I shouldn’t be doing this.
We
shouldn’t be doing this.
“Helen and I will distract her and you get the card,” Fern said on the phone.
“This isn’t a good idea.”
“See you at the Golden Sunset at seven-thirty.”
I turn onto Bleeker Street. I should be in my housecoat right now. I should be in my glider, worrying about whether my stool will be loose tomorrow morning.
Fern is already in the parking lot. I pull up beside her. “I thought Helen was coming with you,” I say.
Fern points towards an approaching car. “I offered to pick her up, but she insisted on driving herself.”
“Am I late?” Helen yells out her open window as she pulls in beside me. She’s wearing that hat again. “I had an awful time getting away.” The three of us slowly walk towards the entrance.
Fern runs through the plan again. “We’ll take her out of the room. While we’re gone, you get the card and the book. Next time you visit, you bring the card back.”
“This is ridiculous,” I say. “She’ll know something is up. The two of you have never come to see her before.”
“She’ll appreciate the company,” Helen says.
“Have you
met
Mrs. Pender?”
It’s deathly quiet inside the Golden Sunset. Most of the residents are in their rooms, preparing for bed. The hallways are deserted. There’s one lone soul, an old woman, sitting in her wheelchair next to the nurse’s station. She looks up as we pass her.
“Wonderful evening,” Fern says with a nod.
She sticks her tongue out.
I’m almost expecting Mrs. Pender not to be in her room. I’m not sure why. But when we push open the door, she’s there in her chair, next to her bed, just like always. Her head is down, her chin pressed against her chest. She’s wearing a dull grey cardigan, but whoever put it on her didn’t take the time to smooth it down in the back. It sits bunched around her shoulders, a puddle of wool. The light from the fading sun slips through the blinds, casting shadowy bands across the room. Mrs. Ogilvy is sleeping, her mouth wide open like a rabbit hole. There’s a faint smell of urine in the air.
“My god, she got old,” Fern whispers.
“She’s ninety-seven.” I step towards her. “Mrs. Pender?”
No response. For a moment, I think she’s dead. But then I see the slow rise of her back. Sleeping. That’s all.
“We should come back,” I say.
“Mrs. Pender?” Helen calls. “Hello?”
I squeeze Helen’s elbow. “Are you
trying
to give her a heart attack?” I look over just in time to see Fern open Mrs. Pender’s drawer and take the card. She slips it into her purse with a quick wink in my direction, then tiptoes out of the room. Helen follows her. I’m left standing there, my eyes darting between Mrs. Pender’s bent grey head and the night table. How did I ever let myself get talked into this? I sneak out of the room before Mrs. Pender wakes up.
When he was nine, my son informed me he was leaving the junior choir.
“I’m not a baby anymore,” he said, his face stiff with solemnity. His hair was so thick. I couldn’t stop marvelling at it. Where had it come from? Not my side.
“I’m sorry if that upsets you, Mommy.”
“I’m not upset,” I said and pressed my hand down on his crown of brown curls. I was both impressed and saddened by my son’s decision. Not that I cared about the junior choir. He’d outgrown it and I never got on well with the director. I couldn’t understand why Mrs. Carr refused to give John more solos.
“I can’t play favourites, Mrs. Sparks,” she said once.
“I’m not asking you to,” I replied. “But you have to admit, he’s the best singer you’ve got. Why not encourage true talent?”
She was a horrible dwarf of a woman with two moles like a colon on the side of her cheek.
“She smells like booze sometimes,” John told me once in a scandalized whisper.
“And what does booze smell like?” I asked.
“Like disinfectant. I bet she’s an alcoholic.”
Where was he learning these words?
“Don’t you repeat that,” I said. “It stays between you and me.”
The truth was, I suspected the same about Mrs. Carr. I noticed that her eyes were often unfocused, as though there were two of everything in front of her and she couldn’t decide which version to look at. Apparently there was a failed stage career in her past. This explained why she tried to shoot down any genuine talent that crossed her path.
“I think John has a wonderful voice,” Mrs. Carr said. “But this is the St. Paul’s United Church Junior Choir, Mrs. Sparks. Not Broadway.”
When she said those words, something sharp went down my throat.
