Practical Jean

by Trevor Cole

  Now Dorothy, thought Jean. Dorothy … Living out along one of the rural concessions, not right in town, not too far a drive. Working hard to take care of Roy; now there was a bad situation that was only going to get worse. Oh, she put on a brave, no-nonsense face, but Jean could tell from Dorothy’s eyes that she was starting to despair. “Big Boy” was close to three hundred pounds now. He could still dress and feed himself, but for how long? And when he got angry he was like one of those movie monsters tearing up everything in his path, except there was so little left now because their money was running out and he’d already smashed or torn or kicked so many of their nicest things. Poor Dorothy deserved to be rescued from all of that. She deserved to be treated to a special, joyful, passionate experience, and then freed … All things considered: Dorothy was a definite possibility.

  Last, Jean put her mind to Cheryl Nunley. She thought that if she could choose someone for purely emotional reasons, it would have to be Cheryl. Because there was so much Jean felt a need to make up for. The abandonment of her friend at the darkest moments of her life. The subsequent decades of neglect. The hateful lack of curiosity about what had become of someone with whom she had shared so much formative teenage experience. It was as if she had worn Cheryl like a favourite pair of shoes and then kicked her to the back of the closet.

  And yet, it was hard to imagine Cheryl being an option in the immediate future because Jean had no idea where she lived, and there was no telling how long it would take Welland to find her. The possibility existed that she wasn’t even alive, which was just awful to think about. So Jean had to accept the facts: Cheryl was on the back burner …

  As she sat at the picnic table, Jean let her eyes drift over to two men who stood chatting by the southern edge of the park near the line of scrub brush while each of their dogs, a boxer and a retriever, rolled around and chewed on sticks for lack of any organized activity. It was irritating for Jean to watch. The men had gone out to take their dogs for a walk and here they were standing. They were having a nice stand. Maybe it was just her mood talking, but it seemed to Jean that if you were going to do something, you should just get on with doing it.

  She stood up from the picnic table and tossed her little wad of names into a garbage bin. The decision was made: it was going to be Dorothy first. Jean just hoped that somehow she could make it up to Cheryl, if she ever saw her again.

  Chapter 7

  It was grey. It was grey. Oh, God, it was grey. Another miserable, malicious grey day. Oh, God, not another one, she thought. Couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take any more of these grey days. Thought she would die. Wanted to die. It was unfair. God, it was so … oh … Sheet.

  It was the sheet pulled over her eyes.

  With a vague swipe, Cheryl Nunley armed the sheet away and fell back to sleep.

  Jesus was not in her wine glass. Of course he wasn’t. It was the late afternoon, or the early evening, and for a minute there in the winery’s big tasting room – for one bedazzling, unbelievable, oh my Holy Lord moment – Cheryl had been convinced that Jesus was staring at her from her glass of Cabernet-Franc. Of all the people, dead or alive, who could have been staring at Cheryl from her wine glass, Jesus was the one she would have wanted most. Jay Leno would have been nice too, because his smile was gentle and comforting. But Jesus, on the whole, was better. Cheryl blinked at the image in the glass. Her eyes were somewhat numb and she had to work to focus. “Hello, Jesus!” she shouted. “Say something, Jesus!” Cheryl clamped onto the stem of her glass with her two trembling hands and stared down into the wine, into his blood, the blood of Christ. “Talk to me, Jesus!” she shouted. “I’m listening!”

  But it wasn’t Jesus at all. Cheryl stared at his face, watching him saying nothing, which wasn’t like Jesus, and she saw that it wasn’t his face. It wasn’t any face. It was just the reflection of some stupid … there … the stupid light fixture over her head. That’s all it was, a light fixture. Not Jesus.

  And nothing to cry about either, so just …

  Cheryl smeared her cheeks dry and pushed her hooded gaze around the room at all the empty tables. She thought, it was a good thing Mr. Binderman wasn’t there.

  Oh, great. Cheryl raked through her purse in the parking area. She dumped the contents out onto the pavement in the dark and got down on her hands and knees and picked through the lipsticks and cigarettes and lighters and … corks and … button and … receipts for some stupid thing and … and what was that? That wasn’t hers, that stupid metal hook thing, whatever it was. Throw that away. She had to find the ring of keys and … there was the ring of keys but there was. no. car. key. on. it. She swayed and stared at the keys and then she remembered, oh, they took that key away from her. That was her key and they took it. Okay, so now she couldn’t go into town. And that meant she couldn’t get more birdseed. And that meant Buzzy was going to die. Buzzy her cockatiel. From starvation. Buzzy, Buzzy, Buzzy. Buzzy who whistled and warbled like a telephone and other whistly things. She laid her head down, mourning Buzzy, who wasn’t dead yet but surely would be soon because there was no food and he would be silent forever and that was sad. Buzzy, Buzzy, Buzzy, oh Buzzy. Nothing she could do. Her eyes were closed. It was okay to sleep here, on the pavement, Cheryl thought.

  “Mrs. Yoon?”

