book she just bought.

“You can make this one to my mother,” she says, handing him the book. “She came to your play twice with me and she’s dying to meet you.”

“Do you ever get out to Vancouver?” he asks, gazing in wonder at her. “To dance?”

“I have gone there to dance,” she says, nodding. “And my sister lives there and we miss each other, so I try to go out there at least once a year.”

“Would you…” he says, but nothing more comes out.

“Visit you when I’m there?” she says, nodding. “Oh yeah. But what about tonight? My friend Juliet is singing with her trio at Honey Martin starting at nine. You’ll love her and probably want to marry her. I can come get you or we can meet there.”

“I have a supper date,” says Andrew, madly in love with her. “But I could meet you there at ten.”

“Perfect,” she says, smiling rapturously. “I’ll save you a seat.”

∆

Before Andrew leaves Jason and Freddie’s to meet Carol for supper, he and Jason have tea in the living room.

“I was not kidding, Andrew,” says Jason, clearly distraught. “Larry Savard is famously violent, and I wish you wouldn’t have anything to do with Carol until she is long free of him. She’s probably afraid to leave him for fear he’ll kill her.”

“I’m just having supper with her,” says Andrew, attributing some of Jason’s upset to his tendency to exaggerate.

“Well make sure that’s all you do,” says Jason, emphatically. “Don’t even kiss her cheek.”

“But how would Larry know? He’s in England.”

“We know two of his ex-wives, and when they were married to him, whenever he went away he had them watched.”

“That’s crazy,” says Andrew, the back of his neck tingling.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” says Jason, throwing up his hands. “He’s crazy.”

∆

In a quaint Italian restaurant, Andrew and Carol sit at a table with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and a candle stuck in a round-bottomed wine bottle covered with melted wax.

After a bit of friendly chitchat, Carol says, “I felt such a strong jolt of recognition when I met you. Not that you look like anybody I’ve ever known, but there was something about your voice and the way you listened to me. I can’t explain it except to say I felt I knew you and you knew me, and I thought if anyone could understand what I’m going through right now, you would. And I thought maybe you could… I don’t know, shed some light on my predicament or give me some advice.”

“I recognized you, too,” says Andrew, wondering if they are being watched. “And I feel a similar affinity with you. So please, tell me.”

“I wonder if we could go somewhere more private,” she says quietly.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he says, sipping his wine to moisten his very dry throat. “Jason told me your husband is famously jealous and famously violent and had his previous wives followed whenever he went out of town. And though I’d love to go somewhere more private to hear your story, to be honest with you I’m afraid to do that. I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize, though I can assure you no one followed me here. That happened a few times at the beginning of our marriage and when I found out he was paying people to spy on me, I told him if he ever did it again I would leave him. So he no longer does. And I understand why Jason and Freddie may think I’m afraid of him, but I’m not.”

“So what is your predicament?” asks Andrew, lowering his shoulders and breathing a sigh of relief.

“I haven’t been able to write anything since I married Larry. But if I leave him… he’ll kill himself.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No,” she says, falling silent as their supper arrives.

When their waiter departs, Andrew asks, “If he didn’t tell you, how do you know?”

“How do we know anything?” she asks, locking eyes with him. “Why did you and I recognize each other?”

“We just do,” he says, nodding.

“Yes. And I have sat with Larry on many a night watching him drink himself into oblivion, knowing that if I leave him he will die.”

“So he does tell you. Maybe not in words, but with his thoughts and actions. And how is that not extortion? Emotional extortion.”

“What if it is?” she says, shrugging. “What would you do? Knowing if you end the relationship you would cause his death? And please don’t say you wouldn’t have gotten into the relationship in the first place. You don’t know that. You might have. And if you did, what would you do if you knew that leaving him would kill him?”

“I would tell him,” says Andrew, jabbing his fork into his spaghetti, “that I would help him find a good therapist and a good rehab clinic, and if he wouldn’t make the effort to heal, I would leave him.”

“Knowing he will kill himself,” she says, her eyes full of tears.

“What are the alternatives, Carol? Going on living in the hell you’re in? Killing your self? Never writing again? Sacrificing your life so he can go on drinking himself into oblivion every night while you watch? Wait for him to die of liver failure?”

