Estimating Distances

by J. J. Steinfeld

Eileen looks out her eleventh-floor bedroom window and can see the smoke of a distant fire. How many kilometres away? How long would it take me to drive that far? A small fire or a large fire? she wonders, realizing that it depends on the distance. She is terrible at estimating distances.

In the living room of her apartment are several of her friends, invited over to celebrate the fifth anniversary of her divorce. "Any reason to celebrate," her ex-husband said to everyone in the room. They weren't even friends any longer, but he is married to a close friend of hers—Of course you are both invited; I have no phobia about former husbands. "If you want to live in a high-rise, this is a good building, great view," her close friend had said, remembering when her husband, then Eileen's husband, lived in this building. That remark was after the argument over Eileen's treatise on guerrilla warfare, as her ex-husband called it.

"Guerrilla warfare is as old as belligerency. If you're at all interested in guerrilla warfare, read von Clasewitz. Read Vo Nguyen Giap and I'd strongly recommend Che Guevara," she had told everyone in the room.

"Eileen used guerrilla warfare in our marriage," her ex-husband explained.

"Only out of necessity. However, the conditions were not conducive to employing the strategies of guerrilla warfare."

"When you going to write the history of guerrilla warfare in Canada? You might as well tell them your silly story of how you were a guerrilla in the hills of Prince Edward Island."

"You are twisting my personal history all out of shape."

"Eileen, when she was a teenager on Prince Edward Island, wanted to stop some cottage development. Preserve the pristine shoreline."

"Nothing's pristine anymore, even back then…"

She had needed to get away from the friends, her ex-husband, the drinking, the accusations and insults and belittlements disguised as banter. The bedroom had seemed as safe as anywhere.

Eileen is looking at the flames. Brian. She thinks of Brian. The birthday card is on the dresser. She had bought it two weeks ago, a full month before his birthday. Bought it on her own birthday. Over the years she often thought of her childhood sweetheart, of the man she would have married had she stayed on Prince Edward Island. Brian is twenty in her mind's eye—the last photograph she had of him, of them together, a piece of chocolate birthday cake on a fork she was holding, about to enter his mouth. His birthday or hers? She laughs sardonically: maybe Brian had set this fire. That was a lifetime ago.

What would Brian say if she called him? She could be anyone, he wouldn't be able to tell. She couldn't sound the same—years of smoking, heavy smoking now. Or she could say right away, "It's Eileen. I hope you haven't forgotten me..." She did send him a birthday card every year. A few words, best wishes, a hint of their youths together, an invitation to visit if he ever came to Vancouver. He would get updates on her life from her parents, who lived in rural Prince Edward Island—hardly satisfying information, as superficial as gossip—and there would be his birthday card to her, usually something oversized and ostentatious, a letter every few years, lists of the books he had read since the last letter, but she would never answer, only the yearly birthday card, no telephone calls, no e-mails, an understanding that distance had to be respected, hiding places not disturbed.

She goes to the dresser and signs the birthday card. It is a bland card, Best wishes on your birthday. Like a fine wine you improve with age... She writes: The old 4-H'er is 43. How's your head...your heart...your hands...your health? I had to strain my memory to remember what the H's stood for. I'm sure you haven't forgotten the 4-H pledge... Back home, in the weekly community newspaper, if she was feeling mischievous, she might have taken out an ad, with his picture as a teenager or younger, the caption, The old 4-H'er is 43. What picture would he have used of her? She had turned forty-three two weeks ago. The detritus of the years, she thinks, shakes her head, remembers Marvin, her paternal grandmother's second husband, talking about the detritus of his life. She traces out Brian's name on the window, a nervous, questioning calligraphy. Then she goes to the bed, sits down, lights a cigarette, and picks up the telephone from the night table.

"It's Eileen. I hope you haven't forgotten me..."

*****

"I need some hope," Brian said, as he and Eileen walked back toward her parents' house.

