The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal

Yes, she was a he, dressed as a she, and no matter how much makeup and sympathy were ladled onto her, this remained a permanent, irreversible fact. She was never going to make the cover of Cosmo. Where the makeup was concerned, you could always more than make out a five-o’clock shadow – a misnomer in this case, since he shaved sometimes three times a day, so it might as well have been a 10 a.m. shadow. His skin reacted badly to the foundation and sprouted abscesses with deep reservoirs. No matter how loosely fitting her drop-waist dresses, you could always perceive the blockiness of her body, the flatness of her chest, the leggings emphasising the power of her thighs, the knobbiness of her knees.

It was appalling.

Missy (we suspect) invited Aline into the Cabal so that she might have the opportunity to meet and get to know ‘other women’ and have them rub some of their womanness off on her. Among other things, she wanted her to experience ‘the reinvention of the self through literature’ and ‘a bit of a haven from boys’.

Since there were no boys allowed in the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women’s Book Club. Not then. Not ever. No exceptions …

Neil Coghill was an exception. Because he was ten and alone in the world except for Runner. And he was not really a member but, rather, merely present to the membership. Otherwise, no exceptions.

The one who was fierce in her loyalty to Aline, who sat next to her, protected her, displayed in the manner of all guardians that most profound test of loyalty – the commitment to a lie – was none other than

Missy Bean,

founder and president of the Lacuna Cabal, of whom we have already spoken. How could we not have already spoken of her? She touched and enriched each of our lives in myriad ways. She gave us books and she gave us one another, and she was lonely and she was from Westmount. She was our captain and our king. If we were the seven sages who laid the foundation, Missy alone was the engineer of human souls!

Which is not to say she could not be barbaric (or, if you prefer, particularly considering the aforementioned allusion to a quote from Stalin: which is to say she could be barbaric). She had the instinct for power and the will to find it. She left no question in anyone’s mind that politics is something pursued for the love of power and the craving of attention. Government is essentially barbaric – ‘barbaric in its origins and forever susceptible to barbaric actions and aims.’11 It can’t civilise itself. But it can certainly civilise the rest of us, depending on what book it elects to have us read and plunder.

And we would have followed Missy to the ends of the earth. As it turns out, Missy did indeed go there, to the ends of the earth, before this story came to its conclusion, and we – the two of us – did not follow her there. So this book is our attempt to fulfil the tenets of our oath some years after the fact.

Missy was a little older than the rest of us – a fact that she managed to conceal fairly easily, mostly by refraining from any discussion of her past. Truth be told, she’d had some experiences of her own, had travelled a bit and was, we’ve come to learn, listening very closely to the ticking of her biological clock. She kept this fact well-concealed, however, allowing us to think of her as a latter-day Sappho, indifferent to the world of men, when in truth she was more like Cleopatra. Which is not to say she was anything like the woman discussed in the previous chapter. It’s true they shared a speculative interest in sleeping with strangers, but the chapter-one girl (Anna) wasn’t thinking clearly about it, whereas Missy was focused entirely on the goal of ten little fingers, ten little toes and a crib, and the reader should not forget this fact. Also, the former girl was interested in being paid, whereas Missy had a rich father who kept her in furs and memberships, and provided the credit card that purchased the heater, in the glow of whose blue flame she now sat next to.

11 Jane Jacobs, Systems of Survival, Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 1993.

Me.

The other I of the two of we: Danielle, at the other extreme end, the other one of the two of us about whom the less said the better, though I suppose we should say something:

We were brought into the club by Missy, essentially as loyalists – sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to her Claudius, with the twins, Runner and Ruby, cast as Hamlet. We were there from the beginning. Missy knew that it would take an effort to control the will of the twins, though she felt that the Cabal was better off with them than without them, since perhaps without them meant against them, and that would have been no good at all.

Though we pretended fealty and friendship to everyone, essentially we represented two extra votes in Missy’s favour. That was the private condition from the beginning, to be overturned only if we felt that, for some reason, Missy was committing a destructive act, against herself or against the integrity of the club. The only reason this caveat was ever discussed at all was that we, including Missy, shared a very high sense of drama, occasionally indulging in fantasies about going mad and that sort of thing.

