Mansion

SARAH KLASSEN

Carmen's soapy fingers discover a lump in her left breast. She rinses the lather from her hands and lets them explore again. Yes, there it is, small, hard, an object so obviously defined one should be able to pluck it out cleanly. When she steps from the shower she feels weightless. She towels, dresses, strides to the kitchen where she tears a sheet from a notepad, finds a ballpoint pen and writes:

10:30 am: appointment at Inga's Interiors.

1:30 pm: lunch with Doris Lang

3:30-5:30: pick up the dry cleaning, return overdue library books, call the city about repairs to the curb, mow the front lawn, take a nap

7:30 pm: Credit Union's AGM (with election of new officers)

        Carmen scans the agenda, then, gripping the ballpoint, draws a line through all of the items. Because the line is wobbly she draws another, more confident line and the whole business of textures, colours, and cost of redecorating is cancelled. All obligations annulled.

        "I wasn't shocked," she tells Trish. "But I knew right away what it meant."

        Because of the sluggish healthcare system the biopsy can't be scheduled until late September. Carmen considers how best to redeem the time of waiting, how to measure out the weeks, days and hours. She experiences a clear-headedness so acute it leaves her elated. 

        The tall cherry wood chest of drawers in her bedroom has vine-like details carved into its surface. She lets her fingers follow the courtly lines her daughter has always admired. Well, Trish can have the chest. Carmen empties the drawers, surprised when the contents cover her bedroom floor.

        "Mom, you don't have to," Trish objects. "I really don't need to have your furniture. Where would I put it?" But next day the chest of drawers arrives in a delivery van. Trish's husband is impressed and even their teen-aged son Mike bothers to check it out. "Cool," he says. A corner is found for it in the master bedroom.

        Carmen rummages through the clothing sprawled on her bedroom floor, sorting everything into two piles-like separating sheep from goats, she thinks. In the pile she has mentally labeled "disposable" there are:

Pyjamas-striped or floral, four pair, one so threadbare she has to begin a   "discard" pile.

Nylons-beige, three packages, unopened.

Bras-six, three white, three nude. (She has kept five.) Are bras something one can give away? If gently used? Clean? The stretchy parts still stretchy?

Sweaters-That bulky Scandinavian pullover knit by an aunt long dead has claimed half a drawer for years, though it's been worn only three or four times and never washed. The sea-green cable cardigan represents Carmen's only venture into knitting-not a complete disaster.

Leotards-what in the world was she thinking, storing them year after year?

Scarves-silk, chiffon, cotton, wool, polyester, nylon, acetate, in shades of red, emerald, blue, yellow, lilac, aquamarine. She imagines her scarves swirling around the slender forms of nymphs in silvery forest glades. Scheherazade winding a coral scarf around her dark hair.

        Carmen hauls plastic bags filled with sweaters and scarves to the local thrift store, discards what underwear she can, transfers the rest to her dresser drawers and finds she doesn't miss the cherry wood chest. Its absence gives the room a restful spaciousness. She sits in the dusky blue Queen Anne chair, her favourite reading spot, and stares through the window at the erratic movement of elm branches. Each serrated leaf-so precise, so specific, so beautiful-moves with the breeze.

 

When she was eight Carmen's father built a tree house in a gnarled oak and nailed a makeshift ladder to its trunk. The tree house contained a table and two sturdy chairs, an oval mirror with cracked glass, a tiny window for which her mother had found a scrap of drapery fabric, two hooks to hang things on. She dragged five or six dolls, all their clothes, a set of pastel plastic dishes, play furniture and her favourite books up the ladder in an ardent spurt of nest building.

         "Going up to your mansion?" her father would tease.

          Before each ascent she made a list of what to take-like her mother's grocery list-in order to avoid unnecessary climbing.

          Up in the tree house, surrounded by her dolls and all their trappings, she would pretend she was a bird, a mourning dove or a flicker, perhaps a swallow, but never an eagle or any kind of vulture. She would fly weightlessly up from the oak tree over roof tops and out of the city, past the last bus loop, past the smoke-belching oil refinery, past the golf course, north to the lakes where she hovered a while over the white beaches before changing direction and soaring west over the prairie.

          The imagined flight triggered such gladness she stopped hauling toys up to the tree house and the lightness of climbing the ladder unencumbered pleased her. She liked the way the sun's rays filtered through breeze-blown oak leaves and made shifting patterns on the ground below. Squirrels skittering along one bumpy branch and flying to the next delighted her. Cradled in that oak tree Carmen dreamt away whole mornings, afternoons and evenings. Whenever the tree house felt too cluttered she would simply toss out a broken plastic cup, a book, a doll, and watch the object land at the base of the oak.

