Autopsy of a Boring Wife Page 4

  Things took a turn for the worse when my mother, seeing my shortcomings as a sure sign of artistic talent, signed me up for Introduction to Ballet/Jazz at the renowned Lapierre School of Dance. But, after several weeks of overt exasperation that baffled me entirely, the instructor told my mother I was a lost cause. That was the first time I heard the expression “rhythmically challenged.” My mother replied that at any rate, it was a heck of a price tag to teach kids how to “monkey about like any five-year-old could do on her own.” There were times I really loved my mother.

  In my friends’ basements, on the threshold of adolescence, I was assigned special roles, ones that generally didn’t require any movement and served mainly to support the other girls’ choreography; I spotted their pirouettes, was a pole for their arabesques, a base for the pyramids and even, when necessary, a brace for ones who needed help with their handstands. I’d have been treated no differently if I’d had only one leg. My friends had big hearts; they were protecting me from ridicule.

  Once we started going to church basement parties, I developed a knack for seeming as if I were constantly on the dance floor, though I wasn’t: I went from friend to friend, whispering secrets in their ears. I followed them to the bathroom, the snack bar, and even outside when some wanted to sneak a cigarette. When the dance floor was so packed there was hardly any space at all, I’d venture a few movements that were rapidly engulfed in the chaos of limbs knocking together. The rest of the time, I went around like everyone else, calling people “losers” or “fat cows” or “pizza face.” Suffering from acne or being rhythmically challenged, it was all the same struggle.

  Some of the best moments of my life were during the U2 craze. Dancing to them was easy, all you had to do was keep your feet stuck together and sway your body like seaweed in a gentle current with your eyes closed, arms undulating in the air. The general fluidity completely concealed my lack of rhythm. Some nights, U2 was the only band we played. It was nirvana, and we ended up in an almost trance-like state. Even today, I get a rush when I hear those first few notes of “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Sundays are still tinged with the memories.

  In university, cheap beer and the time we’d spend waiting in line for it gave me lots of easy outs. I became the self-proclaimed Queen of Refills and spent most nights doing runs between the bar and our “spot” (usually a pile of purses in a corner). I knew the servers, my friends, the DJs. The finest music flowed like water through our intoxicated bodies and electrified minds. And there, in rapture over the new bottle opener some mechanical engineering students had devised, is where I met Jacques. Like me, he was taken with a tool the bartender was using to open six beer bottles at a time — while they were still in the case. A stroke of genius to slake our thirst. Those guys knew how to prioritize. I’d just ordered five beers and he’d ordered six, but he offered to help me carry them nonetheless.

  “You’ve already got six!”

  “I can carry ten.”

  “Ten?”

  “One per finger. Like this.”

  He’d plunged his fingers into the plastic cups, poking them through the heads of foam undisturbed by whatever filth had collected on his hands since he’d last washed them. I pictured the sweat, hair grease, snot, and germs from money, keys, handshakes . . .

  “This way I won’t drop them.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “No, with friends.”

  “Where?”

  “We’re at the back, over there.”

  I’d pointed to the far end of the room, past the mass of bodies bouncing to the beat of the “Jump! Jump! Jump!” blasting through speakers that wouldn’t last the night. Jacques had revealed a set of beautiful straight, white teeth. A guy with a good upbringing.

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s drop them off and meet outside at door B.”

  “For a smoke?”

  “To get some air.”

  “You don’t want to dance?”

  “Nah, I suck.”

  This frank declaration, so seemingly anodyne, would determine the rest of my life. Jacques, like me, was rhythmically challenged. Watching him move however he wanted, wonderfully defying the beat of the song, made me feel like the shipwrecked do when they first glimpse signs of civilization. I fell in love with the guy for what he didn’t have. All his endearing qualities came to life for a moment in the shadow of this absence, which made me treasure them all the more. Had I been religious, I might have believed God had sent Jacques to apologize for overlooking me when bestowing a sense of rhythm on the world.

  We spent that first night, like everyone swept up in love, entangled in passionate embraces, drinking in the same air, trying to fuse our bodies into one. If he had told me then that he didn’t like French kissing, I wouldn’t have believed him. But it later crossed my mind that such kisses, like women’s eggs, were numbered; once the well ran dry, you had to learn to go without. Nights just slipped away. I wouldn’t feel that exhausted again until I had children. We loved each other like no one else, obviously. And just like everyone else, our marriage was for forever.

  In mathematics, two negatives make a positive; in biology, it’s not so simple. When Alexandre was born, I’d deployed an arsenal of means to make sure my son’s brain fired the necessary synapses and neuromuscular junctions for him to keep a beat. I bought a metronome to teach him to clap his hands in sync, as well as DVDs of nursery rhymes, songs, and dances so his ears would be constantly stimulated. When he was eighteen months, I enrolled him in a parent-baby music class that promised to “awaken every child’s inner music.” I endured a whole half-dozen humiliating sessions before giving up on the class and going back to DVDs in order to stimulate the hormone in question. The “therapist” had decided I wouldn’t leave her workshops without “taming the cacophony” inside me — I’ll spare you the psychobabble on which she based her approach. It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to fix me, but her method verged on assault: she would grab my shoulders and force me to move with her, or clap her hands close to my ears so that my body would “wake up.” I left before I hit her.

