The Archaeologists

by Hal Niedzviecki

Uh—I—

  Rose holds up her see-through hands, showing her long gnarled nails. Never had any use for them, Rose says, even when they were the fashion. They just get in the way of doing what needs to be done. Now you’ll need to get the scissors. They’re in the bottom drawer in the kitchen.

  Charlie stands there. Rose looks at her expectantly.

  In the kitchen, dear.

  In the kitchen Charlie finds an ancient pair of steel scissors, a heavy ominous object nipped with rust. She returns to the living room, holding them in front of her like a gun about to go off.

  These?

  Of course. Now let’s start with my toes. If you’d be a dear and just help me take off my slippers.

  Your…feet?

  Well where else would my toes be?

  Rose wiggles her feet, soft lumps under the heaped blankets. Charlie digs around underneath. She finds pink slippers, the fuzz long since flattened and worn away. The smell is mothballs, talcum powder, wet wool, decay.

  Take them off now, dear.

  Charlie slips off the slippers. She starts pulling down a thin brown sock. Rose winces.

  Gently now.

  Sorry.

  Fabric keeps catching on the nails. Charlie slowly reveals them, long yellow serpentine twists, some kind of relic holdover from past times, evolution’s not yet completed task. Charlie gingerly grasps a big toe, wizened and turtled into itself. The flesh is cold and listless. The scissors are huge, not altogether inappropriate. Charlie fits the blade around the nail, a spiralling thick fossil.

  Um, are you sure I should—?

  Just cut them right off dear.

  But I think it might—

  It’ll be fine.

  Wouldn’t it be better if I ask…the lady?

  Just cut them. Go ahead, girl.

  Charlie closes her eyes. She wishes she was in the woods by the river. She goes down there sometimes. She’ll go after school. It’s quiet down there. She lies in the leaves by the river and thinks about how it used to be a long time ago when the First People Indians lived down there.

  Go on now, Rose says. Get it over with.

  JUNE

  Thursday, April 10

  JUNE PARKS IN THE DRIVEWAY. As she gets out of the car it suddenly occurs to her that she didn’t actually accomplish the one thing she left home to do. There are no groceries to haul into the kitchen. No reusable bags bulging with organics to virtuously heft over to their gleaming new stainless steel refrigerator with French doors and a digital thermostat. No cases of Lime Perrier, Coke Zero, and Diet Green Tea Ginger Ale to lug to the basement, no frozen shrimp and T-bone steaks to store in the freezer chest for spontaneous you-should-stay! quick defrost barbecues. There’s nothing for supper, June thinks absently.

  They’ve run out of everything from canned tomatoes to EZ-cook rice. Fresh produce is non-existent. There’s no sandwich meat, forcing Norm to buy lunch everyday this week from the Portuguese bakery in the strip mall next to the medical complex where he has his office. Norm says buying lunch is a waste of money. It’s just plain old dollars and sense, Norm says.

  In the dark, cool foyer, June blinks, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the transition from the unfiltered light of day to the soft illumination of the front hall. It’s not that the house is poorly lit like June’s old apartment was. It’s just the opposite: the house is big, spacious—five bedroom, three bath, den, dining room, living room with a fireplace, fully finished basement—sitting on a generous lot. Large and methodically lit, everything is noticeable, every speck of dust glowing under the relentless warmth of swivelled recessed dimmable LED pot lights. They’ve been living in the house for a year-and-a-half now, and June still hasn’t gotten used to the large rooms, tall ceilings, wide-open spaces. They’d bought the place from a gruff senior clearly impatient to get the whole thing over with. His indifference, even rudeness, was made up for by the effusiveness of the real estate agent, all smiles and lipstick and commission. Maybe, June thinks, I should go into real estate? But, no, she can’t imagine talking about property values and area schools and proximity to the Middle Mall in such enthusiastic terms. Sure to appreciate! Guaranteed value! Now’s the time to buy!

  In June’s mind the house has depreciated. The solitude the agent promised—backyard facing the river gorge, high fences ensuring their privacy—seems to have slipped into the firmament of June’s life. Several of the rooms still await furnishings. Others lack lamps, shelves, pictures on the walls—what Norm likes to refer to encouragingly as “the finishing touches.” Norm calls it “the retreat.” How’s “the retreat?” he says when he phones home from work.