 

The lump in Carmen's breast with all its implications is thoroughly discussed by her friends.

            "She's very calm about it, isn't she?"

            "Strong. Carmen's stronger than she's ever been."

            "She's got such a serene manner, have you noticed?"

            "And a sort of distant look in her eyes. As if she's elsewhere."

            "Personally, I think she looks awfully well. Not bad colour. A spring in her step."

            "Mmm."

            When Doris Lang comes to see her, Carmen makes coffee and they take their mugs into the living room where the noisy flow of the city's life wafts in through the open window. Doris doesn't know if she should mention the lump. Of course she has known other women in Carmen's predicament, but she has been able to steer clear of them one way or another, waiting until they are declared out of danger. Or until they are gone and life closes neatly around their absence.

            "I want to do something about this room," Carmen says.

            "Time for redecorating?" Doris is relieved that her friend has broached a subject so mundane. So ordinary. Safe. She sets down her mug, sits up and appraises the walls. "I'd go for a bolder shade," she says.

            "Oh not that." Carmen gestures dismissively. "Just some-rearranging."

            "Oh."

            "The chair you're sitting on," Carmen says, "and that one over there," she indicates with her hand, "and maybe that table with the lamp. I need to get rid of them."

           Doris wants to ask Why? These pieces are so fine, so solid, so elegant. But she doesn't ask. The next time she visits they are gone, carried off to a Bosnian refugee family with a bare apartment to furnish. "Just like that," Trish will say over the telephone, her voice hovering between awe and anger. "Gave it all away."

          Carmen moves the remaining furniture around, leaving the room with an austere aspect that Doris finds chilling, though she doesn't say so. "This way your sofa gets the attention it deserves," she praises. "The extra space really sets it off."

 

The biopsy is performed as scheduled and Carmen is called in to discuss the outcome, though she knows the report will be positive. Which is to say, negative. Over the weeks she has prepared herself for the verdict. She isn't shocked when the doctor explains that there will have to be a lumpectomy, the hospital will contact her when the date is set, she shouldn't hold her breath.

            "It'll be okay, Mom. Everything will be okay." Trish, who has accompanied her mother to the appointment, is beside herself.

 

Carmen calls the ReStore: Are they interested in area rugs in fair condition? By week's end the ReStore has sends two men and a truck. The rugs are rolled up and hauled away, even the frayed and faded hallway runner.

            The runner came from Shanghai. Women in a stifling factory worked at huge looms creating fantastic patterns: flora and fauna, elegant courtiers and their tiny-footed ladies, hunting scenes with riders and horses and hounds. Detailed scenes woven into lush and exotic landscapes.

            "Let's get one," Ben said. "You choose."

            The trip to China was his idea. A celebration of their new status when Trish moved out. The rug factory came after the silk factory where women bent over fine embroidery that must have ruined their eyes. Before that they were whisked to a factory where heavy machinery was made and a chart showed the daily output, comparing it with communally set goals. Before that, a hospital where they were treated to a demonstration of acupuncture. And before that a model kindergarten where the children wore shorts and blouses of orange and blue and yellow, a startling contrast to the uniformly drab Mao style worn by the adults cycling in black and white columns along city streets. Every night Carmen dreamt of dark-eyed children singing, dancing, waving at the tourists and always smiling. They had also visited a rural village and entered the home of a family-father, mother, one child-a small hut with one room that contained one bed, a stove, a table, and not much else. A hovel, you might say.

            It was all very tiring and Carmen felt out of her element, the way displaced refugees must feel. She let her hand move over the soft, thick nap of the carpets but she couldn't choose. She had come to China expecting to take home with her something of its sublime mystery, but this textile opulence spread out before her eyes could occupy a room entirely, leaving no place for the ebb and flow of ordinary life.

           "Which one?" Ben asked impatiently.

           "One of these." Carmen gestured vaguely toward a pile of rolled up narrow runners.

           Ben shrugged and chose one in deep tones of wine and green. It fit exactly into the space between the front door and the kitchen. Years of coming and going have worn away design and colour, a negative record of passing lives. Carmen doubts it is good enough to give away, but the ReStore men roll it up with the rest.

