The House on Selkirk Avenue by Irena Karafilly

Author:Irena Karafilly
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771832311
Publisher: Guernica Editions Inc
Published: 2017-04-19T16:00:00+00:00

II

“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to know that Otto is related to Pablo!” Kate says this to Antonia as they stand clearing the breakfast dishes, watching Otto emerge, stretching, from under the dining table. Antonia says something about life being full of surprises, but Kate wants to say that’s not the point; not entirely. She wants to say that Elizabeth’s disclosure has made her feel somehow redeemed, or has redeemed the past. No, not redeemed exactly, but validated it. As if, until she ran into Elizabeth, a part of her had secretly suspected that her own romantic past might be a figment of her imagination.

But what a ridiculous thought!

She has never doubted her own memories; never stopped to question a single one of them. And yet, she feels as if Elizabeth has unexpectedly provided a secret bridge, connecting her past and her present; that their chance encounter has brought the past out of its thickening mists and sharpened its fading contours.

“That was a lovely breakfast, thank you,” she says.

Antonia starts stacking the dishwasher while Kate stands wiping the granite counter. As she does so, she has a mental vision of herself wiping the Arborite counter in Guillaume’s kitchen, stopping every now and then to look through the window at the street below. Antonia’s galley kitchen has no windows. One could spend an entire year here and never be aware of the changing weather.

Kate doesn’t share these thoughts with Antonia. She is inwardly flipping through seasonal images from her private past: Guillaume in his winter sheepskin throwing snowballs at her outside the Catholic seminary wall; Guillaume in his light suede jacket stopping one early spring day to buy her a bunch of daffodils at the Atwater Market; Guillaume, sunburnt from his construction job, wading into Lake Massawippi, where her parents had a summer cottage, splashing water like a playful, overgrown school boy.

“What’s the matter?” Antonia says, putting a dishtowel away. “You look kind of weepy. What are you thinking of?”

“Oh, I was just remembering something about Guillaume,” Kate says with a sigh. “He couldn’t swim, you know. I was so surprised to find out he couldn’t! I’d never met anyone who couldn’t swim, have you?”

“Well, yes, now and then.” Antonia leads the way back to the living room, bearing a coffee tray. Settling into one of the plump sofas, she tells Kate how, though she had been taught to swim as a child, she once came close to drowning in Tunisia, caught in a whirlpool with an Austrian boyfriend. Otto is named after this former lover.

Kate listens to the meandering story, paying less attention to its details than to Antonia’s mobile features. She is trying to decide how best to pose the actress in this vast, elegant room. She has brought her camera, but Antonia herself obliged her by picking up the rest of the equipment yesterday, on her way home from a McGill play. It is all waiting now, propped up next to the bay window, though Antonia claims that she doesn’t much like being photographed.

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