But why should Missy not have three guaranteed votes? She’d built the Cabal with her own bare hands. Whatever it was that a maverick such as Runner Coghill brought to the table, she was no leader, and she could not have begun to build such an institution on her own. Mercury burns its path, cuts a swath: it’s a destroyer, not a builder. Missy built the Cabal alone.

So, yes, we were her lackeys, meant to counterbalance the influence of the twins, Runner and Ruby, and their essentially wacky ideas. Which means, we suppose, that the two of us were the anti-twins.

And that completes the call of the role for the Lacuna Cabal, 18 March 2003, 7.06 p.m. Here we are, in all our individualised glory, with our conflicts and our quirks.

Though in many other ways – many essential ways – we were, together, a single thing. Like a unit of the army in battle, like the chorus in an old Greek tragedy, like the Scooby-Doo gang. We were then, and always will be, the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women’s Book Club.

THREE

THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING

How do you describe the cave you lived in before you walked out of it? What did Hell look like before the angels were hurled into it? Was there anyone who felt bigger than life in sixteenth-century London before Shakespeare stepped onto the stage? Did the Meccans have any idea of the power their language contained before Muhammad walked down the hill?

The truth is, the two of us have had enough schooling that we no longer believe in these before-and-after visions of history. History is the history of marketing and publicity; which is the smaller way of saying it’s written by the victors.

And it was certainly not all glory and roses after Runner’s entrance, either.

We said earlier that Du and Anna and Runner were climbing the stairs to a bygone era. But not yet, because the Lacuna Cabal had not yet completed their latest book. Out with the old and in with the new then. Or, more to the point, out with the new and in with the old.

The book we were completing was Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald. It was the only book we had tackled all winter, and it had borne the burden of having to distract us from daily life after the death of Ruby Coghill. Grief and loss were emotions that none of us had really experienced before, and we didn’t know what to make of them.

On the day in question, that is, 18 March 2003, just after 7 p.m., we initiated our farewell to this book with a standard ritual we called the Final Indulgence. Aline, with help from a reluctant Emmy, began to read a passage that was agreed to be beloved to everyone. It was about two women who were lovers who pledged to never leave one another, and it contained descriptions of the sea and of November. Everybody cried for some reason at the mention of that word ‘November’, especially Romy, who cried out loud. We cried too, though we don’t know why; we’re crying now, even though we can’t think of anything bad that has happened in November, other than it was only two months later than September. The truth is, we would have wept at the name of any month at all, the names of months being heavily weighted with the passage of time away from September and towards a sad and heavy future.

Emmy was weeping on the shoulder of Romy, quietly despairing that she didn’t have someone like that, someone to love who could love her like that. Nobody was noticing this except for Romy herself, naturally, and her heart was both melting and bursting. Emmy worried quietly to Romy that she was becoming repellent and unclean, that she gave off a scent that said to men, ‘Don’t come near me.’ She felt it went right down to her genes. She also proclaimed herself one of the last of the old-time nihilists, who would think nothing of throwing herself onto a scrum of sailors à la Last Exit to Brooklyn. Though she was also, she said, so fucking tired of her life experiences being governed by stories in books.

Romy wanted nothing more than to counter Emmy’s nihilism by paying homage to her stripes, which were, to Romy, the most beautiful things she had ever seen, and which seemed to pulse with her heartbeat in a way that could be discerned only by a person sitting as close as Romy was now. But she knew that Emmy did not want to speak of such things, so instead she breathlessly protested that no single man, not even a bevy of wild-eyed sailors, could possibly affect Emmy’s perfect genes and declared, perhaps a little too emphatically, that Emmy was as beautiful as she had ever been.

This was overheard.