“You would leave him,” she says, folding her arms. “And let him die.”

“They are not connected actions,” says Andrew, angrily. “He is choosing to die rather than trying to get well. And by leaving, you are choosing not to be present for his suicide.”

She sits back in her chair and muses for a long time.

Andrew eats his spaghetti, drinks his wine, and thinks Tomorrow I’m calling Yvonne and ending our relationship.

“Andrew?” says Carol, leaning forward in her chair.

“What?” he says, softening.

“Do you like living in Vancouver?”

“I do. I live in a house I built ten miles north of the city. Beautiful place. Good friends. Yeah, I love it.”

“Are you involved with anyone?”

“I’m just ending a relationship and hoping to start another,” he says, seeing no need to hide the truth from her. “Why do you ask?”

“Because if I leave Larry, I’d love to try being in a relationship with you.” She smiles shyly. “If you want to.”

He thinks of Kiki and how he loves her, and he says to Carol, “How about we write to each other and see where that takes us?”

“Okay,” she says, smiling bravely. “I’d love to be your pen pal.”

∆

The next day, after a fabulous night with Kiki in the pub listening to her friend sing, Andrew calls Leslie and ends their relationship. She is most upset with him for breaking up with her by phone and not in-person, but by the end of their conversation she says she understands why he had to get away from her to work up the nerve to tell her.

“I can be terrifying, I know,” she says, laughing a little as she cries. “But I hope we’ll still be friends. I think you’re a great person, Andrew, a rare person, and I’d like to keep knowing you whether we sleep together or not.”

“I love being your friend,” he says sincerely. “I think you’re a rare person, too, and you have helped me in so many ways.”

“As you have helped me,” she says, weeping.

∆

Andrew stays another two weeks in Montreal, a week with Jason and Freddie, a week with Kiki in the house she shares with her mother, her father no longer alive.

∆

He makes the trip back to Vancouver by train rather than fly, which gives him five days of rolling across Canada to write and write and write, stories and poems and letters and dialogue flowing unabated from his liberated pen.

∆

In the spring of 1980, Andrew and Kiki wed in Montreal in Freddie and Jason’s backyard, Andrew’s parents and brother and sisters having made the long trek from California, Kiki’s mother and grandparents and sister on hand, Andrew’s best man Cal, of course, and Freddie giving the bride away.

Carol comes to the wedding with Judith and Penelope, for she and Andrew have become great friends via the postal service, her first novel Simply Love about to be published, her marriage to Larry a thing of the past, Larry still alive and about to wed again.

∆

In a letter to Carol dated July 14, 1981, Andrew writes from Vancouver that Kiki is three months pregnant, they are adding another bedroom to their house, his second collection of short stories Suicide Notes From My Friends is selling very well, and his play Exactly Random will begin rehearsals next week, to open at the Kleindorf in September.

“I know I have tried to elucidate this to you before, Carol,” he writes, “but I will try to put the ineffable into words again because I am overwhelmed this morning by how deeply connected I feel to you, though deeply and connected are inadequate descriptors.

“I often feel you are here with us. We will be in the garden or making supper or walking on the beach, and I will be aware of you on a cellular level. Especially when I play music.

“But the awareness of you is never intrusive. Your presence never impedes the flow of my music, never interferes with the flow of words onto the page. In fact, your spirit is a divine impetus. Dare I say you are my muse?

“Yes, Kiki inspires me. I write poems for her and passages in my stories and plays just for her, but she is outside of me, wonderfully so, whereas you are in my bones.

“Which is to say I think our souls were one soul incubating in the womb of God when by some miracle we divided into two halves and became twin souls loosed into the human swirl.”

fin

love song

Tags Andrew, Cal, Carol, Extremely Silly Ariel Gets Wise, Kiki, Montreal, plays, short stories, short story, Suicide Notes From My Friends, The Draft Dodger and other fables, the same woman, The Same Woman (Carol), Todd Walton, Under the Table Books, Vancouver, Yvonne

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The Same Woman (Yvonne)

Every few years Andrew meets the same woman and always recognizes her, though she never recognizes him as anyone she’s known before.

