by Lisa Moore
The girl took the fifty from his fingers and held the creased bill in the same way he had, between two fingers, and pointed to the cash register, saying she’d just get his change for him. The server was making a kinky parody of herself as a girl serving in a fish and chips joint at closing time, but all of this fell away when a song came on the radio that she liked and she crunched her fist and raised it in the air as a sign of victory and bellowed out the first line. She turned on her heel and slammed her hand on the kitchen door so it was flung open and she disappeared into the kitchen.
The last thing Chelsea had done on her shift was check for the woman’s heartbeat with her stethoscope, and then tell the family of the woman that there was no heartbeat. She’d listened just at the moment when the pounding had receded like the footsteps of someone running past in a hurry on a long sidewalk. David was frozen in a lurching position at the foot of his Aunt’s bed when she died. He went to the head of the bed and adjusted her wig, which was askew.
Chelsea had seen this moment before: family members wide-eyed and awed as the suffering abated. The face in death full of tender eagerness. The loss of conviction. Until the moment when death stole over the features, there was the conviction that it was best to hang on. There was always the moment after death had won out that the family had to get used to the new expression. Sometimes the family mistook it for confusion, but it was abandonment.
David turned over his Aunt’s hand in his own. It was her hand and it was not. The colour changed before their eyes. The hand became lifeless. It was as though the lifelessness began at the fingertips and travelled up the arm, and David rubbed it in the way you would the hand of a child that had come in from the cold.
Chelsea worked in palliative care because other nurses didn’t have the stomach for it. Pediatrics was uplifting; there was always family around a sick child; the kids bounced back so fast. Kids were unharried by illness. They didn’t fret but lay docile and consumed by bewilderment. It wasn’t the actual dying the nurses minded. It was seeing them die alone that made nurses shy away from palliative care.
She told David’s family a doctor would do an examination and they would have to wait in the hall. David recognized her then. The gentle command, he remembered her making him stay on the phone that first time, he remembered her blinking in and out of view in the skywalk. Just a shadow, and her voice.
I’ll just sit down for a moment, David’s grandfather said. He was speaking to Chelsea. Sometimes when a patient dies there’s a brief but searing relationship between the family and the nurse on duty. As though it takes a stranger to measure the loss.
Sit down, Pops, David said. Have a seat. She’ll take care of you.
What are we doing now? the grandfather asked.
When the doctor finishes you can go back in there and be with your daughter to say goodbye, Chelsea answered.
But what’s he doing, the man said.
He pronounces the death, Chelsea said.
You did that, the grandfather said. You put that thing on her chest. The what? Stethoscope. You heard for yourself. She’s gone, isn’t she?
I’m just a nurse, Chelsea said. We’re not allowed to pronounce.
He just wants to hear you say it, David said. Just tell him the truth.
You listened to her heart, the grandfather said. You were the one was there with the stethoscope.
I’m afraid your daughter has passed on, Chelsea said.
Your shoes are so white, the old man said. Must be a job to keep them clean. He shook his head and gripped his nose in a tissue and wagged it roughly back and forth. Chelsea was nailed to the floor by the old man’s gaze on her shoes.
David jerked his chin at Chelsea to follow him away from the grandfather, down the hall. When they were standing in the light and noise of the nurse’s station, outside the grandfather’s hearing, David asked about what would come next, and she told him to phone the funeral home and they would come for the body.
I don’t want her lying around in a hall somewhere, he said. He glanced in both directions, up and down the hall. Then he shifted his weight and hitched up one side of his jeans.
And then he asked her about going out to dinner. And while she considered it, he said that she had done what she wanted. She agreed with him.
I became a nurse, she said. I’m almost done with my training.
Come get something to eat, he said. You’re hungry, I know you are.
I’m not off for half an hour, she said.
I’m starved, he said.
They took the fish and chips from Scamper’s to Signal Hill. On the parking lot with the brown paper bags on their laps and she spoke with her mouth full.
All these people, she said. She was speaking about all the cars around them, steamed up, dome lights glowing like old varnished oil paintings yellowed with age; probably fucking, definitely getting stoned. Are going to die, she said. She waved her fork around as though she were God and had to decide whom to pick off next.
You know what I mean? she asked.
Nursing is weird, he said.
What are you? she said.
Developer, he said. I’m on a big project now, just finishing up.
A flake of white cod fell off her fork. She wiped her mouth roughly and flicked her hand so a bit of the fish dropped onto the upholstery. The car was brand new.
Maybe weird, she said. I like nursing. He was watching her pick up the wet flake of cod, pearl-blue and almost translucent, with her long fingernails. He touched the side of his fist to the spot of grease left on the black leather seat.
These heat up, he said.
I’m sorry, she said. She edged her thigh away from his fist as he rubbed at the smudge.
First time I ever had them, heated seats, he said. I bought this car two days ago.
New car smell, she said.
Heated seats, I’ll never go back. She remembered how he’d often spoken with conviction, often about things that seemed inconsequential but somehow related to having fun.