There had been, thus far in the room, some unspoken tension, because the women of the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women’s Book Club were not comfortable with giving themselves over entirely without criticism to a work of fiction, no matter how important or established it was. We tried to maintain a critical distance, so that only the most sublime portions of a given work would stick. But there had been something about this book that had gotten to us, and so we found ourselves, on this evening, ushering the author of Fall on Your Knees into the pantheon of the greats without so much as a whisper of protest regarding length or anachronism or political relevance or anything. And so there was a creeping feeling of embarrassment that perhaps the Lacuna Cabal was losing its edge. Still, though criticism was desired as an outlet, it had to be well-spoken and deserved, and woe betide the woman who let fly for the sake of venting alone. Nobody had dared on this particular evening, and so when Romy was overheard to be speaking quietly to Emmy about beauty and blue jeans, the collective Lacuna Id, in the person of founder and president Missy Bean, spotted an outlet. She turned to Romy and dressed her down for turning her attention towards issues of fashion and beauty at a time when attention had to be paid to more serious matters of literary analysis, to wit: ‘We are tonight attempting to recall the deepest and greatest values of this book, but Romy, it seems, would prefer to speak about … ’, et cetera.

To Romy, who was the perfect Lacuna Cabal member, this was a blow.

‘No, Missy, we’re not.’

‘Oh, Romy, you’re not? You’re speaking of more serious things?’

‘Yes we are.’

‘Could you share them with the group?’

‘Uh.’

‘Books suck, Missy, essentially, is what I was saying. Okay? Happy?’

This from Emmy, who opted in her newfound self-destructive manner to deflect attention from Romy – possibly the only kind thing she will ever do for anyone in this story. She went on. ‘Because for me they don’t do what they’re supposed to do when they need to do them most.’

Missy, shocked, spluttered something about how books, in fact, ‘have no needs, Emmy’.

‘All I know is,’ Emmy continued, ‘and this is what I was telling the poor embarrassed Romy, all I know is, I lie in my bed at night, by myself, trying to read some cosy little book, but I can’t read them any more, because they’re too small, and they don’t matter, and I have to put them down and just get on with it.’

Missy, trying to affect a sympathetic tone, began to assure Emmy that we all knew about her ‘circumstances’, an ir resistibly vague term that prompted Priya to lean over and ask Romy, whisperingly, what those ‘circumstances’ might be.

‘Priya here doesn’t,’ corrected Emmy. ‘But you were saying?’

‘Emmy, if you’re not available for the necessary suspension of disbelief through these tragic circumstances of –’

‘Missy, I’m not saying my circumstances are tragic. God forbid thinking they’re tragic. I know they’re common, they’re so common that, who knows, they might even happen to you one day.’

To Emmy, Missy presented the image of manless perfection.

‘Can we get down to the next book?’

‘Sure, shit, whatever, shit, sure.’

But it was not as easy as all that. Missy had let loose the Id, and it wasn’t going to be so easy to allow it to slip back into the dark crevice from whence it had come.

Priya spoke up now – lovely, sunny Priya – suggesting helpfully that Missy ‘say what the book is going to be so we can get it over with’. To Missy’s explosion of protest, Priya countered that, ‘Aline and Jennifer and Danielle will vote for whatever you want them to, Missy … ’

Missy, mining a deep-core reserve of calm, asked, ‘What is this, a mutiny?’

‘I’m just telling it like it is,’ said Priya.

‘But it’s not even true,’ countered Missy. ‘Aline and Jennifer and Danielle can vote however they wish, and besides, it’s not my fault that our resident maverick, Runner Coghill, is missing today.’

Romy said, ‘Runner Coghill is always missing on decision days. It’s because she can’t stand the Final Indulgence. She thinks it’s stupid.’

Missy fixed Romy with a very frank look. ‘Well, I don’t have any sympathy for her then.’

‘Missy, she just lost her sister.’

‘What does that have to do with anything? Anyway, that was six months ago!’

‘It’s harder when it’s your twin.’

‘Oh, is it now?’

‘Yes!’

‘That’s just a crutch.’

Missy did say those words: ‘That’s just a crutch.’ It is recorded in the Book of Days.12 But she only said them because she didn’t want to lose control of the argument, and that depended entirely on her belittling Runner’s intentions. Romy was shocked and silenced by the monstrous assertion, and Missy’s work was done.13

And so there followed a moment or two when it seemed like the dark cloud of the Lacuna Id had passed. Until Romy, moving on, suggested they take up The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy, a book about elephants.

