The Company We Keep

by Frances Itani

  In the evening, when she had finally arrived home, she parked the car and made her way upstairs and collapsed in her chair and put her feet up. She had no appetite. She skipped dinner. Her muscles ached, her limbs ached, her eyes were so heavy her vision had blurred. Caregiving was relentless. Over the past weeks and months, she had tried to be positive, tried to support Sybil, tried to keep up the spirits of Sybil’s family. But her own spirits were down. The support part, the raw fact of being on call, of giving and giving, was more exhausting than any of the physical care, or driving back and forth between cities. The only outside activity she kept up now was getting herself to the Tuesday evenings at Cassie’s to meet with the company—her new friends. She would not give those up. Even so, a feeling of hopelessness prevailed. Hopelessness weighed so heavily, she sometimes felt she couldn’t rise from her bed in the morning.

  She’d been in desperate need of music that evening and had lifted herself out of her chair long enough to put on a CD of Chopin’s nocturnes. She dropped back down, sank into a soothing lull and allowed the amazingly delicate fingers of Fou Ts’ong to calm her for a full hour until she was finally able to go to her bedroom and sleep.

  “. . . GUILT,” someone said now. Addie caught only the last word.

  A cognitive emotion, said her reflexive self. Socially, culturally constructed.

  She had no idea what they’d been talking about. The company was indulging her; she knew that. No one was asking her to pay attention. They all thought she was grieving the loss of Sybil. And she was, she was. It was just that Sybil was very much in the present, not in the past.

  She saw a cup of tea in front of her on the table but had no recollection of it being placed there. Maybe she had dropped into sleep for a few moments. That was frightening. Not being aware of the last few moments—whole minutes? But here was Chiyo beside her, reassuringly ready for whatever might take place. Addie reached for the tea.

  “Other emotions get mixed in. Maybe you feel obliged to do something you’re asked, and you go ahead and do it, but you’re seething with anger at the same time.” That was Chiyo.

  “A wasted emotion if someone else dumps it on you—guilt.”

  That’s what she’d heard: guilt. Who said that? Addie had black spots before her eyes.

  “Guilt,” she echoed. But this was the only word she spoke. The others were looking at her with kindness. Where had they been taking this? Wake up, she told herself. Wake up and allow guilt to fill the space.

  THE SWEDE, Hazzley was thinking. And quickly brushed Meiner away. She had no regrets. At the time, she had wanted nothing more than to break free and live a normal life. Was normal achievable, or was it a myth, a state no one experienced? She had come to believe that there were many different and undefined ways of being normal. Whatever it was, she sometimes felt herself outside the conversation.

  For instance, while Lew was alive those last couple of years, she was prevented from living the way others did. The way she thought they did. Lew’s drinking had prevented that. Don’t blame everything on Lew, she reminded herself, but don’t start feeling guilty, either. Schuld, she said to herself. German for “guilt.” But Schuld also means “debt.” Surely, surely I am not carrying a debt load at this stage of my life.

  IDA DIED AND I’M ALIVE, Tom thought. Why did life turn out that way? Why should I be the one to live? What better reason for guilt? He thought of her receiving oxygen, telling him she was thankful for the life she’d lived. He lowered his head, stared at his hands clasped together on the table.

  CHIYO ONCE AGAIN SAW the brown death knot at the side of her mother’s head. “Help me,” her mother cried out. Her mouth shaped the silent words: Help me. But Chiyo could not help. She had been unable to keep her mother from dying. She had not been capable of staunching her mother’s fear. And now she was trying not to feel guilty about moving on, about taking up the reins of her own life. She and her mother had both been born into the concept of on, the concept of giri. The limitless obligations that bound. Why did she think now of Amour, the one film that had caused her to become undone? The lowest point in the film was the scene that would not be forgotten: the old man, the old woman, the pillow over the face because love had been pushed beyond its breaking point. The director had been wise enough to call the film Amour. No, Chiyo told herself. I have many strengths. And I am already carving out a new path.