"You know the answer to that," said Eileen, hardly wanting to respond to his familiar complaint. She thought of it as a complaint or a plea, had been unsympathetic to him only because he had squeezed all life out of the words, was wallowing, not swimming. At the time she was in her first year at the University of Prince Edward Island, unhappy, stifled, wanting to move to a larger centre. She had made the decision to transfer to Dalhousie University in Halifax, would tell him later, it wasn't like she was going to the end of the world. There is little for you here, Brian. Your horizons are limited. I'm not staying here forever... Eileen, this is our home... Listen to yourself, Brian. No hope, our home... My whole family is here. I could start a business. I know I could run a good business. I could take business courses here as well as anywhere else... Not as well as anywhere else, Brian...

"Your cancer sticks enjoyable?" Eileen's father said as she and Brian approached the dining-room table.

"We wish we could stop," Brian said.

"There has to be some scuff in our perfection," said Eileen, and her parents and Brian's parents looked at her as if she had made a rude noise. "Where do you come up with these expressions?" Brian's father said.

The seventh person at the table, a thin, fashionably dressed man—"He looks like a dandy, a fop, our very own Sir Percy from the Scarlet Pimpernel," Eileen whispered to Brian—detected the mild disruption only through the reactions of the others. This was his first visit back in twelve years, last seeing Eileen when she was eight, and he was thirty, back on the Island, in those days, for his wedding to Eileen's grandmother, a woman only two years from being twice his age, the family members were saying, until someone pointed out that she had lied about her age and was more than twice the age of her new husband. The publisher of the weekly community newspaper, a family friend, at the wedding said he wanted to run their photograph on the front page. And young Eileen suggested a caption: Love is blind to age...

Eileen told the newspaper publisher at the wedding that she wanted to be a writer, and he offered her a job when she grew up, and Eileen made the publisher put it in writing. Years later, Eileen wrote a reminiscence of her grandmother, first married to a much older man, then to a much younger man, which won a high-school literary prize—third prize. "Marital Convolutions," she called it. She argued that she hadn't won first or second prize because she used certain words. Words about her grandmother's sexual vigour, the vitality of her libido, into his eighties. In the reminiscence she described Marvin as a fluttering, flamboyant, uninhibited Scarlet Pimpernel, a man it was hard to believe was born and had grown up in rural Prince Edward Island, characterizing the marriage as better suited to being a quirky, idiosyncratic film. Marvin and her grandmother were their own ongoing film. It wasn't until a decade later, sitting with his wife and watching television, that Brian saw the Scarlet Pimpernel, realized what Eileen had meant. A few years ago she had noted on a birthday card that the Scarlet Pimpernel had been made into a stage play and she had seen it in New York.

There had always been debate whether Marvin was part of the family, especially when Eileen's grandmother had died. Died in a small town in California, her ashes sent home with a friend who was going to vacation on the Island, no Marvin to accompany them. Mix the grey ashes with the red soil, Eileen had said when the ashes arrived on the Island. Speculation as to why he was back after twelve years: "I bet he's dying"... "Wants to rub our faces in it"... "Returning to the scene of the crime"... But Eileen's mother said there was no crime, Marvin had not done anything wrong. Getting married and moving to another country is not criminal. It might have been smart. "You never moved, Mom," the daughter said. "People in our family did not like to leave the area, Eileen. Six generations have lived here. You know that..."

"I want to clean up the detritus of my life," Marvin said, sounding more like the Scarlet Pimpernel than Sir Percy.

Eileen knew what detritus meant, said she preferred to use the word debris, the debris of my life. Brian said junk wasn't a bad word, the junk of my life, and the family gathering turned into a search for the proper word to describe a less than adequate life. Rubble, discards, castoffs, slag...

Saturday afternoon. Her parents' house—pancake lunch. Next Saturday afternoon, his parents' house—rancher's brunch, even though they lived on a farm and not a ranch. The week before they had attempted to determine how many of these Saturday-afternoon meals they had gone to. He said it had been over 750 and she laughed at his number, accused him of wild exaggeration. "We've missed weeks, come on..." The two families. Then Eileen and Brian got engaged and became part of it. "We knew you two would get married," each parent said, one after the other. "When Brian's mom and I were pregnant," Eileen's mother said, "we used to talk about what if one of us had a boy and the other a girl." Eileen had once interrupted a version of the story by saying, "Like two royal families trying to solidify their fortunes and consolidate their power."