A fucking nurse, he asked. You with the, what was it?
Ninety-eight percent in chemistry, she said. You don’t understand the first thing about nurses, she said.
You want me to turn on the seats? he asked.
No thanks, she said.
I can do it, he said. He was gripping the wheel.
Okay, she said. Let’s live a little. Turn on the fucking seats. I would like my seat heated up.
It’s hard, he said. He burst into tears and wiped at his face with the back of his hand. Auntie Jo was alone, but she just didn’t stop, you know what I mean. She was such a fucking laugh.
My father committed suicide, Chelsea said. I never told you that.
David picked up his plastic fork but he put it down again. He looked at her, seeming to take her in. He wasn’t judging, rather drawing her into himself. The look reminded her of the night they’d first met, when she’d spoken to him on the phone. What it was like to be in St. John’s by herself. Gabby Fudge, whom she had not spoken to since she moved. And the other conversations they’d had during the two weeks that followed. Long, meandering, meaningless conversations that had kept her fear at bay.
Chelsea had come from Grand Falls, where her parents’ living-room window looked out onto a lawn that went all the way down to the river. There was the shed her father had built, with firewood stacked from floor to ceiling. The ATV parked in the middle. The uniformity of the rough blonde circles of wood, ringed with bark and wedged in tight, was emblematic of her father’s mind. A belief in the sacredness of utility and order. The shed smelled of sap and gasoline. It was where he kept his hunting rifle, padlocked in a metal box.
The view from the bay window in the living room: boulders scattered all over the black surface of the rushing river. Sometimes rushing, sometimes turgid. All the trees bowing, each branch glassed
with ice, sparking with sun. The house was off the main road and you couldn’t hear the traffic.
At five thirty there would be the crunch of her father’s car in the drive. He would roll in slowly. Slow to turn off the engine. Slow to get out of the car. He’d slump in the seat before he forced himself to face the family. She had not seen that, but now she imagined it. Overwhelmed by interaction with the masses. She thought masses because of the theory course she had done in sociology in her second year, as an elective. They’d read The Communist Manifesto in an anthology that cost her $140, tax in. A new edition she couldn’t get second-hand.
But Grand Falls-Windsor didn’t have masses. She was being ironic, which was something she had never been before moving into St. John’s. University had provoked a dormant inner voice that was knowing and petulant. When they did Care for Incisions she found herself imagining a surgery that could cut out the acute pain of missing her living room, her piano, her dog Candy, her father, the river, the woodshed. Even her brother, Kelly’s, habit of leaning in over his food, elbows sprawled, shovelling it in before they’d all got a chance to sit down at the table with him. This habit had disgusted her; now she saw it as vigour. She missed the clatter of his plate in the sink. The dishes left for Chelsea and her mother.
She’d been still, looking into the boy’s eyes, when her phone vibrated. He’d said, Hi, and she could hear him twice, both standing in front of her and in her ear, closer, on the phone. She’d turned and walked away quickly.
I’m just here trying to meet this douche who didn’t show up, he’d said. What a dick move, to say you’ll be there and not show up.
What’s wrong with your own phone? she said.
Takes too long to charge, he said. Basically it doesn’t charge. I got a job washing dishes downtown, and took off half the shift to meet this Clancy. It looks like a good deal. He just wants to get rid of it. What are you doing?
Nursing, she said. What about you?
I don’t know, he said. I’m a colossal fuck-up.
Chelsea’s father had worked at Kent’s home décor. Every day he’d mixed paint and explained shower unit installation and recommended sealants. He’d explained the difference between a twenty-five-dollar paintbrush and an eighteen-dollar one. The difference was that the bristles in the cheaper brushes came away and would stick in the paint. Hairs so fine as to be almost invisible. But with an overhead light these hairs stood out on the wall. She had seen her father explain this, one day, to a woman in bifocals and a black polyester pantsuit and frothy floral blouse underneath. The woman had stood with her arms crossed tight under her breasts and her mouth crimped.
I am conversant with the idea you get what you pay for, the woman said. But this is a leap in price.
You need a quality brush, her father said.
I believe you, she said.
You don’t want to get the job done only to have it be a disappointment, he said. Her father had two Ph.D.s, one in math and another in engineering. He’d worked for a time, before she was born, for the government as an engineer but the responsibility had been crushing.
Chelsea would often be playing the keyboard around the time he came home. She would stop when she heard the car. An obese silence thumped into the void that formed when he turned off the engine. Or her hearing was so attuned to what her father was doing that she could hear nothing else. The dog, wanting to get in, would paw the glass of the back door. That sound broke through her deafness. Made her come back into her own skin.
If Chelsea was studying, instead of at the keyboard, the sound of the dog’s paw would become noticeable over time, and she would fill with dread, wondering how long he’d been out there. A little dog’s paws and ears can get frostbite.