  By four, Alexandre was old enough to take ballet — the only class without parental participation. It didn’t take long to realize he’d been spared, his body evidently able to comply with even the most demanding cadences.

  When he came out at fourteen, my mother-in-law didn’t waste any time offering up a simplistic explanation, one of her specialties. “You can’t be surprised, what with all those dance classes you made him take.” I still don’t know how I managed to contain myself. Over the next few days I quelled my rage by imagining myself gouging out her eyes, breaking her nose, or kicking her stomach so hard I crushed her intestines. Violent? Not nearly as violent as thinking homosexuality is a defect.

  Charlotte and Antoine can also keep a beat. I have a lot of respect for mathematical laws.

  6

  In which Jean-Paul becomes my rebound

  Claudine’s childish suggestions eventually metamorphosed into a sort of role-playing game that kept my mind off things. Her plan had worked. I’d even hatched a series of terrifically corny storylines fit for the most ridiculous soap operas, all ending with a kiss from J.P.:

  By pure coincidence, I end up in the copy room, face to face with Jean-Paul. He doesn’t object when I close the door and lean in for a kiss.

  The elevator breaks down — we’re the only two inside, obviously — and he comes over to see if I am okay and ends up gathering me into his arms for a kiss that I don’t resist in the slightest.

  I’m taking the stairs to get in a little

  exercise before sitting down at my desk for the day, and we run into each other — he’s working out at the same time, what a coincidence! — and this inevitably leads to an impromptu make-out session.

 
Etc.

  My bank of storylines also include a few catastrophes that just about bring me to tears:

  A bomb threat forces us to leave the building, and in the panic of the evacuation we wind up alone together a few streets over. We cling to each other, lips locked in an effort to fend off the evil surrounding us.

  A classic power outage: darkness, fear, beads of sweat, fortunate coincidences, a tangle of hands and mouths, in that order or in disorder.

  I faint in the hallway outside the conference room and J.P., in a burst of Olympian heroism, catches me just before my head hits the concrete of our LEED-certified building (averting damage to my brain and a messy clean-up). He’s so relieved when I come to that he can’t help leaning in for a hungry kiss.

  Etc.

  On other occasions, I pushed the drama to ridiculous heights, the details of which you’ll forgive me for not sharing here. In the best of these worst-case scenarios, we are the only survivors of an apocalypse and only a kiss can distract us from the harrowing wait for our inevitable end. In brief, things look bad, but at least we’re making out.

  In the real world, J.P. worked in Finance on the fourth floor and I was in Physical Resources, one floor up. The chances of winding up alone in an elevator, or in a burning wood nearby, were next to zero. I’d have to help things along a bit.

  So I multiplied my trips between the lobby and the fifth floor to increase my chances of running into him, statistically speaking. I had to start somewhere. I had to get to that rebound. I took the stairs down and the elevator up — I couldn’t ruin things by sweating — telling people all the exercise during breaks and over lunch was part of a new health kick. Given my situation, everyone understood my need to shake things up. I did routine checks of the fourth floor much more than was necessary (to be honest, I was just pretending to blow my nose in the bathroom), or I might forget this or that to give myself a few more opportunities to test my chances that were, I was forced to admit, far better in my dreams than in real life.

  When, in the elevator, I did end up with J.P. (and a whole bunch of chaperones), I focused on him intensely and tried telepathy: they say such messages reach the target more easily when you’re both in the same room. So I’d look straight at him and order him, very simply and clearly, to kiss me. But he didn’t hear me. People walked in and out of the elevator, nodding politely before turning to watch the floor indicators light up. The longer I stared, the more beautiful I found him — and the more unlikely it seemed we would ever lock lips.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! This isn’t voodoo — you’ve got to actually do something. Go see him, buy him coffee. You’ll never kiss him if you don’t make a move. Tele­pathy, hah! If you say you got that from The Secret, I’ll kill you.”

  “It was in a magazine.”

  “Don’t tell me which one. Come by later, I need you to run an errand for me.”

  Foolishly, I walked back to Claudine’s office after my break. “Oh, Diane!” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Are you going down to Accounting? Could you give this to J.P. for me?”

  After taking the couple of files she’d retrieved from the archives, I went down a floor and walked resolutely over to Jean-Paul’s office. The door was open, so I went in. Piles of neatly stacked folders waited for attentive hands beside a fake crystal glass full of Pilot Hi-Tecpoint V7 Grip pencils (I made a slight grimace — I hate medium tips). A few inches away, a little porcelain shepherd smiled at me, looking after his imaginary sheep as if there weren’t wolves to worry about. No photographs, just a peace lily that seemed happy to be there. Which doesn’t mean a thing, of course; peace lilies are happy anywhere. J.P.’s secretary rushed over to greet me.

  “Hello, Diane!”

  “Oh, hi, Josy!”

  “Are you looking for Jean-Paul?”