"Name a Saturday we've missed," Brian said and stuck his forefinger close to Eileen's nose, and she snapped at it. She would have bitten it hard; had another time, during an argument over her academic plans, that living on the Island was stifling her creativity.

As she was doing a mental calculation of Saturday-afternoon meals, he described a few of the more severe storms they had gone through to make it to one family's home or the other's. When they got their driver's licences they would go somewhere afterward, but no squirming out of Saturday lunch—Sunday-morning church they might be able to skip, but not Saturday-afternoon lunch, holy, entrenched, ritualistic. The cigarette...the walk past the barn...or into the barn... It was after one of the Saturday-afternoon meals, during the middle of winter, that they first made love.

"Those are the two most in love teenagers I've ever seen," Marvin said.

"I'm not a teenager," Eileen said.

"I'm only a teenager for another two weeks," Brian said.

*****

—Eileen?... I can't believe it...

His first thoughts are of the argument they had when she told him she was definitely transferring to Dalhousie University. He looked at the finger she had bitten. The slightest scar, if you looked closely.

She had gone a year to the University of Prince Edward Island, transferred to Dalhousie University—Brian angry at her decision, but she saying she had to experience more of life—graduate school at Queen's University, then moved to Toronto—We'll keep in touch, this doesn't mean I won't eventually move back; not a thing keeping you tied to the Island—Regina, Calgary, back to Toronto, to Vancouver. Married, divorced...

He thinks of them walking into the house, after they had made love, being criticized for their "smoke break," of her desire to write a book that would scandalize the family, the entire community, that would make her a pariah—an accomplishment she would be proud of. "Why would you want to be a pariah?" he had asked, not knowing yet what the word meant. He had accused her more than once of using words to make him feel inadequate, though she said she wanted to help him improve himself. She went to university on the Island, he worked at a gas station, saved his money, wanted his own gas station, maybe own a big company one day. The publisher of the weekly community newspaper hired her as a reporter, said he would never violate a binding contract. She lasted a month, quit after writing a story on the use of pesticides in potato farming. "Barely twenty years here and I feel ossified," she explained to the publisher.

—I thought I'd call and wish you a happy birthday. I wasn't ecstatic about hitting forty-three. But what can you do?

—I was waiting for your card, Eileen.

—You'll still get a card. It's right on my dresser. This year I'm adding a little substance to the celebration, if you want to call the sound of my voice substance.

—Only thing I like about birthdays is getting your card.

—I don't like anything about birthdays.

—I've kept all your cards. I thought if you ever became famous, they'd be worth something.

—Famous at what?

—A famous journalist.

—I am a free-lance editor, a word caresser for hire. I like to think of myself as a literary factotum, a jack-of-all-trades. Should I say jacqueline-of-all-trades? A few might think jackass-of-all-trades more accurate.

—My service station hasn't become famous either. I added a convenience store. We have a fair-sized video section. I'm in debt up to my eyeballs...

Teenagers again. The time when he told her his plans to burn down an abandoned house at Halloween, she accusing him of having warped fantasies The next morning she heard on the radio news that the abandoned house had been burned down, and the next day his friend was arrested, but not him. The friend never betrayed him. "What kind of loyalty is that, over a malicious act?" Eileen said. Brian did not attempt to defend what they had done, only that his friend was a good friend.

"Hadn't you ever wanted to do something like that, Eileen?"

"No, not like that. It's too mindless and stupid."

"You calling me mindless?" he said.

"What you did. The mindless, stupid thing you did..."

She heard him mention the friend's name: Jeff. Said she didn't know he had died.

—They said he had so much alcohol in his system that night it was amazing he could find and start his car. What a lie. He knew what he was doing. He killed himself. He told me he wanted to kill himself. I never told anyone that, Eileen.