  WE HAVE SUCH IMPERFECT LIVES, Gwen was thinking. I hated the bell. He made me hate everything about him at the end. What kind of horrible human am I to feel that way, to hide on the toilet seat and read while he was upstairs clanging the bell, giving orders that had to be followed? Well, folks, if you want to hear the ultimate guilty thought, there were times when I wanted him dead. But surely he’d have possessed his own version of dignity. A dignity that was lost to him because of the damage done by the stroke. I couldn’t see that at the time because all the other feelings got in the way.

  ALLAM HAD ONE THOUGHT ONLY: I could have stopped her from going to help the neighbour that day. Conditions in Aleppo were too dangerous. If I had stopped her, she would be alive. Who could say which of the buildings would be bombed? We should have left long before that; we should have left our country when our daughter did. Our now-broken country that once we loved.

  ADDIE KNEW THAT CHIYO was hovering, keeping watch. Chiyo could be trusted. She felt Chiyo’s hand rubbing her shoulder soothingly. But Addie had gathered herself. I’m fine, said her inner voice. I need sleep, that’s all. Lots and lots of sleep.

  Cassie walked in with a tray that held a rectangular cake decorated with white icing, candied green leaves, red berries. It was December, after all—the festive season. A small and brightly decorated tree had been placed on its own table at the side of the room. Everyone looked up blankly, greeting Cass as if she’d bounded in off the surface of a cream-cheese moon. She set the cake in the centre of the table and looked around at the faces.

  Good timing, she said to herself. Definitely good timing.

  The members of the company roused themselves and ordered a round of drinks, and then made short work of the cake, which had the slightest hint of rum in its December icing.

  On His Watch

  TOM

  Tom was thinking of dragonflies in Nova Scotia, jewel-like neon colours, violets and purples, greens and blues, flashes of silver wings. How they flitted toward him and away, abruptly changing direction while going about their business. During one visit, his grandmother had told him that dragonflies were the devil’s darning needles. Grampa Murray scoffed and tried to offset superstition by explaining their usefulness and worth. “They eat mosquitoes and blackflies, for a start. We have dozens of species right here in our own province,” he told Tom. “Dozens. They’re here for a purpose. Part of the life chain.”

  While Tom waited for Dave in the roundabout at the entrance of the Haven, he recited softly three lines he’d written during that childhood visit to Nova Scotia. He was fourteen years old and writing poetry even then. He and his grandfather had taken the rowboat out early in the morning, fished for an hour and a half, caught their breakfast, released a few.

  “Put your hand under the belly, keep it underwater as much as you can. Don’t lift it by the tail; you’ll damage the spine.”

  Later, when Tom was alone in his upstairs room, he pulled a small notebook from the pocket of his suitcase and wrote:

  beside us

  wide-winged dragonflies

  stared with big bead eyes

  The only lines he could remember. Much water under the bridge since he’d written those. His was the work of an amateur, he knew that. But he kept on, worked at the poems anyway. And continued to read poetry, whatever he happened to lay his hands on.

  The door of his Jeep was wrenched open, and Dave hitched his barrel body into the passenger seat. Was Dave thinner? Seemed that way to Tom. As if staves of weight had dropped from his skeleton overnight.

  They were on their way to Greenley for Dave’s canc
er treatment, and as he was the only passenger scheduled this time, they both knew they could relax, didn’t have to make polite talk. Later, on the way home in the afternoon, Dave would be worn out; he and Tom would drive back in relative silence. Lots of energy on the way there, however. Dave, despite his weight loss, was raring to go. He had stories to tell about the inmates. Tom assumed the listener’s role and didn’t mind one bit. He was ever aware of the fact that he did not have to deal with what Dave was dealing with.

  “Dumbasses,” Dave said. “Pardon the language. First of all, this morning, the guy in charge of the kitchen set everyone off. This guy has sleek black hair, wears a two-inch ponytail at the crown of his head so it sticks straight up. A silver bauble on an elastic holds this frickin’ little ponytail in place. He’s good in the kitchen, this guy, but tough on his staff. Well, he was ranting at top pitch about needing more carafes of decaf, and that voice of his got everybody off on the wrong track. After that, when the plates were cleared away, there was a fuss about toothbrushes. One of the inmates needed a toothbrush and wanted the tuck shop unlocked, but it’s closed early in the day. So a predictable flare-up, another crazy man shouting down the hall. I tell you, Tom, people around here don’t have enough to think about. The joke of it is, when you talk to this guy who wanted the toothbrush, you can see three teeth and that’s it. If he throws his head back and laughs—not often, because he’s a complainer—you see that he really does have a mouthful of teeth. With gold caps on his molars. Or maybe they’re crowns. I don’t know the difference.”

