Chapter 27 #2
Mary-Ann Arbuckle resembles an operatic Viking, rising from her seat when she sees them.
She’s tall and broad-shouldered, the effect emphasized by the blond braids she wears wrapped around her head.
She’s acquainted with Reverend Michelle through the bia, and they shake hands in a way that’s almost civilized, Clemence considering that maybe everyone’s blown this out of proportion and the meeting is going to go fine, especially once Mary-Ann Arbuckle has treated them all to a round of hot chocolate, made vegan with oat milk.
But once they’re seated with their drinks, she pulls a folder from her tote bag, slaps it on the table, and informs them that they’re all being served with a lawsuit.
“What’s all this?” asks Mrs. Yeung, flipping through the pages, which are bound with a hot pink bulldog clip. “You’ve hired a lawyer?”
“I am a lawyer,” says Mary-Ann, sinking back into her seat. Her braids are as meticulous as her manicure, which Clemence notices as she folds her hands together like something has been settled.
But Reverend Michelle is undeterred. “You’re not a lawyer, Mary-Ann,” she says.
“I’ve been to law school.”
“For one semester,” she says, her voice soft and steady.
Reverend Michelle is skilled at working with unreasonable people.
“Which is long enough to know that this,” she indicates the papers Mrs. Yeung is holding, “isn’t legally binding.
” She says to Clemence and Mrs. Yeung, “She’s trying to scare you. ”
Clemence says, “I think it worked?”
“I’ve been running this sale for fifteen years,” Mrs. Yeung tells Mary-Ann. “We’ve never had a problem. There is room for our sale and your market. There’s always been.”
“Not when you’re poaching my vendors,” says Mary-Ann. “If you push, I’ll push back.”
“The pushing was all her,” says Mrs. Yeung, throwing Clemence to the wolves.
“But it wasn’t poaching,” Clemence defends herself. “This is a one-off thing. It’s for charity. I wanted to freshen things up. We admire what you do. You’re a local icon.” Now she was grovelling. “I never thought you’d see it as a threat.”
“You’re undermining my business,” Mary-Ann replies. “You come along with your cheap table rates, and my vendors start wondering if they really want to work with me.”
“But we have two sales a year,” says Clemence. “Surely that’s not enough to sustain their businesses. Isn’t there room enough in this neighbourhood for the both of us?”
“And what if your vendors don’t want to work with you because you’re mean to them?” suggests Mrs. Yeung. “That’s got nothing to do with the jumble sale.”
“People are intimidated by confident women,” Mary-Ann enunciates.
She raps her manicured nails on the tabletop.
“Because we refuse to let other people walk over us. I’d kindly ask you to read over the lawsuit.
” There is nothing kindly about her tone at all.
“I may not be a law school grad, but I know what’s legally binding. ”
“How about this,” proposes Reverend Michelle. “We give out flyers for your market at the jumble sale. We’ll put an ad—for free—in the church bulletins. We could consider offering you use of our community spaces for a much-reduced fee. Do you think that might be a start in putting all this right?”
“Perhaps a start,” says Mary-Ann.
“If you could leave our Facebook and our posters alone.”
Mary-Ann has a poker face. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” offers Reverend Michelle.
“But maybe could you call off your minions? Do you think you’d have control over that?
I feel like we could find a solution for peaceful coexistence.
You know we know that our jumble sale is worlds away from your enterprise.
We never considered that you’d think we were stepping on your toes.
You’re operating on a whole other plane, Mary-Ann. Don’t think we don’t know it.”
Mary-Ann appears subdued. Clemence is blown away by how Reverend Michelle has handled her. Mrs. Yeung, looking over Clemence’s shoulder, says, “Hey, isn’t that guy your boyfriend? That Italian?”
The table shifts their attention to where Toby is standing by the door huffing on his inhaler.
“He’s—I mean, he’s not Italian,” says Clemence. “He isn’t even my boyfriend. Not really.”
But Mrs. Yeung and Reverend Michelle are waving, and now he’s approaching, as if drawn by an irresistible force. From the expression on his face, Clemence can tell that he’s in agony. Why is Toby here?
“I thought maybe I wanted a latte,” he explains.
“And?” asks Mary-Ann. She gestures around the table as if to ask the others, What’s with this guy? “I mean, listen, dude, don’t keep us all in suspense here.”
Toby blinks. “I don’t know you,” he says, and Mary-Ann shrugs.
He says, “I thought maybe I wanted a latte, but I changed my mind. Hi, Clemence.” His face is flushed.