The first time they met was in elementary school in 1955. The second time they met was during the summer of 1962 when they were both thirteen. And starting in 1966 they were in a relationship that lasted a year until she—her name was Laura then—left him for someone else.

∆

In December of 1969, shortly after Andrew turns twenty-one, the first draft lottery takes place in America and he draws number 344, which means he no longer has to be in college to avoid being sent to the war in Vietnam. However, one of Andrew’s very best friends, Cal, draws number 3 and is certain to be drafted even if he manages to get into graduate school.

When Cal is denied conscientious objector status, he decides to move to Canada rather than go to prison or Vietnam. Cal has a cousin who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia who agrees to house Cal until he gets settled in Canada. Cal asks Andrew to drive him to Vancouver and they leave California for British Columbia in June of 1970, just a few days after they graduate from UC Santa Cruz, Cal with a degree in Philosophy, Andrew with a degree in Drama.

Funded by Cal’s parents, they rent a big orange van to carry Cal’s books and records and clothing and musical instruments, including two guitars, an electric bass, an amplifier, and a drum kit. They stay in motels, eat in diners, and make the trip to Vancouver in four days.

By 1970 the Canadian government is no longer making it problematic for American draft evaders to move to Canada, so Cal and Andrew have no trouble entering the country.

Cal’s cousin Frank and Frank’s wife Jean live in a small house in a suburb of Vancouver. They are both in their early thirties, Frank a surveyor, Jean a piano teacher, and Jean is pregnant with their first child. They are not thrilled about sharing their house with Cal, but they are thrilled about the thousand dollars a month Cal’s parents are giving them for as long as Cal lives with them.

∆

On the evening of their second day in Vancouver, a few days before Andrew is planning to head back to California, Cal and Andrew go to a pub called Angel Alley in downtown Vancouver to hear a lineup of local musicians. The drinking age was recently lowered to 18 in British Columbia, and the place is mobbed with college kids and hipsters.

Cal, who has been playing guitar and writing songs since he was eleven, is keen to explore the music scene in Vancouver. Andrew took up the guitar after his relationship with Laura ended three and a half years ago, and with Cal as his teacher he has gotten quite good.

So…

After a middle-aged woman does a fair imitation of Judy Collins singing Joni Mitchell songs, and three earnest fellows cover Dylan and The Beatles, a young woman takes the stage with her guitar and stands a few feet away from the microphone as she waits to be introduced.

Andrew looks at the young woman and his jaw drops because as far as he’s concerned she is none other than Laura, the great love of his life who jilted him three and a half years ago and moved to England with her new partner—yet here she is in Angel Alley about to perform.

“That’s Laura,” says Andrew, nudging Cal who is conversing with a gal at the adjoining table. “Has to be.”

Cal turns to Andrew. “Sorry. What did you say?”

“Look,” says Andrew, pointing at the stage. “Tell me that isn’t Laura.”

“Sure looks like her,” says Cal, studying the lovely woman with shoulder-length brown hair wearing a white blouse and black slacks and standing at ease with her guitar. “I thought she was in England.”

“Last I heard she was,” says Andrew, his heart pounding. “Three years five months and two weeks ago. But this is definitely Laura. Who else could she be?”

“I didn’t know Laura played guitar,” says Cal, trying to discern the make of her reddish brown parlor guitar.

“She didn’t,” says Andrew, shaking his head. “But neither did I until she left.”

Now a big burly fellow with spiky gray hair steps up to the microphone and says, “Without further ado, it is my great pleasure to introduce Yvonne Garnier.”

Loud applause and whistling fill the air as the woman steps to the microphone and begins to play and sing. Her voice to Andrew’s ears is Laura’s voice, a sweet woman’s tenor, and he cannot hold back his tears.

When she finishes her first song, Cal whispers to Andrew, “She’s fantastic, but I don’t think she’s Laura.”

“Why? Because she changed her name?” asks Andrew, certain she is his lost love.

“No,” says Cal, putting his hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “Because this woman has been playing guitar since she was a kid. I’ll bet you anything.”

