The Dangling Conversation
I met her in a restaurant in Juneau. She was alone at her table reading and for some reason it felt right to me. It was something Ivo would do.
I was never lonely when I was with Ivo but he had only to depart for five minutes and the loneliness would well up in me. Each passing minute became unbearable until I could no longer endure it. It was that way the night I first saw Isabel, my first night away from Ivo in Alaska. I smiled at her across the room and she smiled back. I took that as an invitation and stood up to walk over to her. She politely put her book away.
"I see I am not the only one reading alone tonight," I said by way of greeting. "Tim Cornish".
She smiled hesitantly at me, something cautious in her eyes, but then she held out her own hand. "Isabel Winwood. I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Cornish."
"Call me Tim," I laughed and sat down. She was British as well which made us instant friends in that lonely place. I asked her where from and she replied that she hadn't lived there in many years.
"I was born in England" – she didn't specify the region – "but moved when I was still quite young. I live, have lived, in Vancouver for nearly twenty years so I suppose I should be inclined to say that is where I am from."
Her answer pleased me. She said it outright like that – low, distinct, accentless so that I couldn't have placed her anywhere other than "Vancouver".
"And what are you doing in Alaska?" I asked, genuinely fascinated by her already.
"Oh, family matters," and that same guarded look crept into her eyes. "I am running errands for my brother. He is much too busy to look after his personal affairs so he calls upon me to do it for him." And she laughed but it seemed forced, as if something were bothering her.
"What does he do?" But the waiter had appeared to frown at me for changing tables without consulting him. "Sorry," I said to him, a half-laugh in my throat. I wasn't at all sorry. I was thrilled to have met Isabel Winwood. Juneau no longer seemed like a death sentence.
We ordered our wine and food and she told me of herself by way of observation of others. I learned that she was married, still married, sadly no children; that she taught in a pre-school and loved it; that she didn't like telephones and most especially telephones at the table (this with a pointed glare at the one brought to the table closest to us so that the occupant could discuss, rather loudly, his personal affairs for all to hear). The spoken word was too harsh, too inflexible. She liked the written word – letters and notes and books and newspaper articles. Writing was always subject to interpretation. I confessed to her that I was an aspiring novelist and she perked up and asked what I wrote. My ego had taken a beating between Martin's ruthless criticisms and Ivo's out-of-hand dismissal of my story about the little boy on the beach but I felt strangely comfortable with Isabel, safe in the belief that she would not castigate my lowly endeavors. She listened attentively, asking me about different aspects of the plot and the characters, wanting me to quote passages from it. My heart warmed and I found myself telling her other things about myself, things about my childhood and my love for music.
It was almost like talking to Ivo but then again it was nothing like that. Though she was scornful (and in a manner that reminded me so much of him) it was of things, never of people. She was as learned as he but her knowledge came from reading, not academic pursuits. Of two things we never spoke – science and sex, the first the foundation of Ivo's universe, the second that of my relationship with him. How odd that the two things that had come to dominate my life for more than a year-and-a-half never came up in my conversations with her, not once.
It was a most unusual interaction.