Foregone. Russell Banks
Fife says, I think that Alicia and I will want a block of time to consider all the ramifications. Because there’s a lot of ’em, he adds, smiling broadly, as if he’s already made up his mind to accept their offer and has become one of them. A lot of ramifications. I couldn’t commence working for Doctor Todd’s till June first, you realize. When the spring term’s finished in Charlottesville. Probably have to get me a shorter haircut, too, Fife says and laughs.
The Chapman brothers laugh, too. They’re relieved he said it and they didn’t have to. It would not do for Doctor Todd’s CEO-in-training to look like some kind of long-haired hippie protester. He probably ought to get rid of that moustache, too.
We’d have to find us a place to live here in Richmond.
You could always stay with us till you had your own place, Leonard.
We got that big three-bedroom apartment over the garage, Jackson adds.
All Alicia’s doctors are in Charlottesville, Fife says, and she’s due in early June.
We can recommend people here at VCU Medical Center. Best doctors in Virginia are right here, Leonard.
Okay, then. Give me a week to decide. Fife shakes Jackson’s hand with emphasis, as if they have a deal, and then shakes his father-in-law’s hand, and turning, exits quickly from the library, wearing a smile that’s almost a grin, and makes his way up the wide, carpeted stairs.
3
From the darkness, Malcolm says, You okay to take a break, Leo? We don’t have to change cards yet. We’re shooting 1080 by 1920. Sorry, man, this is for Sloan’s benefit. You know all that shit.
Fife says, Yeah, yeah, I’m okay to take a break.
He’s fighting off waves of nausea and thudding back pain. His body is a battlefield, as if his liver is at war with his kidneys and both have been mortally wounded. He’s woozy and suddenly confused about where he is exactly and who’s here with him. As long as he is talking into the mic and being filmed, he is able to forget his body, to wear it like loose clothing, and it doesn’t matter where he is located or who is there with him. But as soon as the camera shuts down and he goes silent, he becomes his body again, and he worries about where it is and who is near it.
I want to keep doing this, he says.
Diana says, You sure you’re not too tired?
From what? Of course I’m not too tired! It’s her voice that he snaps at. No matter what she says, it’s the shriek of an irritated blue jay.
He’s quickly sorry he was sharp with her. Nothing she can do about it, he tells himself. She’s had to overcome the unintended effect of that voice her entire life. Especially its effect on men, men who cultivate their baritone and bass and hold their time signature at 4/4, except when slowing it for emphasis to 3/4. Or dropping it all the way down to half notes for winning arguments. Men who are actors. Men like Fife.
Despite her voice, Fife likes and respects Diana. Malcolm would be nowhere without her. He’d be making local TV commercials in Winnipeg or promotional docs for Caribbean time-shares. Because of Malcolm’s sneaky little affair with Sloan, among other things, Fife feels sorry for her. He’s always felt sorry for Diana, from back when she was his student at Concordia and Malcolm was his teaching assistant and seduced her by convincing her that he was more talented than she, when Fife knew the opposite was true. Diana could have become a real filmmaker, but instead she fell in love with Malcolm and married him and became his producer and made him the filmmaker. Even then, Diana was honest, and Malcolm was not.
Same as Emma and Fife.
Why are women more honest than men? he wonders. It ought to be the other way around. Men have so much more power in the world, you’d think they could at least take a shot at being honest. What do they have to lose? Look at Sloan, who is probably convinced that she’s in love with the short, shifty, bald-headed, fifty-year-old married man, and she thinks he’s in love with her, or she wouldn’t sleep with him. Even Sloan is honest.
Of course, it’s possible that she’s just cynical and believes that Malcolm can advance her career a whole lot faster than some attractive, unmarried guy in his twenties. But Fife doesn’t think so. The girl is honest.
Alicia Chapman of Richmond, Virginia, she was honest, too. All the women Fife ever loved were honest. And from his first love to yesterday’s, he was not.
Fife says, I’m sorry, Diana. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just, this is hard. Keeping focused. Not letting my fucked-up dying body distract me. My body wants my complete attention. Just like you and Malcolm, my body resents it when I pay attention to my remembered, hidden past.
Speaking of which, Malcolm says, we have all these questions written out that me and Diana put together for you. Like for posterity, my man. The definitive Leonard Fife interview.
The final interview.
No, c’mon, dude, don’t say that. It’s just, I mean, this story you’re telling. It’s not exactly what we planned on. I mean, it’s interesting and all, and there’s a lot of surprising material back there. The first marriage to the southern woman, Alicia, and all that, wow, that’s news. But we want to connect it to your work, man. This is supposed to be about your films.
My second marriage. Not my first.
Oh. Okay, second, then. But we’ve got questions on process, for example. Like, the Gagetown Support Base story, In the Mist, your first film. Tell about them testing Agent Orange way the fuck out there in Gagetown back in the sixties, and how the film permanently pissed off both American and Canadian governments and Dow Chemical. Or was it Monsanto? I can’t remember. And how you almost went to prison for it. It would be really interesting to learn how you first got onto that story, like when it was still totally top secret in Washington and Ottawa. You were just a kid then. What or who tipped you off to it? You never said. The Gagetown Agent Orange defoliant story is our shared history, Leo. One of Canada’s guilty secrets. The fucking Americans, testing Agent Orange on Canadian soil before using it in Vietnam, that was important for us to know about, man. We were supposedly neutral on Vietnam, as you knew better than almost anyone. People need to hear you talk about that today. Now.
Yeah, well, Fife says, Gagetown’s not top secret anymore, is it? It’s public knowledge. Half a dozen films have come out since the story broke, and as many books and parliamentary hearings and investigations have dug into it, and there’s even a batch of niggardly payouts made by the government to some of the cancer victims’ families. Forget top secret, Fife says. It’s not even a guilty secret now.
He thinks it’s funny—no, not funny, ironic—how, when a guilty secret is finally revealed, the guilt quickly dissipates and gets replaced by a cleaner, more acceptable emotion. Anger, usually followed by denial. Once their secret was out, the US and Canadian agencies that were responsible for decades of spraying Agents Orange, Purple, and White on their own soldiers at Gagetown Support Base didn’t feel guilty anymore. They felt angry. And their anger let them refuse to apologize. It let them deny they did it with intention or anticipation of the consequences. The devil made them do it. Acknowledgement without apology.
Fife wonders if that’s the reason he’s returning, not to his Canadian past, where Malcolm and Diana want him to go, but to his distant American past, where no one wants him to go, where his own guilty secrets were embalmed and mummified and, until now, for all intents and purposes permanently entombed. He wonders if by means of disinterring his past, he’s trying to swap out guilt for anger and denial. As if to say, Yes, it’s true, I did all those bad things, I’m guilty as charged. But, people, it wasn’t my fault, I had a terrible childhood, I was the victim of circumstances. The devil made me do it. Everything is contingent. And now, since I’ve confessed and can be angry at my parents and at circumstances and at the devil, at my fate, now everyone has to forgive me. Acknowledgement without apology.
There’s lots he could tell the camera about making In the Mist that would satisfy Malcolm and Diana and impress Vincent, their impressionable