  Tom pulled out of the roundabout while Dave tugged at the seat belt, adjusting it gingerly around what he referred to as the chemoport implanted in his chest. He’d showed it to Tom one day and Tom had felt sadness, seeing it.

  “All that fuss for a lousy toothbrush,” said Dave. And went silent.

  Tom thought about Ida and how, after brushing her teeth, she used to rinse her mouth with lukewarm water. She had sensitive teeth or gums, one or the other; she couldn’t rinse with cold at all. What a thing to think about now. He’d teased her about it once, and she had flared up. They’d been in their thirties at the time, maybe forties. Turned out it wasn’t only her teeth that were sensitive.

  He had told himself before and told himself now: we had a good marriage, sensitive teeth and all.

  Dave was starting up again. “A few of us walked up the hill to McDonald’s for supper last night. A change from the dining room, you know how it goes. After that, with full bellies, it was downhill all the way.” He laughed at his own joke. “Anyway, we had a yearning for fast food. Too much healthy food in an institution wears you down after a while. Well, there was someone in the lineup ahead of us and she had stovepipe legs, I tell you. I’m not kidding. I never saw the like. No fat, just solid legs shaped like stovepipes. Big. She was a young woman, maybe about thirty, short overalls that stopped at the thigh, rubber boots to the knees, arms akimbo, and she stayed like that the whole damn time she was in line. Daring anyone to say a word. To top it off, she was wearing a railroad cap. What an outfit! And at this time of year.”

  Tom tried to picture this and got as far as the thighs.

  “So we sat down and one of the guys I was with—he’s in his eighties if he’s a day—started in on a story about his youth. How he’d saved a man from drownding once. I tried to pay attention to the story but kept thinking he’d made a mistake about the word drownding. Sure enough, he said it the same way, over and over. Never mind, the story was a big deal for him because he’d saved this fellow’s life. Turns out he never learned the guy’s name, never found out, because after he hauled him out of the water and did artificial respiration, an ambulance arrived and the man was taken away. Fishermen used to go there—the Kawarthas somewhere—to fish largemouth bass. I’ve fished largemouth myself. Big and olivey-coloured. Those bass like weeds, and they don’t care if the water is warm. Good eating, too. Especially when you have a cast-iron frying pan right there on shore so you can cook them fresh when you bring your boat in.”

  Dave was going on about sex now. Back to talking about the Haven. Tom wondered what the ride home would be like. He’d have a few hours to himself in Greenley after taking Dave up to the third floor. He’d go somewhere for coffee, maybe the main cafeteria, which was off to the side of the entrance at the health centre. Or maybe Tim Hortons, same level but different hallway. Past the elevators, past the gift shop.

  “Before the toothbrush fiasco, Rose, at our table, started talking about sex in her marriage. ‘It was good for a long time,’ she told us. Then she points her index finger straight out and lets it droop from the middle. ‘After that,’ she said, ‘not so good.’ There are six at our table, four women and two men, and the women started hooting and laughing. They’ll say anything, even at breakfast. Things aren’t the way they used to be. But you know, Rose is still a helluva bridge player; I gotta admire that. I like her sense of humour. Everybody in the place knows her. I bet when she was younger, she was a killer for looks. She can keep people’s spirits up. She’s a natural.”

  “Laughter in your life is good, no question about that.”

  “You bet it is. I used to be married, and my wife and I had some great laughs, but she died. Long time ago,” said Dave. “You, too, Tom? You never say much about that.”

  “My Ida died last year. I’ve been missing her a lot, I’d say.” His voice cracked, and that took him by surprise.

  “There ought to be a law against it,” said Dave. He stared straight ahead through the windshield.

  “Against what?”

  “Grief.”