12 When an actress in Emmy’s play about the Lacuna Cabal (which, last time we checked, bore the overblown title, The Girls Who Saw Everything) was asked to speak a line just like that one presented above, she protested that no one would ever be so cruel as to say such a thing: no one would ever claim that the expression of pure grief for the loss of a sister could be described as ‘just a crutch’. The actress reportedly demanded a line-change, which Emmy, to her credit, refused to grant, and the whole rehearsal ground to a halt, never to be recovered. The actors weren’t getting paid anyway and, since they were running on their own steam, felt they had the moral right to say lines or not say lines as they pleased. Only a well-paid actor, they all agreed, could be expected to spout lines that were not properly aligned with her own heart and conscience. The bigger the paycheque, the greater the possibility for emotional investment in garbage. Emmy reportedly had to spend two weeks after that filing down a shiny new set of horns that had popped out of her forehead.

13 Also, for the record, a vote by Runner with Romy, Priya and Emmy against Missy, Aline, Jennifer and Danielle would bring about a tie. Since the deciding vote in a tie goes to the executive and Missy was the execu tive, the power came in the end right back around to her. This she knew, perfectly well.

This was unfortunate. Not only was Missy against reading a book about elephants or any other animals, but she was also, for the moment at least, against Romy. So in her argument against ‘the elephant book’, she matter-of-factly revealed some private information about how Romy had become distraught over the deaths of some rabbits in Watership Down, a book she’d read outside the auspices of the club. The deaths in this elephant book, she pointed out, were much worse than the rabbit deaths: they were harrowing, terrible, horrible deaths, and the entire, like, herd was always aware of it. ‘It’s a really depressing book.’

‘Wow, dead elephants,’ said Romy, mortified by Missy’s public revelations. Her eyes brimmed with tears and she wished that something would occur that might annihilate the memory of her suggestion.

And then something did. Miraculously, from the other end of the floor there came a most welcome interruption: a voice, high, piercing and clear: ‘Either I’m delirious or the essence of my vulva is filling the warehouse!’

(!)

(Well, that’s what she said!)

Runner would not have minded what we have written here. In fact she would have approved of our informing the reader that she had a great interest in gynaecological terminology, specifically those words relating to the menstrual cycle. She was obsessed with the idea of the streamlined cycle among women who worked together in groups for any length of time. Her enthusiasm over such matters was embarrassing but also understandable, since her frailty was such that there was probably nothing much going on down there. She had told Romy once that she hadn’t had any real activity since well before Ruby had died,14 and even then there had never been much. More of a trickle than a torrent. For her, PMS meant paltry month’s supply.

In other words, the scent of Runner’s vulva was most assuredly not filling the warehouse, though the scent of her language surely was. Before we had a chance to turn around, she had already moved on to the dreaded question.

‘How many have gotten their periods today?’

But then we saw. With Runner there was a man. A grown man. Neil was there too, but Neil was always there, by his sister’s side. No one, not even Missy, would have invoked the no-boys rule against Neil. But this was different. There was a grown man, and he was holding Runner in his arms, as if he were a combat soldier. Either Runner was engaged in some kind of elaborate practical joke that would take the rest of the evening to unfold, or she was seriously hurt. The man had a kind of half-embarrassed, half-apologetic look on his face, which would have been a very satisfying expression to observe if we weren’t all so totally freaked.

Beside the man there stood a chubby little rosy-cheeked girl who didn’t look too interesting or too bright.15 Except that she was carrying several slabs of stone, which looked to be interesting and so, arguably, endowed her with a veneer of the interesting. Although, on the other hand, they didn’t appear to belong to her. She was carrying them cavalierly, like she wanted to drop them and have a cigarette.

