Listing the house for sale, but actually selling it? She had made inquiries with the heritage
council, and they were adamant about preserving it. Which suited her fine, since she did not want
it falling into the hands of a developer.
But who would want to buy a house this big? In the East Side, where ostentatious homes on
modest estates hadn’t been de regueure since the Roaring Twenties? Still, she could expect just under a million
for the place, once it was sold. Michael
was right when he claimed that it would be a perfect bed and breakfast, or perhaps a small
community centre. Not that she needed to
care. Though she did, given the work and
materials and money and time and energy she had sunk into maintaining and
upgrading the place, which seemed stubbornly to resist her every effort to
improve and modernize. Perhaps Matthew
had had a point about there being at least one period room in the place. She didn’t want to return home just yet. Though she did want to see Lazarus. If he was around. She wanted badly to unwind. But she did feel happy. She didn’t want to slow down? Having already set out on this new
journey—but where was she going, and how could she determine where she was
going unless she slowed down, held still and gave herself time to think, and
feel and understand? What was the wisdom
in selling the house? Was this a wise
thing to do? Where was she going to live?
Questions she could only properly answer were she to give herself time
to be still, to unwind, get past this sudden frenetic euphoria. She wanted maybe to get out of seeing Bill
and Persimmon? Bill she had little taste
for these days. She was still getting
used to Persimmon, a woman she couldn’t help liking but who still was now
sleeping with the man who was once her own husband. She resented this, and she could not by force
of will stop herself from resenting not Persimmon, and neither Bill, but the
arrangement. Persimmon had with Sheila
shared in common the same body, the same intimate secrets of the same man. Which made Sheila feel rather creepy around
them both, and still stifling that vestigial primal jealousy. She felt jealous. Dog in the manger jealous. She no longer wanted Bill, had not desired
him in years. But she still, in a vague
sense, possessed him, and now Persimmon had him, which meant that Persimmon had
over Sheila a certain discreet claim. As
much as she enjoyed this woman’s company she simultaneously longed and
clamoured to be rid of her and her ex-husband both. She really didn’t want nor need their friendship,
neither could she figure out why they would want to befriend her. She really had nothing in common with Bill,
and had since realized that she never had, making their marriage a short-lived
mistake.
At least he had a
normal sexual appetite. Unlike Frank,
who was queer but managed to forget his queerness long enough to help her
produce Michael, their first born, and every bit as queer as his father. Thank God that Suzanne and Jason were both
conventionally heterosexual. Thank God
that Suzanne had made her a grandmother twice.
She wasn’t so progressive or liberal-minded after all. But who could blame her after thirty years
plus of Frank using her as a cover, as an alibi and then replicating himself
like that in Michael, her handsome, sensitive, brilliant and combative son,
certainly far surpassing his extremely average and mediocre siblings in brains
and looks and general appeal: the children he might have fathered, the
grandchildren he might have bestowed on her!
This was a side to his mother she dared not let him see, though surely he
knew it was there. Of course he
knew. She judged him. Always.
Constantly. How could she
not? Sheila could be tolerant and
liberal towards anyone’s gay progeny except her own. But didn’t a lot of mothers feel this
way? How could she know, since she
didn’t know any nor wanted to. She hated
feeling this way, at times she wanted to sink in front of her son into a
weeping mound of contrition. He had
suffered, Michael. Terribly. From day one he had had to fight for
everything, every morsel of respect he could grab from his peers, from his
family. Never once did he play the
victim, never once did he ask for or expect pity from anyone. And why did she still not respect him? He was entitled to it. Surely he had, far and above his very
conventionally-sexed siblings, earned it?
Yet she loved him; and she loved her son with a ferocity and a
tenderness that she could not, dare not name.
She did not feel this way towards Suzanne, nor towards Jason.
But now Michael,
like his mother, was encountering the Divine, and now Sheila was selling the
house. She locked up the café and stood
out in the late afternoon sunshine. It
had become a beautiful day. Surely she
could think of some place to go, besides home.
Slowly she began to walk in a direction that, even if she took her time
and made detours along old streets lined with huge trees and vintage houses and
sumptuous gardens, would still surely take her home. She no longer felt like singing.
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