The Company We Keep

by Frances Itani

  “Toe-mas. The scarlet ibis, have you been fortunate enough to see one? Brilliant red, magnificent. Along north regions of Venezuela. Beauty like that should be protected. The beak is a wonderful curve, a marvel. There are other ibises, close to extinct now. Bald ibises. Some few are found where once I lived.”

  When asked if he had lived in Venezuela, Allam gave a quick shake of the head and made a sound like mmph, which could have meant yes or no. Tom would like to see the scarlet ibis. Somewhere, anywhere. He and Ida had never travelled to South America. Nor had they been to Trinidad and Tobago, where, according to Allam, the scarlet ibis was the national bird.

  Allam wandered through the shop, lifted objects, turned them every which way, inquired about provenance. He was curious, appreciated the worn splendour of old things. He inspected three railroad watches in a display case. He spoke knowledgeably about the jewellery business but did not elaborate.

  What was clear was that Allam, like Tom, wanted to believe that the truly beautiful objects were those that had been cared for lovingly—a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred years in the past.

  Early on, when he’d started up his business, Tom had convinced himself that he could tell which objects had been possessed by caring owners. There was an intimacy to acquiring something others had owned and loved. A sense of personal history passed on. Each owner had been a custodian, a temporary guardian. Each object had been entrusted to someone’s care. The nineteenth-century dough box, for instance, purchased during the summer. How he wished Ida were alive to see it. Table height. Solid pine. Thick legs squared by an artisan who had taken pride in his work. The lid—almost the length of a door—was thick and heavy, with smoothed, rounded corners. With lid removed, the box—more like a table, really—was deep, and Tom was certain it had been in the daily service of someone who’d baked bread for a family with a dozen children, and extra farm workers, too. No nails pounded in, thick boards held together by rounded wooden pegs. How many hundreds or even thousands of loaves had risen inside the dough box over time? He was reluctant to sell the piece and considered bringing it home. For now, he had a discreet sign on top: Not for Sale. By keeping it in the shop, he could share its beauty with others. If he did decide to sell, he knew it could be used in several ways: for objects stored, objects secreted away. And certainly as a dough box, if anyone baked that quantity of loaves anymore. He watched Allam run a hand over the surface. He watched him admire the grain of wood, the polish, the overall perfection.

  “Rig’ma’role,” said Allam as he returned to the chair by the desk. He spoke with precision, articulated as if each consonant was a word of its own. “I am liking the name you choose for your shop, Toe-mas. I once had a dream of creating a sign in a shop window that would read ‘Master of Complications.’ Lives have complications, you know that. The people want to discuss, sort problems, stay alert. Always, it is necessary to stay alert.” Again, he did not elaborate.

  Tom, sensing tragedy, did not ask. He knew little of Allam’s background, but wondered if he might be interested in coming to Cassie’s to meet the others. It wouldn’t hurt to offer information.

  “Earlier this week, Allam, I attended a discussion group. A meeting—small group. Five people turned up. Four women and me.”

  “For what was this meeting?” Allam looked wary but curious.

  “Have you been to Marvin’s Groceries?”

  “Sometimes. At back of store, someone makes bread. Almost like a real baker, but not.”

  “There’s a bulletin board for notices. Near the exit.”

  “Notice of what? I have never paid attention to this board.”

  “Not everyone uses his phone to plan activities,” said Tom.

  “I have a phone. I use it for phone calls only. What is on this board?”

  “All sorts of things. Take a look next time you’re there. Events going on in the community. Advertisements. Offers to help, a variety of items. Occasionally I check to see if an auction or estate sale is coming up.”

  “I will look next time I go to the shopping.”

  “The five—we all shop at Marvin’s—well, we all saw the same notice on this board and came together to talk about grief. We met at a café called Cassandra’s. The meeting was not sad. We weren’t there to be morose.”

  “‘Morose’ is a good word, Toe-mas. Much of the world is morose. What do five people together say about not being morose?”

