Necessary Lies(38)

“Why?” she asks Anna as they turn south, down Rue de la Montagne, past Anna’s first Montreal apartment. The Hungarian restaurant has since closed. There is a new restaurant there now, Terra Mare, a seafood place. The windows of her old apartment are opened, but the curtains are drawn. The mustard coloured curtains, with frayed edges have not been replaced. Anna’s mind drifts to the past, to the time when William stopped the car to tell her that he loved her.

“I thought people had decided to start a new life,” Marie’s voice breaks through her memories. “After all, no one was without sin.”

“What do you expect?” Anna asks. There is irritation in her voice for which she has no excuse. Marie is right, and yet Anna goes on. “That they all instantly forget? Just like that?”

Marie gives her a cautious look.

“I mean amnesty, not amnesia, Anna,” she says, taken aback. “I’m not saying it is easy.”

Quickly, before she loses courage again or can change her mind, Anna opens her purse and takes out the envelope with Ursula’s letters.

“Here,” she says. “I’ve found them in William’s office.”

“What?” Marie asks, stopping abruptly, making the young couple behind them swerve to avoid bumping into them.

“Letters,” Anna says. “From William’s lover.”

“From whom?” Marie fixes her eyes on Anna’s face, not sure she has heard right.

“From William’s lover,” Anna repeats and swallows to ease the burning feeling in her throat.

They find a café to sit. There is only one table free, plastic plates piled up on it. Marie throws them into the garbage bin. The table is still littered with croissant flakes.

“I found letters from his lover,” Anna says. With her left hand she is gathering up flakes on the table surface, neatly, into a pile. Small and compact. When the pile is perfect, she scatters it all up and begins again. Her voice is slow, subdued, still calm, but Anna knows how precarious that calm is, and she hurries. “William had a lover in Berlin.”

“When did you find out?” Marie asks.

“Right after you left. When I started clearing his office.”

“How long did it go on?”

“They met when he was still married to Marilyn. But they’ve always been lovers. Until he died.”

“Are you sure?” Marie asks.

Anna nods. The envelope is lying on the table. Unopened.

“What a jerk,” Marie says, frowning. “I could’ve wrung his neck. Men are all like that. They think they can tramp on you if it suits them ” Her black hair falls over her eyes as she shakes her head. “Oh, God, Anna. How could he do it to you?”

“I didn’t see anything,” Anna says. “I was blind.” She doesn’t like the sound of her voice, it’s too plaintive, too hurt.

Marie is calculating something in her head, putting together what she has just heard.

“Does she know he is dead?”

“Yes,” Anna says. “Julia phoned her. They all knew it, for years. Marilyn and Julia. I was the dumb one.” Her voice hardens when she says Julia’s name, when she tells Marie about her last conversation with her stepdaughter. She might as well say everything that bothers her. Get it over with. She wants to hear she has the right to feel the way she does.

“Oh, God, Anna. You have to understand her, too,” Marie’s voice quivers when Anna has finished her confession. “What else could she have done?”

“I don’t want to understand,” Anna says with such force, pulling at the sleeves of her jacket, that Marie lets the matter drop.

“All I want to know is why he did it. It’s the deceit I mind.” Anna’s voice is breaking down, “the lies.”

Marie remains silent.

“That’s all there is to it,” Anna says, regretting her outburst already. She was hoping she could talk about her own feelings with more detachment. She really would like to know what Marie thinks. But now she has pushed herself into a rut, begging to be consoled. “I was his second-best,” she says.

“I don’t think so,” Marie says softly and holds her hand across the table. “William knew how to be a complete * at times, but I saw the way he looked at you.”

Anna’s eyes well up with tears. “I could do with a coffee,” she says.

Marie stands up and goes to the counter. She returns with two cheesecakes and two cups of coffee. The cakes, rich and soft, have a mound of whipped cream and a chocolate stick on a layer of breadcrumbs. Marie takes a bite of hers. “Shit,” she says, stirring her coffee with a white plastic spoon, swallowing. “What a mess! What a bloody mess!”

The comfort Marie offers is not too elaborate, a touch of her hand, a sweet bite of the cake, and Anna is again filled with gratitude.

“Ursula,” Anna says. “Her name is Ursula Herrlich. I wrote to her and she wrote back. Said I should go to Berlin, to see her.”

There is nothing wrong with being consoled. That’s what she has longed for, hasn’t she?

“Will you go?” Marie asks.

“Why?” Anna answers with a question. She doesn’t want to admit how many times she has imagined picking up the phone and dialling the Berlin number. “Ursula Herrlich,” she would hear from the other end. “Anna Herzman” she would say, but then her imagination fails her. What would Ursula say then? How could she reply?