  Cold, June thinks as she takes off her coat. She stands shakily, uncertainly, in the hall. The house makes her feel like a visitor—or an intruder.

  June switches off the hallway lights. Outside the sky is darkening for early evening. Rain tonight, June thinks. She suddenly feels exhausted. She didn’t sleep last night. The last couple of nights. Lying in bed next to snoring Norm, she kept trying to bear down on the problem, on her sense that there was some kind of problem, some thing following her through the immaculately appointed rooms of their new oversized house and out into the unfamiliar, unsurprising terrain of Wississauga. What was it? Where was it? All winter, June had lain in bed waiting for it to transform, to turn tangible and become not some thing, but something. Well, winter’s over now, she tells herself. Her second winter here, long and cold and wet and lonely, all her friends and familiar haunts at least an hour’s drive away. It’s no wonder, she kept assuring herself as she tossed and turned in the big bed. You’re still adjusting. Get a SAD lamp, join a gym, find a book club—Jesus Christ girl, do something. But every time it felt like something was about to reveal itself, June found herself descending into familiar drift, her body lying inert in the soft sticky bed, her mind pulled into the haze of inevitable half-sleep.

  June moves through the front hall, through the kitchen, and into the living room. A year ago, everything seemed so sharp, crisp like the picture on the 65-inch flat screen that she sometimes catches Norm standing in the living room admiring, as if it was a painting slowly revealing its brush-stroked meaning. Two years ago she was newly married. She was buying a house. She was renovating that house from top to bottom. She was doing, doing, doing, moving from one thing to another in a constant swirl of motion. And then, things just sort of…stopped. Norm wakes up, goes to work. She doesn’t go to work, maybe she doesn’t even wake up. The more she tries to think about it, the more she feels as if she’s wandering around in pointless circles, padding up and down the plush carpeted stairs, poking her head into rooms that, for now, sit empty and purposeless—like me, she thinks. It’s this house. Of course it isn’t. But somehow it is: a nothing emptiness expanding, blocking her out. Which doesn’t even make sense. How does nothing expand? But it did. All winter, June’s felt it, a nothingness turned corporeal, a nothing that through its sheen of voided emptiness seems determined to become that all-consuming something. Be careful what you wish for. She’s stopped shopping. She’s stopped idly scanning the online classifieds looking for a job she might apply for. She’s stopped cooking. She’s stopped sleeping.

  June drops herself on their leather sectional. The couch is huge. Sits six without their legs touching—June remembers that line from when they bought it. She stares through the big bay window into the empty square of their backyard. It’s as if all this time she’s been waiting. Waiting for something to happen. And now, June thinks, it’s happening. What’s happening? Nothing, June thinks. Nothing’s happening. It’s getting dark. She’ll just sit a minute. Then she’ll get up. She’ll jump in the car again and go get a few groceries. She doesn’t have to do a big shopping trip. Just pick up a few things to make dinner and Norm’s lunch for tomorrow. June shivers, her slim arms in goosebumps. What’s wrong with me? April chill. She draws an afghan around her, sinks further into the big leather couch.

  Wakes up.

  In a strange place. Dé
jà vu: on the couch, asleep. Rain lashing the big bay windows. The bare branches of the trees dancing in dark saccades.

  Blinks. Blinks. Asleep, awake.

  June is looking down at herself, this dumpy and pale woman in jeans and a sweatshirt. Plump in the cheeks with an emaciated puffiness, her face a white smear framed in lank brown hair that could use a trim, a wash, a hot oil condition.

  So that’s me, she thinks dully.

  Where is she?

  Floating above herself in a big room on the edge of an ancient gash in the ground. Sleeping.

  June? June honey?

  Drops from Norm’s blunt nose splash her forehead.

  June startles awake.

  Norm’s looking down at her.

  June?

  Norm?

  June, are you okay?

  I’m…awake?

  Of course you are.

  You’re…wet?

  I’m soaked, Norm says congenially.

  Oh. June brings a hand to her mouth. Feels hot breath on her palm. Oh.

  What is it sweetie?