  “I suppose each of us told a bit of our own story. A small piece of the life pie. None of us knew each other beforehand. There were good feelings in this group.”

  “Did someone read aloud? A fable? An invention of the mind? A story, a poem?”

  “No. Though I suppose some stories might have been inventions of the mind.” Tom again thought of, but did not mention, the poems in the drawer beneath his hand. “We spoke about people we’ve lost in the past. Recent past. We spoke of different things, not only loss.” He smiled while considering fables, inventions, what was real, what was not.

  Allam was silent, also looking inward. He glanced toward the door, always checking.

  “People are bringing their pain to this group? They speak aloud their pain?”

  “Not exactly. Everyone was friendly, informal. And kind. We’ll be meeting every Tuesday, seven o’clock. If you’d like to come, I’ll bring you along. The meeting is open to everyone.”

  “I cannot next week. But for weeks after that, I will think abou-t,” said Allam. And left the t sinking through the air as he departed.

  Memory Vault

  CHIYO

  Chiyo, too, was thinking. She had decided that she would return. She might be the youngest in the group, but Addie was around the same age. And she liked the idea of there being no hard-and-fast agenda. Everyone seemed reasonable about expressing what came to mind, nothing rehearsed. In some instances, details erupted sharply. In others, a shade was drawn, whatever veil there was to hide behind. Topics changed quickly. And yet, grief underlay everything.

  We have the ability, she told herself. The ability to experience sadness. Maybe not exclusive to our species, but it does help to make us human. And there’s something hopeful about people getting together to share. Who can possibly know how profound the experience of grief can be except those who have grieved? I suppose that includes almost everyone. From the smallest child who loses a pet, or whose best friend moves away.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table, checking through release forms for her private clients, tabulating her hours for the city, preparing paperwork from a printed list of names for a tai chi class that would begin in December, after the present one finished. The maximum number she accepted for tai chi at any time was sixteen, and the city required that the planning be done well ahead so space could be booked in advance.

  Her mother had once looked over Chiyo’s shoulder when her papers were laid out over the table, drawing her finger down the enrolment list and commenting on various names—everyone unknown to her.

  “You could be sued,” she’d warned. “People will sue over anything.”

  “You’ve been watching too much television,” Chiyo told her. “But don’t worry. My students are aware of the risks. Private clients have to sign a waiver. Any classes sponsored by the city are covered by insurance.” Not to mention, she was thinking, the extent of her own preparation: the certification required, the hours she put in to stay current every year, the updating of skills—first aid, CPR/AED. Did her mother think she wasn’t qualified?

  She had wondered, at the time, why her mother spoke in the manner of someone giving orders. Orders, demands, complaints, needling behaviour. That was the way she talked to her daughter—but never to her own friends. Chiyo tried to remember if this was true. She had been so accustomed to hearing her mother address her a certain way, she was surprised at the momentary insight. Would her mother have been aware of the differences in the way she spoke? Would she have understood that an alternative existed? Probably not. Insight had not b
een her mother’s strong suit. She didn’t sit around contemplating the possibility of change.

  She counted on me to comply, Chiyo told herself. She dumped her mother–daughter expectations on me when I was young—really young. I learned to be compliant before I knew what the word meant. Maybe my own insight has been compromised. What I don’t want to be is compliant.

  She stood up from the table, and as she rose, she recognized a man’s name at the bottom of a sign-up sheet she’d posted in the city gym to advertise the upcoming class. She would add these extra names to her master list, which meant the class was now full. The name she recognized had been scrawled in red ink, hurriedly, an afterthought: E.L. Hopps. How could she forget? Hopps—who insisted on being called just that—was a man in his late thirties who had once engaged Chiyo as his personal trainer. His first name was Eldon, he had told her, but he didn’t like the name, so he answered to Hopps. He insisted on exercising to music—had to be Miley Cyrus—but couldn’t follow a beat. Chiyo worked with him for months and finally gave up. She couldn’t prevent herself from assigning silent descriptions to her client: manic, frenzied, frenetic.