 

When the pastor comes-Trish has notified him-the room echoes slightly, as any empty room will. He has planned to recite for Carmen Psalm 23, but instead he pulls out his paperback Bible and reads from the Gospel of St John: In my father's house are many mansions. Carmen nods and looks thoughtfully out the window at the movement of clouds above the bare elm branches. Mansions, she murmurs. Mansions. Her mind fills with a vision of spacious, light-filled rooms.

            When the pastor closes his Bible, nothing more needs to be said. Still, he compliments Carmen on the large crystal vase on the mantel. He has noticed the way the light glances from its flawlessly cut surface. When Carmen says he must take it with him, he is embarrassed and she has to insist. She doesn't mention that the vase was a gift from her husband whose taste in crystal was impeccable. She kept it when she gave away, perhaps with too much haste, Ben's other extravagant gifts:  The mink coat. The Tiffany lamp. The opal ring.

            From her window she watches the pastor place the vase carefully on the front seat of his car and drive away. There is relief at the departure of a part of her life that should long ago have been cut loose and allowed to float away. (She smiles at the idea of crystal floating.) There is also the smallest tinge of regret.

 

The date for the lumpectomy is set, finally, for early December. Carmen marks it on her calendar, noting the weeks left to wait.

            "Disgraceful," Carmen's friends tell each other. "When you need health care, where is it?"

            "No woman should have to wait that long for breast surgery." 

            "Why doesn't she go across the border? She can afford it."

            They study their own unmarred breasts with renewed appreciation, with affection, and with the vow never to wish for bigger or smaller. They resolve to examine themselves regularly the way they've been told. They jot down addresses of clinics across the border, advising each other to save up for any eventuality. This could happen to me, each one thinks, terrified.

 

Carmen's dining room table and chairs were purchased the summer before Ben moved out. The two of them spent weeks looking, and in the end decided on a teak ensemble-a rectangular table that could be extended to seat twelve comfortably, eight upholstered chairs, a buffet with glass doors and a tea wagon to match.

           There were several dinner parties before Ben left. At one she served poached salmon, steamed asparagus and an oriental salad; at another, Cornish hen with wild rice stuffing, buttered snow peas, and some sort of soufflé that had taken hours to make and fell before she could serve it. She can't remember the other dinners except that by then everything was out of synch. Ben was absent more often than present in the home they had furnished together and lived in their entire married life.

           Carmen never looked for hard evidence-letters in pants pockets, unexplained phone or email messages, lipstick stains, the scent of some other woman's perfume. She did not need proof. She knew what was coming. She would be prepared. Strong.

            But when Ben left to be with the woman he had met on some business trip to Montreal or Halifax or New York Carmen felt the whiplash of betrayal. She had not taken her marriage vows lightly and to have them undone was a shock she believed she would not recover from.

            "I'll help you find another place," Trish offered. "A condo. Apartment. A smaller house, maybe."

            "I'll stay," Carmen said, placing her hand lightly on the teak table, as if blessing the furniture that could no longer offer her pleasure. Her husbandless life stretched before her, an unrecognizable landscape in which she could no longer find her place. 

            But loneliness did not become the terror she had envisioned. Her world did not fall apart, the moon did not fall from the sky, and her body and mind did not cease functioning. It was possible, she learned, to accept solitude and sorrow, not as burdens to be borne, but as elements life was giving her to do with what she could.

            Now Carmen checks the table legs for chips and scuff marks.

            Trish tries-and fails-to persuade her mother to keep the dining room furniture, but manages to talk her out of giving it away outright. It is sold to a cousin capable of recognizing a bargain. Everything is shipped to Brandon. The money goes to charity.

            Doris is shocked to find the dining room blatantly vacant. Her hands tremble and tears come to her eyes when Carmen serves coffee. "You look great, Carmen, really," Doris says.

            It's true. Carmen looks well and much younger than fifty-seven. Her skin is clear, her step firm, as if the task of dismantling her house, eliminating objects, creating space, imbues her with energy. She walks through the rooms looking for what else she will no longer need: the piles of towels in the linen closet, the landscape painting that hangs over the sofa in the living room, the bread machine. And the little things like scissors, letter openers, accumulated boxes of hasti-notes, spools of thread, candles, recipe books, jewelry. She is amazed at the quantity of her possessions. She gets rid of both TV sets. Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Da Vinci's Inquest, all those cooking and survival shows, documentaries about scam artists and abused children, even the late news, seem suddenly unnecessary.

            Carmen marvels at the way light occupies the space she creates. Mornings the sun's first rays brighten the faded wallpaper. At noon she resists closing the venetians against the flood of light that dazzles the living room. Evenings, when the sun is low, the rooms of her house are comfortably subdued. She begins to watch for alterations that come with every change of light.