  I…fell asleep.

  That’s okay. No big deal. It happens.

  No—I—

  Norm kneels down in front of her on the carpet. He wraps his arms around her.

  It’s okay.

  Hey! You’re all wet. June twists away.

  I couldn’t get the car in the garage. You parked right in the middle of the driveway. I had to park on the street. Why didn’t you park in the garage?

  I…I…thought I did.

  Norm is in front of her. His shirt is dark where the cold, fat drops hit. His clothes smell like the wet spring, like weather and fresh decay, but underneath that, there’s his skin, which exudes the odours of his office—fluoride and antiseptic. It’s not a bad smell.

  You’re soaked, June murmurs, now leaning into him, letting him hold her. You need a hot shower.

  Yeah, I guess I do.

  I fell asleep.

  I know.

  I’m…I was…tired.

  Slowly June sits up. She’s dizzy, distant. But her heart is racing. What’s wrong with me? She left the house planning to pick up groceries. Instead she drove around aimlessly, in circles, in cul-de-sacs, plied her Volvo station wagon through neighbourhoods that looked so much like her own that in the end she couldn’t find her way out of the maze and had to activate the built-in GPS. What city? it asked her. June pulled over, suddenly not sure.

  June, Norm says, looking at her. Are you okay?

  I’m fine. June stands and Norm stands too. She feels woozy and resists the urge to lean into him.

  So, Norm finally says brightly. Anything for dinner?

  June feels herself stiffen. She’s not the maid. She doesn’t have to make him dinner.

  No, she says brusquely. She hears him exhale. She knows what he’s thinking. What did she do all day that she can’t even make dinner? But—then—what did she do today? Why can’t she make him dinner?

  I’m sorry, she says. I, uh, was going to go to the store. But I’ve just been so…tired.

  Maybe you should see a doctor, honey.

  No, no, I’m fine. It’s no big deal. It must be the rain. June laughs uncertainly. You go take your shower.

  But maybe you should just get it checked out.

  She can tell he’s annoyed.

  Don’t be mad at me. She nestles up against him. I just—fell asleep. We’ll order in, she says definitively. From that place you like. With the noodles.

  Okay. Fine. I’m going to get changed.

  Norm pulls away. He loosens his tie as he heads upstairs.

  June falls back onto the couch. The dream she had, like she was outside of her life, looking down on it, hovering just over the surface. She crosses her arms against her chest. She moves to the window and peers into the backyard. It’s still raining. The water starts running upstairs. Norm is taking his shower. He’s annoyed. His routine disrupted. Norm’s older than her, 41 to her 32. He has a routine. He comes home hungry. He expects to have his dinner. He’s a dentist in Wississauga Heights. That’s what June married. That’s what she chose, what she wanted.

  In college, June went through an artsy phase, a slutty phase, a party phase. She graduated with a BA in English Lit and a boyfriend, tall and gangly John Baker—everyone called him Johnny. He was in a band and some kind of arts collective. They had a manifesto he was excited about; he read it to June, his voice loud and emphatic. Johnny was all chaos and excitement, his endless “gigs,” his bands breaking up and reforming with ever more elaborate names, his lengthy random road trips with his buddy and bandmate Rich and Rich’s weedy nasally girlfriend, singing backup vocals, stroking the tambourine and their egos. They were living together then, by default mostly, Johnny coming and going though it was June’s tiny apartment, June’s name on the lease and the phone bill. While Johnny played basement clubs and posted an endless stream of photos to his band-of-the-moment’s Myspace page, June mimicked her friends, burnishing her resume and applying for internships. She interned at the public relations department of a pharmaceutical company, then got hired on for six-month contracts that kept getting extended. One day, June came home to find Johnny passed out drunk on her second-hand couch. She stood over him for a long time, studying the rise and fall of his scrawny chest. Then she shook her head as if to clear it and found herself stuffing everything that belonged to him into a garbage bag: scribbled scraps of song lyrics taped to the walls and lost in the carpet, muddy sounding burns of his band’s attempts at recording marked with sharpie-scrawled dates and times, dirty socks, ripped T-shirts, a battered volume of Whitman’s collected poems she never once saw him read.