∆

After a scintillating set of original songs and a few folk classics, Yvonne leaves the stage to thunderous applause and many of those in attendance head for home.

The bartender calls “Forty minutes to closing,” and Andrew and Cal shift their chairs to join the two women and a man—Terry, Sheila, and Chas—at the adjoining table, Terry of great interest to Cal and vice-versa.

“So are you moving to Canada, too?” asks Chas, directing his question at Andrew.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” says Andrew, still under the spell of seeing Laura again. “I got a very high draft number and I’m hoping to get into grad school one of these days, but I am loving it here, so you never know.”

“And he’s gonna visit me often,” says Cal, his eyes full of tears. “Aren’t you, A?”

“Much as I can,” he replies. “Much as I can.”

Now the woman Andrew thinks is Laura emerges from backstage and comes to join them because Terry and Sheila are her best friends, and Chas has been her devoted fan for years.

Chas rises to give Yvonne a kiss on the cheek and Terry says, “Fantastic Evie. You just get better and better.”

“Thanks,” says Yvonne, turning to Cal and Andrew. “Who are these hunks?”

“I’m Cal,” says Cal, shaking her hand. “And this is Andrew. I’m just moving to Vancouver and Andrew drove me up from California.”

“Why don’t you move here, too?” says Yvonne, shaking Andrew’s hand.

“No good reason,” says Andrew, barely able to breathe.

“At least come to my birthday party before you go back,” she says, sitting down to have a beer. “My twenty-first. Day after tomorrow. At my mother’s farm. You’ll love it. Say yes.”

“Yes,” says Andrew, laughing to keep from crying. “Of course.”

∆

But he almost doesn’t go to Yvonne’s party because in the half-hour he spends with her in Angel Alley, he falls in love with her again—or discovers he is still in love with her—and he can’t bear the thought of her breaking his heart again.

The night before the party, he and Cal go out for fish and chips at a place Frank and Jean recommend.

“Using linear logic,” says Andrew to Cal, “I know Yvonne is not Laura. But every cell in my body tells me she is the same person.”

Cal ponders this for a moment. “What do you mean by the same person? They could be twins, but twins aren’t the same person. They may resemble each other, but they have different brains and hearts and personalities and experiences. So what do you mean by the same person.”

“I mean that when we were in the pub with her, I knew she was Laura.” Andrew clears his throat. “I know that sounds crazy because she is not Laura, and I know that because Laura’s mother still lives in San Francisco, not on a farm in British Columbia. And I know that because I called her today to confirm she still lives in San Francisco and to ask her if she’d heard from Laura recently and she said she had, that Laura was still in England with what’s his name.”

“Therefore?” says Cal, smiling at the approach of their waitress with two big platters of fish and chips.

“Therefore she cannot be Laura,” says Andrew, nodding his thanks as the waitress sets the feast before him.

“Anything else I can get you?” asks the waitress, making eyes at Andrew.

When Andrew does not reply, Cal says, “We’re good. Thanks so much.”

“And yet,” says Andrew, staring at his food and seeing Laura/Yvonne playing her guitar and singing, “I know she’s Laura.”

“Did you also know that our very attractive waitress was interested in you? No, you didn’t. Because a big part of you isn’t even here.” Cal sighs in sympathy. “I think you never got over Laura. You never broke the spell. So of course you see her in Yvonne who looks very much like her.”

Andrew closes his eyes. “But it’s not just the resemblance, Cal. Yvonne is two or three inches taller than Laura, and her speaking voice is deeper, and she talks much more slowly.”

“With a subtle sexy Quebecois accent,” says Cal, smiling quizzically at his friend. “So why do you say she’s Laura?”

“I think she has Laura’s soul. Or her spirit. Maybe they’re the same thing.”

“What about the Laura in England?” asks Cal, chewing thoughtfully on a delicious French fry. “Does she share her soul with Yvonne or did it somehow leave her and enter Yvonne?”

“I don’t know,” says Andrew, shrugging. “I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t know how to else to explain it. Yvonne doesn’t just remind me of Laura. She is Laura. And that’s why I’m not going to the party tomorrow. Because the only way to end this madness is to avoid her whenever she manifests in my life. And I hope she never does again.”