  But Hopps’s name suited him. He had ruddy red cheeks and orange hair that stuck straight up. A huge forelock fell over one eye whenever he hopped up and down. It was unfortunate that he was oblivious to instruction as well as to rhythm. Chiyo had always expected him to topple over, but that hadn’t happened. Now, several years later, his name was on the sign-up sheet for tai chi. How would someone that frantic be able to engage in a meditative exercise? She would have to see.

  Don’t count on anything, Chiyo warned herself. Maintain zero expectations.

  Already a challenge and the class had not begun. And now, having considered Hopps, she thought of how everyone these days seemed to need slowing down. In her various classes, she found herself using adverbs like mindfully, carefully, deliberately, gently—all the while speaking in her low and steady reassuring voice. Each instruction was geared toward staying safe, respecting the body’s limits while exploring its possibilities. She wondered if she should be exploring a new vocabulary, too.

  There was also Maria, who frequently signed up for classes. Participants often returned, keeping fit by repeating or mixing classes of their choice. Maria, strong and lean, danced to every move no matter what the class, no matter what the exercise, music or no music. She was incapable of being still. If she was lifting weights, she danced. While stretching, she danced. Her feet tapped a double beat to everyone else’s single. If other participants were stationary, Maria was wiggling around. But Maria also had grace. She listened to people; she cared. And why would Chiyo attempt to suppress anyone’s natural dancing talents? No reason at all. So Maria danced through every session.

  Chiyo stacked her papers and set them aside; Spence was on his way to pick her up. They planned to go to the repertory theatre to see Wim Wenders’s documentary Pina. Thankfully, Spence loved film as much as Chiyo did, and both were glad that after half a dozen years, Pina was finally coming to Wilna Creek. Chiyo had long ago purchased the DVD, but she wanted to see it on the big screen. She had huge admiration for the late choreographer’s company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, the innovative use of space, the grit and beauty of movement. Pina Bausch understood emotions, but it was her use of the playful and absurd that most attracted Chiyo. Male dancers often wore dark striped suits too large for them and baggy pants, a sort of zoot-suit look of the forties that included snap-brim fedoras. The women wore bunched-up dresses, ill-fitting loose lingerie, heels or pumps with straps. Sometimes, men and women exhibited bizarre tics or swept their arms over their heads repeatedly. The work was visceral, spectacular; the absurd insistently reared its head. For Chiyo, the end result was a glorious display of creativity.

  Another element of the dance was the way men and women sometimes relinquished their sense of balance. They tipped over, fell sideways or forwards or back, deliberately, occasionally violently. Usually, but not always, someone was there to catch them: someone who ran ahead, or behind, or alongside. But the fallers continued to fall. Repetition was paramount, and for Chiyo, this was a message about life itself: persistent patterns. Occasionally, the fallen stayed down. There was something semi-comic and vulnerable about the dancers after they fell, about their inability to get back up. At the same time, expressions of the tumbled body postures evoked deep sadness.

  Later, after the film, Spence would come back to the house with Chiyo and stay the weekend. Chiyo smiled to herself. She would be glad of his company. She looked around the kitchen as if her mother might be standing in a doorway, peering inside her thoughts.

  Only months ago, she could not have imagined bringing Spence home to sleep in her bed. Now each left clothes in the other’s closet, supplies in the bathroom. None of this had gone on while her mother was alive.