  Dave seemed to be talked out, so Tom let his thoughts wander as they neared Greenley. He was grateful for sunny weather and a clear highway in December. Next year he’d be eighty. Before his birthday and every two years after that, he’d have to pass a vision test and some sort of in-class screening assignment to renew his driver’s licence. He’d be required to undergo a review of his driving record and participate in a forty-five-minute group education session. He might have to take a road test—if deemed necessary—and he hoped that wouldn’t happen. He had talked to one of his long-time friends who’d already gone through this. One of the tasks had been to draw a clock with hands pointed at a particular time. His friend drew the perfect clock face, all right, but after that, he drew the hands separately and placed them outside the clock. That was the end of driving for him! Tom didn’t want to make any mistakes like that.

  He thought about his upcoming eye appointment. There was no bus service from his street, so maybe he could ask someone to drive him. He did have the option of taking a taxi. He’d figure it out when he got home. At least his ophthalmologist was in Wilna Creek. He wouldn’t have to ask for a lift to Greenley. He also had to remember to tell the doctor that only his left eye watered. He wouldn’t say a word about crying. What would be the point? He didn’t sit around crying; he hardly ever cried. But once in a while, his left eye started tearing up. Maybe he had one dry eye. He’d heard people in his shop talk about dry eyes; they carried drops with them everywhere they went. Too bad that at his age, eyes and teeth were up-and-down concerns. Half a molar could fall out of your head, and if you were lucky—as he was—you had a caring, skilled dentist who could patch you up and tell you to chew on one side until a permanent repair could take place. Most of his peers were probably chewing on one side. On the positive side, he still had his own teeth—except for small chunks that had fallen off with no ill consequences.

  Tom pulled up at the entrance to the health centre, put on his flashing lights and walked Dave to one of the benches inside the main door. He left him there while he went out again to park the car in the big outdoor lot. Dave was waiting when he returned, and Tom escorted him to the elevator and up to the third floor.

  “I’ll pick you up right here,” he told Dave. “Have a nurse call or text and I’ll be ready. I brought a book along, so I’ll be in the coffee shop or the cafeteria.”

  “I’ll se
nd a text,” Dave told him. “The treatment doesn’t take so much out of me that I can’t use my own phone. See you later.” And he hailed the staff in his big voice and checked himself in at the desk.

  TOM WENT BACK DOWN to the main floor and sat for a while, watching people come and go. All shapes and sizes, some with deliberation and intent, some looking half or entirely lost, some tapping at phones as they walked by. A few stood around waiting; others rushed to get to the elevators. Two young women were talking and Tom overheard, “I was listening to the news in the car. Their president’s behaviour is so outrageous, he might be increached. He hasn’t been in office two years yet. My mom says the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket.”

  Tom shook his head, got up and wandered along to the gift shop. He knew Hazzley would be interested in the desecration of the word. He’d tell her about “increached” when the company met next Tuesday.

  He looked over the gift-shop merchandise, which was of no interest. He leafed through magazines on a rack at the back of the store and chose one about fishing, not that he fished much anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out in a boat. The volunteer at the cash, a man of fifty or so, looked surly, or maybe just sad. If there hadn’t been people lined up behind him, Tom might have asked the man if he could help in some way. It was the kind of thing Ida used to do. No feigned empathy from her. Tom was convinced that on the days Ida worked alongside him at Rigmarole, customers came to the shop just so they could spill out their troubles to her. Sometimes she took them to a café down the street for a cup of tea, even if they were strangers when they’d first walked through the door. He suspected that Hazzley was like that, too. Ready to help, and with humour added in. Hazzley was a strong woman, he could see that from the beginning, from the first meeting of the company.

  He decided to go outside to get a bit of exercise. The grounds of the hospital and health centre covered a sizable chunk of real estate. Several buildings were interconnected—tunnels inside, pathways out. He chose a walkway that led between trees and buildings, certain that at some point he’d end up back where he started. His sense of direction could be relied upon. A few workers, wearing coats over hospital greens or blues, were out for a midday walk. Some were wearing headphones, some tapping at small screens. Tom turned a corner and faced a biting wind. His eyes smarted and the left one began to water. He chose another path and changed direction, this time passing a staff residence where interns and residents lived with their families, a three-storey building. Two boys of preschool age were playing a serious game in a patch of grass beside the parking lot. They were arguing when Tom passed, and the taller of the two uttered a threat in his high-pitched child’s voice: “You keep doing that, and I’m telling the hospital!”