This is why he avoids most company, because there’s too much explaining involved.
Clemence is confused about what’s going on, until he leans down toward her ear and whispers, or at least he probably thinks he’s whispering, because Toby has a hard time gauging these things, and everybody can hear: “I’ve come to check on you. Are you okay?”
“We’re having the meeting about the jumble sale,” Clemence tells him, trying to sound offhand, like they hadn’t just been talking about it an hour ago in a closet.
“I know,” he says, refusing to follow her lead to tone down the weirdness so as not to further inflame Mary-Ann Arbuckle. “That’s why I’m here. Crampton made me come.” Although even Crampton, Clemence knows, isn’t powerful enough to inspire Toby to do anything he doesn’t want to do really.
“And because you wanted a latte,” says Clemence, one last attempt at making this seem normal. “Maybe.”
Toby says, “Nah.”
“Reverend Michelle, this is Tony,” Mrs. Yeung interjects. “Clemence, you really should be introducing your friend. And this is Mary-Ann. We were just finishing up. Tony, it’s nice to see you again.”
Toby ignores her. “Crampton was afraid you might be in trouble. So she sent me. To save you.”
“How?” asks Mary-Ann. “By having an asthma attack?”
“Toby,” Clemence corrects Mrs. Yeung. “His name is Toby.” To Reverend Michelle, “Are we done here?” If they weren’t, she had a feeling that she might be in trouble for real.
Reverend Michelle attempts to build a bridge. “I think we’re not far from some kind of understanding.”
“She served us with a lawsuit,” Mrs. Yeung tells Toby.
“Well, not an actual lawsuit,” says Clemence. What she thinks, but doesn’t say, is that it was more of an artisanal lawsuit.
And as she’s thinking this, she watches Mary-Ann’s expression turn.
“It’s not like you even bothered to read it,” Mary-Ann snarls.
She turns to Reverend Michelle. “And if you think a mention in your church bulletin is any kind of peace offering, you’re delusional. You deserve to have your roof fall in.”
Reverend Michelle never stops smiling. “God bless you.”
“What is wrong with you people?” Mary-Ann demands in disbelief. Back to Clemence: “And what are you even doing here? I googled you. You used to be a big deal. You used to write live dispatches from your honeymoon in Tahiti. So what happened? Where’s your husband?”
Almost as if on cue, Clemence’s phone starts buzzing.
“Here we go again,” sighs Mrs. Yeung.
But Mary-Ann Arbuckle is still staring at Clemence, still demanding.
In fact, everybody is watching her now, as her phone continues to vibrate, urgently, impossibly, like it has never buzzed before.
A gadget possessed. Dancing across the table, flying off the edge—Clemence catches it in mid-air.
“I’ve got to take this,” she says. What else can she do?
“Sure, sure,” murmurs Mrs. Yeung, but nobody else has moved, everybody with their eyes still on her. They’ve got her blocked in and there’s nowhere to go, the bulk of Mary-Ann Arbuckle looming, her yellow braids gleaming, shiny and terrifying.
Clemence accepts the call, knowing precisely what she’s getting into. “Hello.” This is her only escape route.
Silence for a moment, and she wonders if he hung up too soon, then his voice on the line. “Clemence?” That nasal twang she’d gone so long without hearing that her name as he said it wasn’t her name at all. Who was the person he was asking for?
“Hello?” she repeats.
“It’s me.”
“I know.”
“I’ve been trying,” he says. “Your mom gave me the number. I thought maybe it was wrong, and the lawyer was in touch—”
“I know,” she says again. “I just couldn’t—” And he’s waiting for her, but she’s got nothing now.
The only good thing about this situation is that it has made the tense scene before her in the café disappear, taking the rest of the world with it, the entire universe distilled into a single pinpoint that is the sound of the man she once tried and failed to love telling her again, “This is destroying me.” The same words he’d used all those months before, weeping on the floor in their bedroom.
So it wasn’t news, merely confirmation, and she wasn’t sure that hearing it again was any worse that those same words as an echo in her mind.
She tells him, “I’m sorry.” And she is, even though love is about saying sorry, and she doesn’t love him anymore, but she is sorry about that, too. She is so sorry about everything.
He says, “But can’t we try—”
And she says, “No.” She will never be sorry enough for that. She ends the call, and the world comes back, all those around her with no idea of how that seemingly innocuous exchange had made her so vulnerable, every bit of her armour disappeared.