“That’s fine,” I said. “It’s just that John loves to sing.”
“He certainly does.”
I tried to encourage him. “Well, if you leave the choir, is there anything else you’d like to do? You should always keep busy, John.”
“I don’t know what else I can do.”
“You’re talented at so many things. You’re good at singing. And drawing. And you help me make the best cinnamon buns in the whole wide world.”
“Really?”
Although he enjoyed being in the kitchen, I was getting concerned. I’d noticed in the past few months that his belly had begun to protrude over his waistband and his thighs were getting rounder. I wasn’t too alarmed. I knew that most boys went through chubby phases. But the more times I caught him rooting through the cupboards, the deeper my doubts became. It seemed like something else was quietly building. An undercurrent of frustration. Or boredom. Perhaps both.
He needed to be more active. I’d make a point to remind Charlie about this. In any case, I wasn’t too concerned. And besides, whatever minor downfalls he had were eclipsed by his sparkling personality. My boy was special. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. I heard it from other people: teachers and friends and parents. John was intelligent and sensitive and well spoken and courteous. He had an endearing way with people.
“You’re putting him on a pedestal,” Charlie would say.
“I’m building his self-esteem. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“You watch, Joyce. He’ll fall from your perch sooner or later.”
“No doubt you’d get some kind of pleasure from that.”
I was convinced in those days that Charlie was having an affair. I’d spend afternoons going through his pockets, his change drawer, searching for anything that might validate my suspicions. I even examined his underwear for starchy stains. But I found nothing. The more empty-handed my searches left me, the more convinced I was that something was going on under my nose.
“Why are you so hell-bent on this?” Fern would ask me. “Usually when there’s no evidence, it means no crime.”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
It was true that Charlie had grown more distant than usual, spending most of his time in his workroom, repairing or building while the sawdust drifted up from the vents. He seemed to take more interest in his two-by-fours and tools than in me or—and this was what bothered me most—his son. But I wonder now who was avoiding whom.
The more distant I allowed my world to become from my husband’s, the closer it became to John’s. We were inseparable. He had a way of understanding me, of seeing me in a way that Charlie, or anyone else for that matter, didn’t.
“I hate when you’re unhappy,” he said once, resting his head on my shoulder as we watched a matinee. My mouth dropped open. He always knew. I’d said nothing to him to indicate my unhappiness. In fact, I was doing everything in my power to convince him otherwise.
“Why would you say that?” I asked.
“I can see it in your eyes.”
He was eleven years old. The images on the screen turned to blurs. How in the world did a child like this find his way to me? How had I managed to stumble upon this gift? I squeezed his hand tightly in the darkness.
“You
make me happy,” I told him.
“You make me happy, too,” he said, squeezing my hand back.
After that, he became the husband I had always wanted. For Valentine’s Day, he gave me a box of chocolates and a giant card made from red construction paper with a doily border. The morning of Mother’s Day, I awoke to find John at my bedside, smiling ear to ear. His hair was slicked back and he was wearing one of his ties. I smelled Charlie’s aftershave on him.
“Happy Mother’s Day,” he said and pulled a handful of wilted daisies and Queen Anne’s lace from behind his back. “I made breakfast for you, too.”
The kitchen was a complete disaster. On a plate in front of my chair sat a misshapen cinnamon bun smothered in icing.
“You made this?” I asked, afraid I wouldn’t be able to stomach all that sugar so early in the morning.
He nodded.
“What time did you get up this morning?”
“Same time as Dad. I told him to wake me up before he left for work.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t hear you.”
“I tried to be quiet. It’s Mother’s Day, after all.”
After I discreetly scraped most of the icing off and took a few bites of the bun, he placed a brightly coloured package on the table.
“I picked it out,” he said. “Daddy helped.”
Inside the box, resting on a thick bed of cotton batten, was a necklace.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, even though it wasn’t my style. It was cut glass and silver. Something a movie star might wear. Is this what my boy thought of me? I wondered as he fastened it around my neck. He called me Elizabeth Taylor and I laughed and laughed. I wore that necklace for the rest of the day. In spite of its garishness, I was surprised by how I felt: glamorous, special. I was out of my element amidst my kitchen cupboards and self-hemmed curtains. I almost believed in a version of myself that had long since faded away.