  Done with Johnny, June focussed on her work. She got hired on permanently for $42,000 a year, the kind of job an unexceptional English degree holder might expect. Three years later, she met Norm through her job, at a dentist trade show in Orlando. He took her out. Courted her. Asked her all kinds of questions. He wanted to know everything about her. He was older. He had his own practice.

  The shower water stops.

  She pictures him, hairy Norm dripping, towelling off.

  Another image slips into June’s mind—a woman splayed out on a couch, fingers twisting and twining messed hair.

  Me?

  She shivers. It’s like someone’s spying on her. It’s like she’s spying on herself. She pulls the curtains shut. Any minute now, Norm will yell down and ask in his perpetually cheery and courteous voice what she decided to order and when it’s likely to show up. I’m hungry, Norm will call. Guilt will run through her like a snapped branch suddenly coursing sap. Norm likes to eat at 6:45. It’s now 7:34.

  June hurries into the kitchen. She grabs the menu for Thai Tastes. She barks random dishes into the phone. Can you, will you, we’re in a hurry, she says.

  Thirty-five minutes, says the ambivalent voice on the other side of the conversation.

  June sighs. She hangs up the phone. She doesn’t remember a single thing she ordered. Something with chicken. And maybe, she hopes, the pad Thai? She considers calling back.

  Norm, honey, she yells in a pre-emptive gesture. Her voice careens up the empty stairs. I ordered Thai. It’ll be here soon!

  A muffled response she can’t quite make out.

  I got the noodles you like. You like that, right? Not too spicy? That’s your favourite, right?

  June figures if she didn’t order it, she can just claim they forgot to pack it. She must have ordered it. Who cares anyway? What am I so worried about?

  The kitchen is all sparkling metals and buffed woods. June recalls being excited about the counter tops once. Through the big glass doors leading out to the backyard, June sees rain splashing into the puddles forming on the lawn. She snaps the blinds closed. Nothing to see out there. Her hands are shaking. Cold. I’m coming down with something. She makes her way to the dining room liquor cabinet. June pours two scotch whiskeys in the matching crystal tumblers they got as a wedding present from
one of Norm’s dentist school buddies.

  Thanks sweetheart. This is just what we need, right? Terrible weather…Well you know what they say?

  April showers, June says sweetly.

  Right, right, Norm agrees, absentmindedly flipping through the mail.

  June takes a hit of scotch, doesn’t feel the usual heat searing inside her belly. Instead, the nothing. Instead, the shifts and creaks of the house, beating raindrops hidden by the night, millions and millions of raindrops.

  She sits in a chair with her back to the wall.

  Norm is still working through the stack of mail they get every single day. On her own in her apartment, June rarely got more than two or three pieces of mail a week. Bills mostly. Here, they get at least ten items a day: catalogues, fliers, charity solicitations, dental magazines, community newsletters. Once a week, June gathers up the pile of previously perused solicitations and catalogues and dumps them in the recycling box for pick up. This doesn’t alleviate her guilt. So much junk mail. She read in the newspaper—more fodder for the box—that the city only actually recycles something like ten percent of what gets put out on the curb.

  So what did you get up to today? Norm is busy ripping open an official-looking letter.

  What should I have done today? June thinks. The way her voice sounds in her head: petulant and angry.

  Norm continues without looking up. Maybe tomorrow you can drop by the garden centre? Ask them about helping you put together a plan for the backyard?

  A plan for our backyard. I’ll get right on that. God, June thinks, when did I get to be such a—

  The doorbell rings.

  June jerks, startled.

  Norm’s face in some letter.

  I’ll get it, June sighs.

  Outside air, cold and scummy. What’s so great, June thinks, not for the first time, about living above a goddamn swamp? Two bags of Thai food, two proffered twenties, thank you and good night. She shuts the door and locks it.

  Food’s here, she calls.

  She shivers again. She can’t seem to warm up.

  June opens containers. She gets out two plates. She could dump the stuff from the Styrofoam into nice bowls. But then she’ll just have to rinse them and load them into the dishwasher, and who cares anyway, just wasting water. Bad enough all these containers and lids and everything are going in the garbage. She could light a candle. Open a bottle of wine. Make it nice for her Norm.