14 A lie. (Neil’s note.)

Still, during the conflict that followed, this girl, with the self-consciousness of someone who was not accustomed to negotiating fragility, managed to lower the stack to the floor and allow the stones to slide away into a harmless little heap. We’d have expected her to let them drop and break into pieces. She looked the type. But there was some deep current of delicacy in this girl that we could not see on the surface.

‘Ladies and ladies,’ said Runner, now that the arms of the man had given her our undivided attention. ‘I’ve come to propose a book.’

‘You’re late,’ said Missy.

‘That’s a great leadership skill, Missy: you can tell the time.’

‘That’s how I know you’re late.’

‘But it doesn’t matter because I’m hijacking the agenda. Neil, show them your rifle.’

Neil’s eyes widened as he looked at Runner, and a very familiar she’s-crazy expression flashed across his face. He didn’t have a rifle. Still, Runner continued as if Neil had flourished a semi-automatic and sent a hail of bullets over our heads.16

15 Sorry, Anna.

‘Now, there’s no need to panic; if we keep our heads when all around us –’

‘But you must know, Runner, darling,’ interrupted Missy sweetly, ‘that boys are not permitted to attend these meetings.’

‘He can if he’s got a rifle.’ (Runner’s baby poker face.)

‘Runner, darling?’ (Emmy, incredulous, her eyes stuck up inside her head.)

‘I’m not talking about that boy.’ (Missy, indicating the obvious and Neil.) ‘I’m talking about that boy.’ (Missy, indicating the boy in whose military arms Runner reclined.)

‘This boy?’ asked Runner, as if she were noticing him for the first time.

‘Yes, that boy.’

Runner looked at the boy again. And then, as if she had only just recalled it, as if it were all slowly coming back to her, she explained that, had it not been (or, rather, had it NOT BEEN) for the assistance of this boy (i.e. THIS BOY), she would still be lying in a pile of refuse on the first floor, having fallen through the ceiling, indicating the possibility that she had perhaps finally become too heavy for this world.

16 The following was written in the Book of Days immediately under today’s date: ‘Salam Pax has not posted today regarding the situation in Baghdad. Why not? We can’t help but fear the worst for this courageous bear of a man.’ The authors of this account did not recognise the handwriting, but it has turned out to be from Aline, who managed to keep his obsession with the Iraq war and specifically the Baghdad Blogger a secret from everyone else in the Cabal.

At the mention of Runner’s surfeit of heaviness, Missy placed the tips of her thumb and forefinger on either side of the bridge of her nose, pressing hard in a believable display of martyrdom. Runner continued.

‘He carried me here, and I have yet to hold up my end of the bargain, since I promised to blow him if he got me up all those stairs.’

Now we all had our faces in our hands. Even Priya. The boy, we think, would also have had his face in his hands, but for the matter that he had his hands full of Runner, so he had to content himself with casting a suffering look towards the chubby-cheeked girl who stood beside him.

The girl beside him, it should be noted, did not have her face in her hands either. She was looking almost amused behind her fulsome mug.

‘Still,’ Runner continued fearlessly, ‘the boys aren’t nearly as effective a hijacking tool as the Girl. Ladies and ladies, I present to you: the Girl.’ And then, sotto voce, to the girl, ‘I didn’t get your name.’

The chubby17 girl flashed a flicker of a smile, which passed as swiftly as a sparrow round a street corner, and replied too quietly for us to hear.

Runner continued. ‘Anna. First order of business, and necessary for the historic tie-break between the two distinct factions of the Lacuna Cabal, is: Anna here must be received as a new member.’

17 Sorry … sorry …

After a pause, Missy inquired whether Runner had gone out of her mind. Runner ruminated on the question for a moment or two before Missy just said, ‘No.’ Runner asked if we could vote on it. ‘No,’ said Missy.

‘Well, as it turns out, Missy,’ said Runner, ‘Anna owns the building we’re standing in. So if this were the Notre Dame Cathedral – and Missy, I’m not suggesting that if this were the Notre Dame Cathedral you’d be the Hunchback of Notre Dame Cathedral – but if this were Notre Dame Cathedral, Anna here would be the bishop, not to mention a devoted supporter of my book proposal.’