—He used to show me what he wrote. He wanted to go out with me, but I said I'd need your written permission.

—I remember how happy he was when he won that story contest at school. But he never wanted to be a writer. It was a story about a parallel high school on another planet. Except where the teachers were so tiny as to be almost invisible and the students could belch out huge, colourful bubbles and capture the teachers inside. Strangest thing I ever read...

*****

Brian remembers the time Eileen handed him something under the dinner table. Felt the foil, realized it was a condom. "Lambskin," she whispered. "Costs a lot more." He dropped the foil packet and it hit her mother's shoe. Eileen's mother reached under the table before he could. "For a school project," Eileen had said quickly. "A history of contraception. Did you know that use of the condom goes back hundreds of years?" "Never liked using those things," Brian's father said, taking the foil packet from Eileen's mother, and held it up, as if displaying a rare insect he was attempting to identify.

—We were so careful. Had I gotten pregnant.

—I wanted to get you pregnant, Eileen. If we would have started a family...

—We were much too young.

—Our lives sure would have been different... Why did you laugh? How much have you had to drink?

—I had a picture of the day you used two rubbers, you were so scared. Wanted to put on three, but I told you that was ludicrous, not to mention expensive. You were going to suffocate your penis.

—You can't suffocate a penis.

—I only used two at a time a few times. After Jeff got Shelley pregnant. That scared me.

—How did Shelley take the accident?

—She wasn't living with him when it happened. Christopher comes in to get videos every so often.

—Who's Christopher?

—Jeff and Shelley's son...

*****

Brian starts talking about his two children, both teenage boys.

—They are both readers. That's your influence, Eileen.

—I read much more when I was younger.

—I've read all of Lucy Maud Montgomery's books.

—Would you believe it, Brian, I still haven't even read Anne of Green Gables.

—You never had kids, did you?

—My ex-husband and his wife are trying to have a child. He must be popping potency pills like candy. She showed me a book on motherhood after forty, autographed by the author. I wish I'd edited that book, I said, then had to emphasize I was joking. She got cranky with me. If I have another drink, I'll do a fertility dance for my ex-hubby.

—I'd like to see you do a fertility dance.

—I have a spare room. Come here for a visit.

—When have I ever travelled? Why don't you come home for a visit, Eileen. How about Old Home Week? You've never come back for Old Home Week.

—Not going to happen, Brian. I would like to see you. You won't believe Vancouver .

—I like it so much here on the Island.

—I live on the eleventh floor. I bet you've never been on the eleventh floor of anything.

—You've never been over the Bridge.

—Not that bridge, Brian...

How they would argue about connecting the Island to the mainland, Brian recalls. He said he never wanted to live to see a bridge built. But the Confederation Bridge was built and his sons have driven over it, but not him. Eileen always thought that a bridge was a good idea. Wrote an essay at university on the history of the schemes and plans to connect the Island to the mainland.

—The house we bought, it's just down the road from that abandoned house Jeff and I burned down. I'm still here but the wife isn't.

—Got your wedding invitation. That was a long time ago, wasn't it?

—Time flies when you're having a crisis.

—I contemplated coming to the wedding.

—Not a match made in Heaven. That's what I get for marrying my second choice.

—I should have invited you to my wedding.

—Your parents told me all about it…showed me pictures. Your husband was shorter than you.

—I don't remember Jennifer too well.

—Not much to remember.

—She was a good singer in high school, I remember that. She won some amateur talent contest, didn't she?

—That was her sister. I think I should have married her sister. Since you weren't available...

—No invitations for crumbled marriages.

Eileen thinks about her marriage, the years compressed into a few memory images. She knew from the beginning that the marriage wouldn't last, even said it to her husband at the wedding but he laughed. He wanted to go to Prince Edward Island for their honeymoon. She thought the idea of a honeymoon was silly. She was editing a very difficult book and didn't need a honeymoon disrupting her work. Besides, she had said, I've burned all my bridges. That was long before the Confederation Bridge.

—I stay in touch with my parents. They've been out here for visits. Once every year or two.