  DURING THE FINAL DAYS of the illness, Chiyo made up her mind that her mother was not going to be alone when she died. She could see that her mother was terrified. As part of the care plan, a doctor visited daily. Two caregivers alternated shifts, also daily. Chiyo was the “extra,” and took few breaks. She cancelled some of her classes. She learned that a whole new category of help existed for her mother, whose needs now fell into a zone called end-of-life care. The caregivers’ shifts sometimes overlapped, and this arrangement removed a bit of weight from Chiyo’s shoulders and allowed a few hours of sleep here and there. The people who came and went were not nurses—not exactly—but they’d been trained by nurses to give specific types of care. Chiyo’s mother wanted to remain in her own home and so she did, as had been arranged. During the forty-eight hours preceding her death, she drifted in and out of lucidity. She was weak, piteously so, but strong enough—her will was responsible for this—to raise her head an inch or more off the pillow. Always to ensure that Chiyo was present and could be seen.

  What Chiyo was seeing was her mother’s repeated feeble attempt to plead with two hoarse and desperate words: Help me! The words falling silently from her lips. Or rasping from her throat. The desperation was frightening to witness.

  The doctor told Chiyo to prepare for the possibility that she might not be at her mother’s side at the precise moment of her death. “The act of dying is private,” he said. “I’ve seen dozens of cases where family members take turns sitting at a patient’s bedside for weeks. The moment the person ‘on duty’ steps out into the hall . . . well, that’s the moment the loved one departs. It happens again and again. Don’t be disturbed if this is the case with your mom.”

  Chiyo vowed that she would be there, though she could hear what the doctor was saying. Were escorts waiting on the “other side,” watching for that split second of privacy? Who? Whom? How could the timing be as intentional as he had implied? Was there a wall holding back an invisible world? No wall at all? A world that shifted and couldn’t be seen?

  Her mother died at eight forty in the morning. Chiyo had stepped into the kitchen to rinse a glass and refill it with fresh water. The doctor had left moments before, promising to return in the late afternoon. Both caregivers were present: one about to depart after the night shift, the other receiving the night report as her day shift began. The report took place while the two sat at the kitchen table discussing the notes in the chart.

  Chiyo’s mother had never come to terms with the fact that her life was ending. She died in her room with several people in plain sight. No one was with her at the moment of death.

  The doctor was recalled before he had a chance to start up his car. He filled in the essential paperwork, notified the funeral home and told Chiyo a hearse would arrive within the hour. Chiyo sat with her mother’s body, but after several minutes, the caregivers respectfully sent her from the room so that the body could be cleaned, prepared, dressed in clothes Chiyo had chosen from the closet and bureau.

  When Chiyo went back to the room—these were the last moments she would ever have with her mother—the first thing she saw was a long strip of brown cotton banda
ge, two inches wide, looped under her mother’s chin and tied in a clumsy knot above her ear, on one side of her head.

  This was the image locked in the memory vault. The one Chiyo could not banish.

  Her mother’s face was peaceful. Her life was over, her body still warm. But the oversized knot of brown bandage at the side of her head was incongruous, discordant. Chiyo felt herself slipping sideways, the room unnaturally askew. Inhale, she told herself. Exhale. Call upon your training. Stay upright. You know how to focus. Go deep. Still the mind.

  Why had her mother’s jaw been tied? Would it have fallen open in death? Did her dentures not fit—for she did have dentures. Was there thought to be impropriety if a dead person had an open mouth? Chiyo didn’t know. Nor did she know if she’d have been more upset if her mother’s jaw was slack and drooping.

  All she knew was that this was her last vision of her mother. The vision had nothing to do with love, which was what Chiyo had been expecting to feel. There was no room for love because it had been squeezed out by sadness, haste, the grim image now etched in her mind. The hearse drove up to the bungalow, and two quiet-spoken, efficient young people—a man and a woman in their twenties—arrived with a stretcher and wheeled her mother away in a body bag.

  Sometimes this last vision swept in unexpectedly and lodged behind Chiyo’s eyes: the brown-coloured bandage holding up her mother’s chin, forcing her mouth closed for the first and last time. Not the mother she had known. The image refused to give way to something kinder.

  She should have untied the knot and pitched the bandage into the garbage. But she did not. The caregivers were competent and had been through this procedure many times. Chiyo had yielded to them because they were supposed to know what they were doing. She should have spoken out.