Something Ive Been Meaning to Tell You

them. Everything was thought of, everything was done.
    The walls, the high, sloping ceiling of the living room were of warm wood; the carpet and the curtains were heavy, creamy, soft. Eileen drank vodka. The curtains were not drawn shut, and she saw them all in their splendid, confusing costumes (herself too, betraying her own sterner judgments, in a dark blue caftan embroidered with silver threads), moving, drinking, talking, against the late afternoon, the early evening. Against the rainy dark she saw them all so bright and sheltered. She saw the carpet of lights which was the city, the strip of blackness which was the water.
    “Do you know where you are?” the husband said to her. “You’re up on the side of Hollyburn mountain. That’s Point Grey over there.” He made her move closer to the window so that he could point out in the opposite direction the Lions Gate Bridge, a distant tiara of moving lights.
    “Stupendous view,” he said.
    Eileen agreed.
    He was a neighbor, he told her, he had built a housea little further up the mountain. Like many rich people he seemed to be full of a sincere and puzzled, almost heavy-hearted, hope that he had got what he should.
    “We used to have a house in North Van,” he said. “And I wasn’t sure for a long time we were right to give it up. I wasn’t sure I would like this view as much. We used to look out and see the slope of this mountain, right where we are now, and the bridge and the city, and on a clear day we could see Vancouver Island. Looking westerly you get the sunsets. Magnificent. But now I’m just as much in love with this, too, I wouldn’t ever want to go back.”
    “Do you always like views?” said Eileen.
    “Always like views?” he repeated, and showed by his bent head, his tolerant eyebrows, that he was waiting to be charmed.
    “Well suppose you’re in a low mood, you know, you might be feeling in a very low mood and you get up and here spread out before you is this magnificent view. All the time, you can’t get away from it. Don’t you ever feel not up to it?”
    “Not up to it?”
    “Guilty,” said Eileen, persistently though regretfully. “That you’re not in a better mood? That you’re not more—worthy, of this beautiful view?” She took a large drink, wishing of course that she had never started any of this.
    “But as soon as I see the beautiful view,” said the man triumphantly, “then I couldn’t be in a low mood any more. That view does more for me than a couple of drinks. More than the stuff they’ve got downstairs. Besides, I don’t believe in being in a low mood. Life’s too short.”
    Saying this reminded him that they were not at a party, after all.
    “Life’s too short. There’s no rhyme or reason to the things that happen. Is there? Your sister’s magnificent. Ewart too.”
    Eileen went down the hall to the guest room, carryinga fresh strong drink. She passed the door of the room where the small children were playing. The children of friends, playing with June’s small adopted daughters. They were playing Fish. She stood and watched them. She felt intimidated somehow by the Indian children, she felt on trial before them. Of course that was when June was there; she could feel June listening, watching—quivering, it seemed, with her keenness to detect failures of attitude. Who would believe now that June, as well as Eileen, had gone around the house talking a singsong pidgin English based on the speech of the Chinese couple at the Becker Street Groceteria? Eileen watched the smooth brown faces of the Indian children. What were they—June’s badges, her trophies? She could not see them, only June.
    She closed the door of the guest room, she lay in the dark. Crossing her ankles, pushing the pillow up behind her head, still holding the glass but letting it rest on her stomach. She had come to the point she always came to in June’s house. Douglas made no difference, death made no difference. She was becoming paralyzed, she could not hold her own. From this house her life, her choices (if indeed there were any), she herself, did not make a favorable or even coherent impression. It had to be admitted that she lived haphazardly, she had wasted too much time, she did few things well. Never mind how all this looked when she was away from here, how she made it into funny stories for friends. Moreover, she had not been able to help.
    On the plane she had thought that she would make tea biscuits. As if that