Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [175]
“You won’t eat fish, and red meat is bad for you.”
“So’s white wine. It killed James Joyce.”
“Then open a bottle of red, if you prefer.”
“There’s no need to snap at me.”
“But you’re the one who’s …”
“Yeah, sure. It’s always me.”
Saul phoned me at the office. “I want to know why Mummy was crying this afternoon.”
“It was nothing, Saul. Honestly.”
“That’s not what she seems to think.”
I was losing it. My wife. My children.
“Barney, I want to know why you’re turning up here drunk every night.”
“Am I now obliged to account for how many drinks I’ve had before dinner?”
“You’re not going to like this, but I’m afraid that at your age you can no longer handle it the way you used to. You come home in such an unspeakable mood that to tell you the truth I’d rather eat alone,” she said.
Miriam turned away from me in bed that night and wept quietly. I wanted to die. The next morning I seriously considered charging across Sherbrooke Street against a red light. I would be hit by a car and rushed to the Montreal General in an ambulance. Miriam would sit by my side in intensive care, holding my hand, forgiving me everything. But I chickened out. I waited for the light to turn green.
Correction. These meandering memoirs do have a point after all. Over the wasting years I have levered free of many a tight spot leaning on a fulcrum of lies large, small, or medium-sized. Never tell the truth. Caught out, lie like a trooper. The first time I told the truth led to my being charged with murder. The second time cost me my happiness. What happened is that Miriam, as achingly beautiful as I had ever known her, came into my study on a Saturday afternoon, carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and two cups and saucers. She set the tray on my desk and sat down on the leather armchair opposite, and said, “I want to know what happened while I was in London.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Tell me. Maybe I can help.”
“Honestly, Miriam, I —”
“The way you cough in bed these nights. Those cigars. Are you hiding something from me and the children that Morty Herscovitch told you?”
“I haven’t got lung cancer yet, if that’s what you mean.” And that’s when I broke down and told her what had happened. “I’m so sorry. I’m absolutely miserable. It meant nothing to me.”
“I see.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“It never would have happened if you weren’t available,” she said, and then she went to pack a suitcase.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please, Miriam. We have a life.”
“Had. And I’m grateful for it. But before you can corrupt it any further and I end up hating you —”
“We can work this out. Please, my darling.”
But there was no point, because Miriam was twelve-years old again. Looking me in the eye it was her father she saw. Humping factory girls. Trolling downtown bars.
“Why do you put up with him?” Miriam had asked.
“What should I do?” her mother had answered, bent over her sewing machine.
Miriam would not be so helpless. “I need some time alone,” she said to me.
“I’ll do anything you want. I’ll sell the business and we’ll retire to a villa in Provence or Tuscany.”
“Then what will you do all day, a man with your energy? Build model airplanes? Play bridge?”
She reminded me of the last time I had promised to ease up with a hobby.