Or maybe they do know. While Mary-Ann across the table seems as invincible as ever, her expression is less defiant. She looks confused. Like everyone else, she is trying to piece together what has transpired, who Clemence had been talking to, how so few words could hold so much weight.
“Are you okay?” asks Reverend Michelle, reaching for Clemence’s hand to steady her, to help her return to the present.
Her grip is soft and firm at once, and Clemence is surprised to find she’s grateful for the contact, to realize she is shaking, and how glad she is to not be alone, for this company—Mary-Ann Arbuckle notwithstanding.
Is that Toby’s hand on her shoulder? And even Mrs. Yeung has stopped rolling her eyes.
Fellowship, community—it’s a disaster, but it’s also everything, and Clemence has it in abundance, even after all her mistakes and misdeeds. It was what she’d come home for, and since she’d been back here it had only grown, no matter how motley the fashion.
Clemence suddenly thinks about how Mary-Ann seems impossibly alone, and she remembers. “Hey, I have a book for you.”
“A book?” Mary-Ann looks almost disgusted as Clemence pulls the package from her bag and pushes it across the table.
“It’s a very good book. Millions sold. An entrepreneurial bible. Plus, it’s vintage.”
Mary-Ann has unwrapped the paper and examines the cover. “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” She looks up at Clemence. “Seriously?” Clemence nods emphatically. “Okay,” she says. “Thanks. And listen,” she looks up at Reverend Michelle again. “I didn’t mean what I said. About the roof.”
“Can we have a truce?” asks Clemence. “Because I’ve been losing sleep over this, and I hate that. And we have other books, if you like that one. All kinds of them.” Toby’s hand is still her shoulder and it’s helping her be brave.
“Um, I actually have a lot of friends already,” says Mary-Ann, still examining the book. “I like vintage books though. I arrange mine by colour.” She opens the cover, letting the pages unfurl like a wave. “Okay,” she says. “I will cease and desist with the cease and desist.”
“Oh, well, that is a relief,” says Reverend Michelle, who is a good diplomat, but a very bad actor.
“What did you think,” asks Toby later that night, “of me swooping in there like a hero?”
“Was that what you were doing?” asks Clemence.
“I’m not always the best judge of which people are unhinged,” he says, “but that woman radiates it.”
“And what would you have done,” Clemence asks him, “if she’d proven a physical threat?
If you’d been forced to place your body on the line?
” Tracing her finger along the length of his body for emphasis, or at least as long as her arm can stretch.
They’re lying in her bed on their sides, which is the only way they both fit.
She is pleased that they’ve managed to make love without Toby hurting himself.
She has scoured the place to get rid of cat hair.
This is the closest she’s come with him to something that’s almost comfortable.
Toby answers her question. “Easy. I would have pulled her hair. Those braids are just like rope. Like a tug-of-war. Didn’t you just want to?
” And she really had. Clemence knows what he means exactly, and it is at moments like this that their connection seems like a kind of miracle.
Securing her heart to his, and she wonders if she really could love him. If she should.
Clemence had told him it had been her ex on the phone, that the call had rattled her so much that Mary-Ann seemed like an easy challenge in comparison.
“There are things still unresolved, I guess,” she’d said, “between me and my ex.” But Toby hadn’t asked her to delineate what those things were.
Clemence tells him, “You know, you’re braver than I’d given you credit for, daring to confront Mary-Ann Arbuckle like that. ”
“Well, you confronted her, too,” says Toby. “You gave her a book.”
“But that’s different,” says Clemence. “I always knew I was a little bit brave. What I didn’t know is that you’d show up for me.”
“I didn’t either,” he admits.
“So what you do you think it means?” she asks him. “If it means anything, I mean. Not to say that it does. But still.”
“Does it have to mean something?” he asks.
“Toby, you’re a reader,” she tells him, rolling onto her back so he’s squished against the wall. “Surely you know that meaning is the point.”
“But meaning is not always definitive,” he says, turning so he’s on top of her. “Or stable.”
She agrees. “Nothing is. Subject to interpretation. There’s ambiguity. That’s what makes it interesting.”
He says, “What it means, though, I think, is that I care about you.” He looks into her eyes. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“And is that really so hard to say?”
“Why do I have to say it when it’s demonstrable?”
“Because sometimes,” she says, “it’s just good to know where we’re at.”
“We’re right here,” he tells her, and pulls her closer. He’s kissing her neck, his lips drawing a line down to her chest, and then lower, until his point is really undeniable.