“But you love her,” says Cal, frowning. “Maybe this time she’ll want to be with you and not leave you for someone else.”

“Why would she be any different this time?” asks Andrew, still pained by his memory of the moment Laura told him she’d found a new love. “If she has the same spirit, then she’ll act the same way. Right?”

“Maybe she’s changed. Maybe she’s evolving as you’re evolving. Maybe this time she’ll be ready to make a life with you.”

“I doubt it,” says Andrew, sipping his beer. “Though I do love the idea of souls evolving together. And maybe she won’t even be interested in me this time.”

“Oh she seemed pretty interested in you,” says Cal, loving the fish and chips. “That’s why she invited us to her party three seconds after she met you.”

“Maybe I won’t be interested in her this time,” says Andrew, wanting to sound disinterested.

Cal rolls his eyes. “Maybe you’ll grow wings and become a bird.”

“So what if she breaks my heart again?” says Andrew, abruptly changing his tune. “Maybe that’s part of the evolutionary plan.”

“So you are going to the party with me,” says Cal, laughing. “I hope so. And I hope you do fall in love with each other and you stay in Canada and then I won’t feel so alone.”

∆

Yvonne’s mother is named Charlene. Her farm is an idyllic place, ten acres of level ground seven miles north of Vancouver, eight of the acres in permanent pasture, one acre for summer vegetables, the remaining acre occupied by a big old farmhouse and a rundown cottage and a flower garden and outbuildings for chickens and rabbits and pigs.

Charlene is fifty-two with long brown hair going gray. She speaks English with a strong Quebecois accent and has lived on her farm for twenty-one years, having moved here from Montreal when Yvonne was in utero.

“I was a singer, too,” says Charlene to Andrew as she gives him a tour of her farm—the birthday party in full swing at the farmhouse. “But when I got pregnant with Yvonne, I thought, ‘No, I’ve had enough of this struggle. I will go west and live in a quiet place near the ocean. I had some money from my father, so I bought this farm and we have been very happy here.” She smiles as she remembers her first years on the farm. “Of course I sang to my daughter and taught her to play the piano and the guitar, but I never thought she would try to make singing her career as I did. She is more successful than I was, but still she makes her living as a waitress.”

“This is such a beautiful place,” says Andrew, wondering why Charlene singled him out for the tour and not Cal. “How far to the ocean?”

“Two miles,” says Charlene, stopping with him in front of the dilapidated cottage. “Yvonne says you are thinking of moving here. Perhaps you would like to fix up this cottage and make this your first home in Canada.”

“Oh I’m not moving here,” says Andrew, embarrassed by the mix up. “My friend Cal is moving here.”

“Yes, I know,” says Charlene, nodding, “but Yvonne says you are thinking of moving here, too, and if you will do the work on this place, I will give you free rent for two years, and, of course, pay for all the materials. She told me you are handy with tools.”

“I’m a fair carpenter,” says Andrew, intrigued by the cottage. “But I’ve mostly been a landscaper. Built decks and sheds and…”

“Well this is like a big shed, isn’t it?” says Yvonne, beaming at him. “A sophisticated shed with a toilet and shower and kitchen and living room and bedroom.”

“Maybe Cal could live here,” says Andrew, imagining settling down on Charlene’s farm for a while, playing music with Cal and getting to know Yvonne. “Can we have a look inside?”

“It’s falling down,” says Charlene, pushing open the front door of the little house. “You would mostly be building it all over again.”

“I’d need a place to stay while I was doing the rebuilding,” says Andrew, warming to the idea of a Canadian adventure before going to graduate school. “There’s no room for me where Cal is staying.”

“I have an extra bedroom in the farmhouse,” says Charlene, nodding assuredly. “You would be welcome here.”

“But you hardly know me,” he says, taken aback.

“Yvonne says you are wonderful,” says Charlene, matter-of-factly. “That is good enough for me.”

∆

So a few days later, after he drops the van off at a car rental place in Bellingham, Washington, Andrew returns by train to Vancouver and begins a new chapter of his life.