“Well, what do you think?” Charlie asked when he came home from work and saw the necklace. “He wanted to get you a tiara, but I held him back.”
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Made my day.”
Charlie presented me with a new flannel nightgown. He must’ve seen the disappointment on my face when I opened the box.
“That’s what you said you wanted.”
“You’re right,” I sighed. “It’s exactly what I asked for.”
I kept that necklace, even after my relationship with John fell apart and there was no reason to hang on to the painful mementoes of the people we used to be. I still have it. It’s in my jewellery drawer, buried under tangles of beads and earrings with no partners. I can’t even bear to look at it.
“Let’s recap everything one more time,” Fern says. We’ve assembled in her car, parked in the empty lot of the public library. I’m holding the card gingerly in my hands, trying to spread as few fingerprints on it as possible.
“Freddy died in 1959.”
“Correct,” Helen says. Her finger makes a check mark in the air.
“We have a Mother’s Day card with his name on it, dated 1977.”
“Correct,” Helen says. Another check mark.
“There’s only one logical explanation,” Fern decides.
“Correct.” Helen turns to Fern. “What’s that?”
“This is ridiculous,” I say and open the car door. “Good night.”
“Freddy didn’t die,” Fern says, her eyes wide as two full moons.
The car begins to chime. I close the door.
“He’s dead,” I say.
“Lots of people fake their own deaths,” Helen says. “I read about one just the other day.”
“I’m happy for you, Helen.”
“Why are you being so irritable?”
“This ends here,” I say, putting the card into my purse. “Not a word of this to anyone. Helen, that means you. I’m ashamed of myself for letting the two of you talk me into this. We went into an old lady’s room and stole a personal item.”
“There’s no reason to get wound up,” Helen says.
“I’m
not the one who’s wound up!” I open the door again and step out.
“You’re
the ones wound up.”
I almost cry with relief when I finally get home and into my bed, but sleep doesn’t come easily. I can’t stop seeing that card, the handwriting inside. It simply isn’t possible. There has to be another explanation. The dead don’t come back.
I wake to the sound of tapping on my window. It’s John. I must’ve locked the back door before going to bed. Why would I do something like that? He said he’d be late.
Tap … tappity-tap … tap …
My boy is trapped outside, freezing and burning. He’s been sick for some time. Skin and bones. Fingers like pencils. Hair wet with sweat. Never mind. He’s come home. I’ll take care of him. I’ll let him in.
“I’m here,” I say through the window, and the sound of my voice rips me from my dream.
Morning has turned the walls to steel. Short red dashes of the clock next to me assemble like soldiers. My tongue feels like clay.
Every morning when I wake up, I need to remind myself that my son is gone.
My brain feels heavy, as though a wet sponge has replaced it. I manage to get into a sitting position. My varicose vein throbs under my skin. I exerted myself yesterday with all that commotion. I need to take things easy today. I’ll do laundry and watch television. That’s all. And if Helen or Fern calls and wants to rehash last night, I’ll simply tell them, “I don’t want to discuss it.”
I go to the bedroom window and pull up my blinds. When I look across the street, I see that Mr. Sparrow’s blinds are down. I glance at my alarm clock. It’s 7:10 a.m. He’s usually up before me. I look back and feel a jab of concern. I decide to give him and his blinds a bit more time.
My stool is fine this morning and I thank god for small mercies. I go into the kitchen, turn on the radio and pour myself a bowl of cereal. The announcer says we’re in store for another scorcher today. With the humidity, it will feel like 40 degrees. I do the Celsius-to-Fahrenheit conversion in my head like I always do. That’s over 100. My head falls into my hand.
At seven-thirty I get up from the table to check on Mr. Sparrow’s blinds. They’re still down. I go back into the kitchen and find his number in my address book. I listen as the phone rings five times. Then six. I take the phone into the hallway.
Eight … nine …
I open my front door.
… ten.
I hang up and hope that no one else is up at this hour. I throw my jacket over my nightgown and put on a pair of sandals. My hairy legs are on display for everyone. Never mind. It doesn’t matter.