  Nobody called him Jean-Paul except his secretary. A question of pecking order, I suppose. He always introduced himself as J.P, what with the stock of “Jean-Paul” having plummeted since a popular soap opera had featured a villain by that name.

  “Uh . . . yes, I am.”

  “Are those files for him?”

  “Uh, no — well, yes. Claudine asked me to deliver them, but I’d rather hand them to him in person.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll see that he gets them. He should be back soon.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He went for a coffee on the second floor. They just bought an espresso machine.”

  “Oh, wow!”

  “The translation department has special coffee needs.”

  “I’ll go down and find him. There are a few things I should explain anyway.”

  “I like your outfit.”

  “Oh, thanks!”

  If I’d been blind, I might have returned the compliment. But as I watched her head back to her office on her glossy white four-inch stiletto heels, I felt a sort of pity. She waved at me, fluttering her white acrylic nails and white pearl rings perfectly accessorizing the white earrings, bracelets, decorative comb, and eye shadow that matched her pantsuit. She’d gained a reputation as a busybody from the moment she’d arrived and lived up to it on every occasion. If I had a secretary like that, I’d probably spend breaks exploring the building until I found an espresso machine on a faraway floor, too.

  I took the stairs, giving myself time to muster up some courage. When I reached the second floor, I saw J.P. slip into the elevator with the energetic stride of a man splendidly in shape. I hurried to catch him, but the door closed at the very moment I squeaked out a “Jaaaay-Peeee!” That’s exactly how it sounded, my greeting ridiculously stretched out. I stood there, bogus files in hand. Almost immediately, the door reopened, revealing a smiling and clearly curious J.P.

  “Ah . . . uh. Here, Claudine asked me to give you these, since I was heading to the fourth floor anyway . . . ”

  “They must be important if you came all the way down here.”

  “No, no, I’m here for the coffee machine.”

  “What are they, those files?”

  “Uh . . . no idea.”

  “Oh, okay . . . I think I already approved those last week . . . ”

  “Maybe she was confused.”

  “Maybe. Odd, though. Are you going up?”

  “Umm . . . yeah.”

  “But didn’t you want a coffee?”

  “Oh right, silly me. I forgot.”

  “All right, then. Well, thanks for the files, I’ll look over them right away. There must be something wrong with them.”

  “Yeah . . . ”

  “Bye!”

  “Uh . . . ”

  A quiet whoosh as the doors closed on silly me. I abandoned the idea of coffee and climbed the stairs at a gentle trot, hoping to digest my disappointment in peace.

  I walked into Claudine’s office and flopped into the grievances chair. It’s the most popular chair in the building.

  “I’m done with this whole kissing business. I looked like an idiot, I hate myself, and frankly, J.P. is — ”

  “ — an excellent rebound.”

  “No, he’s way too hot.”

  “He’s independent, a little big-headed, though he can’t possibly be as confident as he seems. He’s the ideal candidate for you!”

  “And he has a wife — or better yet, a girlfriend!”

  “What do you care? It’s perfect. We’re not talking marriage, we’re not even talking sex. You just want a little tongue action. Then you can both get on with your lives.”

  “You want me to get back at Jacques?”

  “Not at all. It’s not about revenge, it’s about putting yourself first. Now’s the time to focus on you — and you need two things: to pass the time, and gain a bit of self-confidence back.”

  “Well, that really worked!”

  “How long have you been fantasizing about J
.P.?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Don’t tell me it didn’t take your mind off things.”

  “Barely.”

  “And don’t tell me you’re not trying a little harder when you get dressed in the morning.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “There you go. That’s what the make-out fantasy is all about. As harmless as hot water and lemon, and just as good for you. I haven’t seen you look this good in months.”

  I returned to my desk to find a message from Jean-Paul Boisvert on my answering machine. I couldn’t believe it: J.P. had called me. The Tom Brady of Accounting had dialled my extension.

  “ . . . listen, Diane, uh . . . if you could come by my office when you get a chance. It’s nothing important. When you have a minute.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yup.”

  “Hey now! Miss I-looked-like-an-idiot . . . ”

  “Well, what do I do?”

  “I imagine that’s a rhetorical question.”

  “But I’ll look like an idiot!”

  “You will, but you’re still going down there.”

  “Keep the grievances chair warm for me. I’ll be right back.”

  The door to his office was closed — a defence against the threat of unsolicited bedazzlement. Josy, after announcing me over the phone, opened the door like an overzealous butler, with a swish of the arm out of The Price Is Right. J.P. was concentrating on his computer screen, his brow furrowed and more gorgeous than ever. Worry looked good on him — it gave him a touch of wisdom male models lacked. His hair was so thick I doubted anyone could run a hand through it — not even a slender woman’s hand. As for Jacques, his hair had steadily jumped ship until there was nothing but a monk’s crown around his head. But since men look sexier with wrinkles, a clean shave was enough to take a good ten years off him; he was one of those older men who wear baldness well. Sometimes I’d felt as if I was the victim of a pernicious shift in our lousy marriage. I took on double the years as time passed — mine, and his.