Having brought very few things with him, he moves into Charlene’s farmhouse with a small suitcase of clothing and a knapsack containing notebooks, pens, dark glasses, a few books, a Swiss Army knife, and a camera.

His parents are surprised by his decision to stay in Canada, but understanding, too, and they ship him a box of clothes and shoes. Cal is thrilled with Andrew’s decision to stick around and comes to the farm every day to help with the renovation until a committee assisting American draft evaders gets him a job as a dishwasher and janitor at a college cafeteria, after which he can only help on weekends.

Charlene’s boyfriend Walter, a roofer, outfits Andrew with most of the tools he needs, shows Andrew the best places to buy building materials, and lends his expertise to Andrew when the going gets tricky.

And what of Yvonne? She is delighted to have Andrew living on the farm and staying in her former bedroom. Throughout the summer, she comes for supper a couple times during the week, and every Sunday she spends the day and sometimes the night at the farm.

She is greatly attracted to Andrew, as he is to her, and they spend lots of time talking, playing guitars, going to movies and plays, and walking on the beach. But they rarely touch and never kiss except on the cheeks as French people do when greeting each other and saying goodbye.

∆

As the weeks and months go by and summer turns to fall, the cottage lacks only a new roof to be ready for Andrew to move in. Charlene’s beau Walter does the roofing job with Andrew assisting him, and Walter is sufficiently impressed with Andrew’s skills and strength and amiable nature to tout Andrew to a builder he knows, which results in Andrew being hired for eight weeks of good-paying work that gives him a nest egg for the winter.

Charlene loves having Andrew on the farm and hires him at a decent wage to help around the place a couple hours a day.

Not being in school or working for his father as a landscaper for the first time in his life, Andrew starts writing songs and stories, and he discovers he is much more interested in those art forms than in acting.

∆

On a Sunday evening in early December after the supper dishes are done, Andrew and Yvonne and Charlene and Walter and Cal and his sweetheart Terry gather in the living room to hear Andrew read a short story he’s been working on for some weeks now, The Precipice. This is the first time he has ever shared his writing with anyone other than Cal, and though nervous at first, he grows more confident as he reads.

“That was so moving for me,” says Charlene when Andrew finishes reading. “I was on the verge of tears from the beginning to the end.”

“Really good,” says Walter, nodding in agreement. “Kind of a fable, but it seemed very real, very true. Just great.”

“I loved it,” says Terry, smiling wide-eyed at Andrew. “I know an editor at The Weekly Blitz who might want to publish it. Can I show it to him?”

“I need to polish it,” says Andrew, overwhelmed by the praise. “But yeah, that would be wonderful.”

“You’re amazing,” says Yvonne, gazing at Andrew as if seeing him for the first time. “Will you read it again to us when you finish polishing?”

“I… yeah,” says Andrew, blushing. “It really helped knowing you were listening. I mean… I read my stories out loud to myself, but it’s not the same as reading to an audience.”

“Same with a song,” says Yvonne, wanting to kiss him. “I always think of the audience as the final ingredient.”

∆

The response to his story from his new family of friends ignites Andrew’s writing fire as nothing ever has and he starts waking early every morning to write for a few hours before doing his farm work or going off to a carpentry job. He writes in the evenings, too, if he’s not going somewhere to hear Yvonne sing or visiting with Cal.

∆

Andrew’s parents offer to fly him home for Christmas, and to please them he flies from Vancouver to San Francisco a few days before Christmas, spends seven days in Redwood City with his mom and dad and brother, sees a few old friends, and flies back to Vancouver in time to attend Charlene and Yvonne’s New Year’s Eve party.

∆

The day before the party, Andrew gets a phone call from the editor of The Weekly Blitz, a guy named Joe Ganz. “We would love to publish The Precipice,” says Joe, his voice deep and gravelly. “I can pay you twenty-five dollars. I know it’s not much, but that’s what we pay for feature stories. And I’d love to see anything else you want to show me. We don’t often publish fiction, but this story fits us to a T.”

Which means the New Year’s Eve party is also a celebration of Andrew’s success, and Yvonne asks him to read The Precipice to the fifty or so party goers, many of them artists and musicians and writers.