—I know. When they come into the gas station, they always let me know something about your life.

—They think I'm crazy living here. Dad goes to a strip club each time he visits. I cover for him. Don't tell Mom he goes. I went with him once. Real father and daughter bonding...

*****

Eileen thinks about the time she and Brian got drunk and he begged her to act raunchy, to put on nylon stockings and a garter belt. He begged and pleaded but she refused. She told him to go find a prostitute and through his drunkenness he asked where would he find one on the Island. "You poor, deprived, horny little boy," she had said. She lights another cigarette, apologizes for coughing into the phone.

—I haven't had a cigarette in about ten years, Eileen.

—I'm still smoking away.

—I remember how we used to enjoy smoking together. A beer and a cigarette together. What fond memories.

—Tonight I've had brandy and I've had wine.

—No beer?

—I haven't had a beer since I left the Island. Do you believe that?

—I had a beer with lunch.

They both remember how they shared a beer, drinking out of each other's mouths. Jeff and Shelley also used to do that. Eileen remembers how Shelley asked her if she had ever kissed another girl, on the lips, you know, like with a boy. It wasn't until years later.

—I was really naïve and foolish, Brian, wasn't I?

—Your heart was in the right place. Every so often, something reminds me of your little crusade. Small town life...

She had read a book on Che Guevara, written a school report on guerrilla warfare, and he had bought her a poster of the revolutionary leader—she had used that poster to try to stop the sale of some farm land for tourist cottages. That got her publicity, and a big article and photograph in the weekly community newspaper. The same newspaper that had the article on the Halloween burning of the abandoned house. "We approached the military objective in the dead of night, under cover of darkness..." The same newspaper that ran the photograph of Eileen's grandmother and Marvin. The same newspaper that had reported Jeff's fatal car accident. The same newspaper to which she wrote letters to the editor and where she eventually got her first writing job. The same newspaper... "Brian, what would have happened if the house hadn't been abandoned?" she had asked him when they were looking at the newspaper article together. "What would have happened if two teenagers were screwing inside?... "

*****

—Saw a documentary on Che a few nights ago. I wanted to call your parents, Brian, tell them to watch it. It was too late at night. Four hours difference in time...

—I would have liked to have seen it. Every time I hear anything about Che Guevera, I think of you.

"Che," Eileen said at the dinner table, "helped to change the world."

"Never heard tell of him," Brian's father said.

Eileen wore a beret to one of the dinners. Her mother grabbed the beret during an argument over revolutionary politics and put it on her husband's head. Then he put the beret on Brian's mother's head, and she put it on her husband's head. Brian and Eileen chanted Che Guevara's name while the beret was making its way around the table...several times around the table.

—I think Che is more popular now than ever. That was a big story several years ago when his remains were returned to Cuba.

—Funny, I was talking to your parents about Cuba on their forty-fifth wedding anniversary. They celebrated by driving completely around the Island. It’s something they had always wanted to do, they told me, tears in your dad's eyes when he said that. They had to have their brakes fixed that day so they could go on the drive. That was my anniversary present to them...a free brake job...

*****

Eileen thinks of the time she wanted to take a trip to Cuba, had the money saved, but Brian wouldn't go with her. She spent a lot of time unsuccessfully trying to convince him to take his first plane trip. She wanted him to see a psychologist about his aversion to flying, and he told her he had no desire to get on a plane, or to leave the Island. Instead of going to Cuba, she took her first trip to Toronto, and slept with her first man other than Brian.

—Maybe you were wise to stay on the Island.

—Maybe you were wiser to leave.

—I don't think I had all that much choice.

—Both my boys have been to hockey tournaments in Ontario and in Quebec. They've already travelled more than I have. You think not going farther than New Brunswick is a problem?

—That's right, you did fly once...

She thinks of Brian at the hospital in Moncton. Her visits. First and only time he flew on a plane was after a fall from a barn roof, having to be airlifted to a Moncton hospital. He recovered and was driven home by his father.