 

After Ben left, Carmen bought a computer and took courses in keyboarding, word-processing and desktop publishing. It wasn't her true element, but it was work she could do at home and she liked that. As demand for her freelance services increased, she replaced hardware and software with newer and better. Mike is not elated, but pleased nevertheless, when his grandmother's state-of-the-art technology shows up in his room. 

            Trish is disconsolate.

            Carmen's friends do not say that matter is giving way to spirit, they don't talk that way, but they understand that she is separating from them. Letting them go.

            "Why doesn't she fight?" Doris thinks.

            The pastor worries, though Carmen tries to persuade him that all is for the best and that this is not the end of the world.

            When Mike arrives with his saxophone to play-on his mother's orders-a few bars of "New Orleans Nightfall," and all of "Amazing Grace," she smiles and sends him home with a half dozen CDs overlooked when she gave her sound system and tapes and LPs to the Salvation Army after playing her favourites one last time. She still likes that song Ben used to sing along with: I've got a mansion just over the hillside.

Mike studies the CDs, Mozart and Beethoven and Buxtehude, composers he's never heard of. "Thanks, Grandma," he says politely.

 

Trish is puzzled when Carmen asks, "Can you take me to the liquor store?" Her mother drinks very little. But it isn't sherry or sparkling wine she has in mind. It's the sturdy cartons they come in. "They're good for packing."

            "Packing?"

            "Yes. The books." As though Trish should understand this.

            They fill the back seat and trunk of Trish's compact car with empty cartons fitted one into the other, and when they arrive at Carmen's house they have to make several trips from the garage. Trish, impatient, makes a show of consulting her watch, but her mother begins at once pulling books from the shelves. "Help me, Trish," she says, as if her daughter must be as convinced as she is of the logic of this culling. "Any you want? Help yourself."

But Trish, tired of the way her mother is excising chunks of her life, can't choose.

            "We'll take them to the Children's Hospital Book Mart then," Carmen says.

She has left books to the last and now lets her hands caress each one before she drops it in a box. She reads aloud the titles of the ones she intended to re-read.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
On the Road
The Pilgrim's Progress

           How courageously these fictional travellers took to the road in their quest for something better. Something more. How modest was the sum of their possessions. Carmen reflects on the way journey and arrival constitute life. She and Ben travelled occasionally, always with maximum luggage, but she can't say they arrived anywhere important. And she was always relieved to return home. And always determined that next time she would travel light.

A Room with a View
The Remains of the Day
Home
Bleak House
A Good House

         Hers is an empty house. She herself has made it empty. Has she gone too far? But the momentum of the stripping down can no longer be stopped. The process has acquired a mind of its own and soon, she thinks with a flutter of fear, only light will occupy the house. 

 

When the date for the surgery finally arrives, Christmas has taken over the city. Snow falls generously and then melts, leaving messy puddles. Plastic angels and candy canes and bargains of all sorts clutter the bustling shopping malls. Main Street is ablaze with trumpeting angels.

            The surgery, under a local anesthetic, does not take long. Carmen emerges from it, only slightly groggy. The surgeon says he is satisfied with the results, she should go home and rest and make an appointment with her own physician for the pathologist's report and further recommendations.

            "You're coming home with me," Trish says.

            "No, Trish. I'll sleep best in my own bed." It is one of her few remaining pieces of furniture.

            "Well, at least you'll come for Christmas." Trish sounds exasperated.

            This year Carmen has made no preparations. Trish on the other hand has bought a medium-sized, fresh turkey and baked four varieties of Christmas cookies, decorated a Scotch pine and announced that this year Christmas will be at her house. She has stopped crying.

            "Of course I'll come for Christmas," Carmen says, ushering her daughter out. It will be the fifth Christmas without Ben.

            Reclining against propped pillows in the bed she once shared with her husband, she looks around the stark room with approval. Days are short, and the light scant, but she doesn't mind the half-gloom. When Trish returns with buttered rolls and boils water for tea; Carmen nibbles and sips dutifully. After Trish leaves, Carmen closes her eyes and luxuriates in the prospect of completion. The cessation of mundane duties. A slendering. A clearing away, as if to make room not only for illumination but also for silence. For a different order, something new and not quite imaginable.