“Not tonight,” says Andrew, hating to disappoint her. “I’m feeling shy and I’d rather not be the center of attention. If you know what I mean.”

“I do know what you mean,” she says, putting her arms around him. “But I really want you to read that story for everyone. It’s just what we need to hear right now. Please?”

So Andrew agrees, a microphone and amplifier are set up, Yvonne plays a beautiful guitar tune to get everybody’s attention, and exactly an hour before 1970 gives way to 1971, Andrew reads his story to the assembled host.

All the usual clichés apply. You could hear a pin drop. They hang on his every word. Again and again he has to hold for laughs. There isn’t a dry eye in the place. And when he reads the last word of The Precipice, there is a collective gasp and the crowd goes wild.

At midnight there is much hurrahing and hugging and kissing, and when Yvonne and Andrew kiss, they cease to hold back from loving each other, though they do not take the physical loving beyond their kiss.

∆

In the days that follow, Andrew gives himself so entirely to his new life, he forgets all about trying to get into graduate school. He works on the farm, takes the occasional carpentry gig, writes for hours every day, plays music in the evenings with Cal, and he and Yvonne start spending big chunks of time together on Saturdays and Sundays, exploring the city and the coast, and reveling in their friendship which continues to deepen in spite of (or maybe because of) their unspoken agreement not to become lovers.

∆

One day in early summer, as the one-year anniversary of his arrival in Canada approaches, Andrew and Yvonne sit shoulder-to-shoulder with their backs against a driftwood log on a gorgeous beach a few miles north of the farm.

“The thing is,” says Andrew, smiling out at the sparkling sea, “I feel married to you. Yet we are not lovers. Which means…”

“Soul marriages aren’t about sex,” says Yvonne, taking Andrew’s hand. “They might include sex, of course, but they aren’t founded on sex.”

“Do you think if we had sex we’d lose our soul connection?” He frowns. “I wonder if that’s why we haven’t. Because we’re afraid we might.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Our souls will always be connected, even if we never see each other again. But I do think we’re afraid that becoming lovers would complicate things. And it would. Sex always changes everything. Don’t you think?”

“I’ve only been sexually involved with one woman in my life, and we started having sex right from the get go, so there was never any question of changing the relationship with sex.”

“I’ve had a handful of lovers,” she says, sounding somewhat bitter about it, “and in every case, the minute we had sex, even really awful sex, they thought they owned me, as if entering my body gave them dominion over me, and I hate that.”

“I think that’s a primal belief among most humans, don’t you? Claiming each other by having sex. I’m not saying it’s right, but I understand why people feel that way. Not just men. It’s not just cultural, it’s biological.”

“It’s learned,” she says, angrily. “Taught to little boys from the day they’re born.”

“What is taught to little boys?”

“That they are superior to girls and should be able to dominate them.” She frowns at him. “You don’t think so?”

“My darling, Evie,” he says, smiling at her. “I have two brilliant older sisters and learned ten thousand times before I was seven that girls are stronger and smarter and more capable than boys in every way except, eventually, in terms of brute strength. And I’ve never liked brutes.”

“So if we become lovers you won’t think I’m your exclusive property?”

“You mean will I be okay with you sleeping with other people?”

“Would you be okay with that?”

“Well the thing is, I wouldn’t want to be in a sexual relationship with you if you want to sleep with other people. But I’d still want to be your friend.”

“How is that not owning me?” She pouts. “You would own the exclusive rights to me sexually if I wasn’t allowed to sleep with other people. Right?”

“No,” he says, laughing. “I just wouldn’t be in a sexual relationship with you. You can sleep with a different person every night if you want. Or two. I just don’t want to be involved in that kind of sexual dynamic with you or anybody. It’s not who I am.”

“Hmm,” she says, pondering this. “Because I really want to make love with you, A, but I can’t promise sexual fidelity.”

“Are you sleeping with anyone now?” he asks innocently. “I won’t mind if you are.”

“I’m not,” she says, pouting again. “I haven’t in over a year. Since a few months before I met you. And every time I’ve been tempted since then, I always think, ‘But I like Andrew so much better than this guy. Why would I ever sleep with this guy if I can sleep with Andrew?’ And then I don’t because I want you instead.”