In the dark winter afternoons, when she waited for her father, Chelsea would wander between the keyboard and her books. Down the hall, Kelly would be behind his door watching Netflix. Every afternoon he’d come out of his lair and make a grilled cheese sandwich, burning the shit out of the frying pan, scraping away the Teflon with the copper pot scrubber. Clouds of blue smoke, and the smell of burnt butter, hanging in the kitchen. He drank from the carton, glugging for long minutes at a time.
Other people have to drink that after you, Chelsea would say. Your germs all over that.
And Kelly, his head tilted back, the spout resting on his lower lip, would roll his eye toward her, like a horse eyeing something scurrying in the leaves at its hooves. Finally he would lower the carton and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. But Chelsea’s mother would look on with a dreamy admiration.
Where you do put it? she’d say. The milk you put away. As if her Kelly had undertaken a job that required skill or fortitude. As if he were a bloody genius.
The squirting noises of the jumbo-sized ketchup. Kelly would squiggle it out all over his burnt sandwich.
That’s my fruit for the day, he’d say, and go back to his room.
After his career as a civil engineer, Chelsea’s father had been the local librarian and then the government had closed the library. So he’d had the job at Kent’s in the paint department. He mixed the colours that people brought to him on swatches, making the machine with different spigots jerk around in a circle so that the spigots could squirt pigment into the can until an exact shade of eggshell or sand or lilac had been achieved. Then he’d fitted the lid back on and put the can in a loud machine that shook it vigorously.
Lucky to get it, he said. The side of his fork vigorously sawing a piece of beef until it seemed he would scratch through the plate.
Lucky to get anything now, her mother said. Her father put down his fork. He put his elbows on the table, joined his hands together and rested his forehead on them as if in prayer.
I cannot, he said.
Please, John, her mother said.
Eat this shit, Francine. This is like what you would give a dog. This is what do you call?
This is stew, John, her mother said. This is with carrots and fresh oregano, that I have growing in pots in the sunroom, and a recipe from a magazine that Michelle, the secretary at the school, took a picture of with her phone and texted over to me and I got up at five this morning and put the ingredients in the pot before going to work, is what this is.
Chelsea’s mother was the music teacher at the high school. Music teachers were being cut all over the province. Other kids said Chelsea’s mother must know someone high up to still have her job. They’d overheard their parents saying it.
But people also knew about Chelsea’s dad. She had once heard a secretary at school describe him as fragile. The secretary had said Francine had her hands full. Some people said that’s why she didn’t lose her job.
She keeps that family going, the secretary had said.
I’ll tell you what this is, her father said. But he lifted his head and picked up his fork and cleaned his plate without another word.
After supper, even with the TV going, her father picked up the fiddle and worked through a number of jigs and reels. He knew over a hundred. He played as many as he could after supper. He had done so for as long as Chelsea could remember. Her mother was doing the dishes.
Leave them, Francine, her father said.
I’m coming, she said.
Francine, he said. And then he shouted with so much rage that the cords stood out in his neck: Francine.
But her mother continued washing the dishes. She didn’t pause. The sound of a pot dunked under the water and the slosh of water as it came back up. It was those evenings, when her mother was determined to remain apart from them, that were the worst. It meant she was close to giving up and ashamed of considering it. Once Chelsea had gone into the kitchen and found her mother braced against the counter, her arms out straight, her hands gripping the sink, her head hanging down. It had been like she was trying to push down the side of the house.
Her mother came out with yellow
rubber gloves dripping and picked up the remote and turned off the TV. The sudden silence was embarrassing. Her father’s bow was about an inch from the strings and he looked up at her startled.
This is a family, she said.
Mom, Chelsea said. Her mother whipped around with a bloated yellow rubber finger pointing at Chelsea. It looked like a cartoon hand and the finger was brilliant in the gloom. Pointing.
These are children, John, her mother said. These are our children. I know you are hurting, but you’re going to have to put them first, or I will leave with them. You are going to have to try harder. If I have to say it again, I’m gone. Do you hear me, John?
I hear you, Francine. You are scaring the children.
No, John, she said. And here her mother let her arms hang down loosely, as if the bones in her arms were broken, her yellow gloves drooping at her sides.
You are scaring the children, John, her mother said. You are scaring the children. You are scaring me. I am your wife. Your job is not to scare people. Do you want to scare us? Is that what you want, you son of a bitch?
Please forgive me, he said. Kids? I’m depressed, Francine. I’m exhausted. I’m sorry.
John, she said. John. We need you. I need you. Please, John. Please. Will you please try?
But nobody spoke. Then, after a time, with her mother weeping, holding her elbows, each nestled in a wet yellow glove, Chelsea’s father began to speak. He talked about himself in the third person.
Daddy is having a hard time, he said.
Then he touched the bow to the fiddle and a squawk screeched through the room, a rip in the fabric of rage. He played for maybe thirty seconds and Chelsea could hear the words of the song through the strings, I took Liza to a dance to see if she could travel, every step that she did take was up to her knees in gravel. He stopped at the end of the line.