            In the morning Carmen steps to the window and beholds a white world. Snow has fallen overnight but now the sky has cleared and the evergreens down the street sparkle. This is the world I am abandoning, she thinks, this street, these trees, this brilliant sky with those white puffy clouds. And then her hand flies out for something to hold onto. Something to brace her against the sharp stab of unexpected sorrow. Her knees threaten to buckle, her head is dizzy, but she holds fast to the window ledge and gradually the shock ebbs.

 

A week before Christmas Trish drives her mother to the appointment. In the car, Carmen recites the possible procedures the doctor may prescribe: radical surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, Tomoxofin. She will decline them all and settle for whatever time is left.

            The waiting room is unusually empty. Last minute preparations for the holiday season claim priority over aches and pains. A young boy with a bandaged hand scowls over a sports journal. An old man in a soft grey hat slumps near the window, his face joyless. A jazzy rendition of The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy throbs amplified through the half-empty room.

            Carmen watches Trish riffle through an old copy of Chatelaine, pretending to read. She looks bored. Impatient because there's so much still to do. Carmen lets her eyes rest on one object, then another. The bandaged hand, a geranium in the window, the sad face of the old man, the white-toothed smile on a magazine cover. Her empty hands want to clench but she doesn't let them.

            The doctor is brief. The lump was encapsulated, she says, and the surgeon removed it all. The adjoining breast tissue has tested negative; there will be no need for further treatment.

            Carmen is stunned. "Not even radiation?"

            "All indications are it won't be necessary," the doctor says. "Go home and carry on with your life, Carmen. Examine your breasts regularly, of course." As she rises to go to her next consultation she smiles. "Merry Christmas. You're a lucky woman."

 

Trish accompanies her mother into her bare kitchen and watches her remove her coat and gloves.

            "You have things to do, Trish," Carmen says, her voice leaden. "You'd better go."

            Trish wonders if there is milk and bread in her mother's fridge. Not knowing what else to do, she says, "Okay, Mom, but call me. I'll be home."

            Alone, Carmen feels as if everything around her is hostile. As if she has made a wrong turn and stumbled into the wrong house. Through the south-facing window of the living room the low, midday sun is visible, its rays weighted with gravity.

            She doesn't open the almost empty fridge or run water for coffee. She picks up a cup from the counter, turns the forlorn thing round in her hand and sets it down again. The calendar shows December. She has not bothered to get a new one for the coming year.

            When she enters her bedroom, once occupied by the chest of drawers, the blue Queen Anne chair, the carpet, paintings, her husband's presence and then his absence, she wants to lift the bed covers and without removing her shoes crawl in and pull the sheet over her face. Instead she lowers herself to the floor and sits down, her back against a wall. She will not, after all, be taking leave of this place, this life with its responsibilities and decisions. Its small pleasures. Its shifting pattern of light and shadow.

            When the telephone rings, Carmen has been sitting so long in an unaccustomed position that she must struggle to rise. She speculates who might be calling.

            Not Trish. Not yet.

            Doris Lang, curious about the surgeon's report?

            The pastor, who now owns her gorgeous crystal vase?

            Who else is there?

            Ben. It might be Ben. Calling to wish her a Merry Christmas as he did on Christmas Eve three years ago. "Maybe we could get together," he said, his voice tentative as a teenager's. "For lunch? What do you say, Carmen?" 

            But it isn't Ben. It's Mike. "Our jazz band is playing in the mall tonight. Mom says I should ask, do you want to come?"

           The invitation is a jolt, an awkward summons, and Carmen's first impulse is to say, No, of course not, the very words she used to respond to Ben's question three years ago. But by the time she finds her voice, she hears herself saying, "Let me think about it, Mike. I'll call you back." 

           She is still standing at the telephone when it rings again: Standard Carpet Cleaning, with "a Christmas special on, in your area." A clear and confident female voice at the other end rattles off prices for shampooing wall-to-wall carpeting, area rugs, sofas and upholstered chairs. Morning, afternoon and evening appointments are still available. Carmen listens to the voice warning her that the offer cannot be extended into the new year and will not be repeated.

           "Thank you," Carmen says, her voice steady. "We have no carpets."

           "Not even area rugs, Ma'am?" The woman sounds suspicious. "What about the furniture? We could get your place all clean and bright for the holidays. Is it a house or an apartment we're talking?"

           "It's a mansion," Carmen says, her eyes fixed on the narrow ray of sunlight falling across the bare floor.

 

Sarah Klassen lives, writes, reads and sometimes teaches in Winnipeg. Her second short story collection, A Feast of Longing, (2007) received the High Plains fiction award. Her latest poetry collection, A Curious Beatitude (2006) received the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Poetry. She is presently at work on a novel.