“I’m flattered,” he says, holding out his arms to her.

They embrace and feel marvelous.

“So let’s make a pact,” she says, kissing his chin. “If we do sleep together and sleeping-together doesn’t last for some reason, we’ll always be friends.”

“Sounds good,” he says doubtfully, “but we can never know in advance if we’ll always be friends. We only know our souls will always be connected, which is not necessarily the same thing as being friends.”

“So how about this,” she says, moving apart from him so she can see his face. “We commit to sexual exclusivity with each other for one year with an option to renew for another year if we both want to.”

“A one-year marriage?” he says, loving everything about her. “Will we live together?”

“Yes. I’ll move into the cottage with you and save oodles not paying rent.”

“But what if we make love…” he says, pausing portentously. “And it’s really bad? Marriage annulled?”

“No,” she says urgently. “If the first time is bad, we have to try to make it better. We have to help each other in every way. Sexually and creatively and emotionally and spiritually.”

“I’m game,” he says, looking into her eyes. “What are you doing tonight?”

She takes a deep breath. “Being with you.”

∆

The morning after their first night together, entangled in Andrew’s bed, Yvonne says, “Laura may have broken your heart, but in the ways of lovemaking she was a very good teacher.”

∆

A few days after becoming Andrew’s lover, Yvonne gives notice she is vacating her apartment at the end of the month and starts moving her things to the farm a carload at a time. What doesn’t fit nicely in the cottage, she stores in the attic of the farmhouse.

∆

After two months of commuting at night to and from the restaurant where she works, Yvonne shifts from supper to lunches so she can spend her evenings with Andrew. She makes less money, but now she’s paying no rent and can gig during the week, and she’s happier than she’s ever been. Ditto Andrew.

∆

In October, they borrow Charlene’s car and drive to California to visit Andrew’s folks, after which they continue on to Los Angeles where Amelia, one of Yvonne’s old friends, now lives and has arranged a couple gigs for her.

Much to Andrew’s surprise, Yvonne loves LA, and on the way back to Canada she says she’d like to live there one day.

“What do you like about it?” he asks, much preferring life on the farm in Canada.

“I love the weather, the people, the energy,” she says, gazing out at the passing scenery. “And if I really want to succeed with my music, that’s the place to be.” She turns to him. “If we got married, we’d essentially have joint citizenship and you’d be free of any hassles about living in Canada and I’d be free of any hassles about living in America. So we could live either place. Or both.”

“Is that a proposal?” he asks, deciding not to tell her he hates Los Angeles, the putrid air, the terrifying traffic, the absence of forests and wilderness, the millions of desperate people.

“Something to think about,” she says, kissing him. “I know you love where we live now, but I’ve lived there my whole life and I’m ready for a change.”

∆

Which is why in the summer of 1973, after two years of living together, Andrew and Yvonne part ways, she to pursue her music career in Los Angeles, he to stay in Vancouver and carry on with his writing.

∆

One evening a few months after Yvonne moves to Los Angeles, Andrew and Cal are in Angel Alley having beer and burgers, and they realize they are sitting at the same table where they first met Yvonne and Terry, who is now Cal’s wife.

And their reminiscence about that fateful evening prompts Andrew to say, “You’re the only person who could even begin to understand what I want to tell you.”

“About Yvonne?” asks Cal, knowing Andrew is hurting terribly from his loss of her. “Tell me.”

“You remember how in the beginning I said she was Laura, not in body but in spirit?”

“I remember.”

“Well I continued to feel that way until about a year ago.”

“What changed?”

“Well… I came home one day and she was on the phone with Amelia, and something was different about her. I couldn’t say exactly what it was, but she was different. Still sweet and funny and loving and wonderful, but different. And I came to realize she no longer reminded me of Laura. A particular kind of energy I have never been able to describe was gone from her.”

“Yet you still loved her.”

“More than ever.”

“So where do you think the Laura energy went?”

“I don’t know,” says Andrew, his eyes sparkling with tears. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

fin

the song Just Love