—A psychiatrist I went to a couple of years ago said I personified the Island, and it became something of a lover. A lover I loved too much or loved not enough...or even despised. The psychiatrist said I was repressing feelings about wanting to move back to PEI. Maybe he was right.

—Why were you going to a psychiatrist?

—Business and pleasure. I was commissioned to write an article on the psychiatric profession, and my life was in a minor shambles at the time...

*****

Brian thinks about his plans to enter politics. His uncle wants him to run for office. Thinks he isn't cut out to be a politician. He wants to ask Eileen's advice. His grandfather ran for election twice, but lost badly both times.

—I'm considering running provincially in the next election. If I get the nomination.

—You're going to have to wear a beret, Brian. I'll lend you my old one. I still have it.

—I don't believe you.

—I haven't put it on in years, but it is in a closet somewhere. You still have the poster?

—My mother ripped it down when I still lived at home. Don't you remember, Eileen?

—No, I don't. Use that photograph of us in front of the Che Guevara poster in your campaign.

—Who took that?

—Marvin. Marvin wanted to immortalize us. Where in the world is he now?

—Marvin visited about two years ago. No advance notice. Brought his then new wife. That caused a stir, believe me.

—How old was she?

—About his age. They held hands the whole time they were in the house. Not that they stayed long. Mom didn't invite them to stay for dinner. Never saw Mom rude like that. Marvin came into the gas station, and I invited him and his wife to have a meal with me. When Marvin went to the bathroom, she told me she was pregnant and it scared her, being forty-seven. I thought she was more like fifty or fifty-five.

—I'm editing a book on teenage mothers. It’s a sociological study. But I'm starting to write fiction. Working on a short story about Che Guevara. He wasn't killed but escaped to Prince Edward Island. Lived in seclusion. I, or rather, a character based on me, meets him... We go back in time, Che and I, and use his guerrilla tactics to fight the rent collectors in nineteenth-century Prince Edward Island...

—Why don't you set your story in Vancouver? That's where you live.

—I have a harder time imagining Che in Vancouver. Now, Prince Edward Island...

*****

Her close friend comes into the bedroom and says, "We're getting drunk, drunker, without you, Eileen. The flirting is getting disgraceful..."

Eileen cups the receiver, and says, "This is important. I'll catch up."

—I have a drunk in my bedroom. She's married to my ex... There, she's gone.

—Do we act like we did when we were kids, if I visit?

—Oh, yes.

—We were always getting into trouble, Eileen.

—You could use three condoms.

—We might not like each other.

—We used to like each other. I'm willing to take the chance.

—Maybe I should visit around Halloween.

—Don't burn any houses around here.

—I was eighteen. I can't remember how many beers...

—Mindless...

—Just because I've never been as far as Vancouver.

—I do still have the beret, Brian. I swear to God, I still have the beret...

*****

Still holding the telephone, Eileen goes back to the window and sees the smoke of the distant fire again.

—I'm looking out my bedroom window now, and I can see a fire. It's far away, but I can see it, Brian. I was thinking of when you had me drive us past that burning abandoned house.

—You'll never let me forget that, will you?

—If you get on a plane tomorrow, and fly here, I'll put on the sexiest outfit you've ever seen. I have these sheer black stockings that will really excite you. You can help me put them on.

—You never did that when we were young.

—I've matured.

—You know I can't fly.

—You flew to Moncton.

—I was unconscious.

—Close your eyes and pretend you are unconscious. I'll pay for your ticket.

—I can pay for my own ticket.

—I thought you were badly in debt.

—I have a line of credit.

—It would be a big change in your life.

—The idea of going on an airplane...

Eileen begins to chant Che Guevara's name, interrupting Brian's excuses, and he joins her, and together they become revolutionaries against time and unfulfilled dreams.

J. J. Steinfeld lives in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He has published a novel and nine short story collections, the previous three by Gaspereau Press: Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (1999), Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown (2000), and Would You Hide Me? (2003). His stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals, and over thirty of his one-act and full-length plays have been performed in various forms, ranging from staged readings to full productions. He was interviewed in TDR in the fall of 2003.

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