  Mrs. Yoon was not her name. That was someone who no longer lived here. That was someone she used to be, but that person was not her any more.

  “Mrs. Yoon?”

  Someone was still saying “Mrs. Yoon.” How could a person keep calling another person by the wrong name? What was that? Misidentification. Probably a crime of some nature. Determined to make that stop. Tried to open her eyes but the sun poured in like lemon juice, so she kept them shut.

  “I’m not Mrs. Yoon.”

  “Mrs. Yoon, you have to get up.”

  “What’s my name?”

  “Mrs. Yoon.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Mrs. Yoon, you are on the pavement. Please get up.”

  “Why don’t you listen? I am not, not, not Mrs. Yoon.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Yoon. I can’t really understand you. I don’t know what you are saying. But you have to get up now.”

  Mr. Binderman took hold of her arm and pulled her into a sitting position. She knew it was Mr. Binderman because no one else was here now, and also because he smelled like the vineyard, sweet and green, and because she recognized his voice, his old-mannish, Austrian voice – not German – which was kind and imperious and afraid all together. It was Mr. Binderman pulling her into a sitting position, from which she wanted to throw up. So she did throw up.

  “Oh, Mrs. Yoon, no, that’s not good. Not good. Here, I’m sorry, you take this. Please, you take it.”

  Mr. Binderman shoved a cloth into her hand. A flimsy cloth. A handkerchief. What was she supposed to do with it? Wipe her nose? Be that as it may, she had to throw up again. She did throw up again. All this was best done with eyes closed, Cheryl thought.

  Buzzy was her only friend. Buzzy, the cockatiel, had been there from the beginning, arriving in Cheryl’s life eighteen months before as a grand, angelic gesture, white warbling proof of Tam Yoon’s affection. Cheryl was then just a divorced claims adjuster living in Syracuse, New York, who liked to go on winery tours and sometimes got a little silly and snuggly with well-dressed men she happened to meet. From his perch in his white wire cage, Buzzy had seen it all – Cheryl’s sudden, swooning love for fifty-seven-year-old Tam; the determined effort to defeat the lifelong temptation that could undo her; the fervid plans for a future with someone a foot shorter and many, many times richer thanks to Tam’s very astute investments in the cellphone industry; the campaign to convince Tam to use just a bit of that money to buy a little winery and retire in the very setting that had brought them together; the early, giddy excitement when Cheryl thought she had finally secured everything that mattered and could matter in a life like hers; the gradual weakening of that certainty, and the steady disintegration
of everything that had been sweet and new and possible; the shouting and the crying and the horrible, angry accusations; the “you’re pathetic” and “ridiculous”; the slammed door; the nights of Cheryl on the phone, begging Tam to forgive her; the anguish and remorse; the self-hatred; the days of lost hours; the months of lost days.

  The surrender.

  Throughout the formless, shattered days since Tam had gone, Buzzy was Cheryl’s steady comfort. At noon, or thereabouts, he sat perched in his cage on a table in the living room, watching his circumscribed world with black-marble eyes. He never spoke but made a series of chirping and warbling and whistling noises that could sound like the kettle or the telephone or the fax machine or the alarm clock. Some of those ringing noises sounded very much like a phone call from Tam wanting to apologize and come home. But they weren’t Tam calling. There was a dent in the side of Buzzy’s cage to remind Cheryl.

  By about five o’clock every afternoon, Buzzy had stopped sounding like phone calls and often seemed, to Cheryl, to have acquired the power of rudimentary speech. But he used it to utter only warbly nonsense words that Cheryl found indistinguishable from the Chinese curses Tam had sometimes hurled at her, his mouth contorted, his black hair flying.

  By nine or ten, many nights, Buzzy was conversing emphatically with Cheryl about her failed marriage. Buzzy had a harsh opinion of the cellphone industry that had fuelled Tam Yoon’s fortune, and of Tam himself, and of the New York wine industry, opinions which he was only too happy to share, and which resonated with Cheryl and seemed to confirm every qualm and misgiving she had had and ignored before committing herself to the life that now consumed her. Once in a while Buzzy said something so right and true that Cheryl would hug the cage. She would press her face against the wire bars so fiercely they left imprints that took hours to fade.

  But by three and four in the morning, in Cheryl’s experience, Buzzy had typically risen above such petty concerns. By then, most nights, Buzzy had convinced Cheryl to free him from his confinement, and he was flying about the living room and the dining room, the foyer and the stairwell, the kitchen and the solarium, his great white wings outstretched like the reach of a divine herald, lighting now and then on a chandelier or a curtain rod or a banister, delivering God’s message in white, glistening packages.

  By nine or ten in the morning, whatever heavenly force had imbued Buzzy with the power of speech and argument and transcendent grace had dissipated, and he was returned to the form of an animal, indeed, a menace. One who made unholy, piercing noises no pillow could block out. And in these bewildering, terrorized hours Cheryl often found herself shouting at Buzzy thinking he was the phone, or at the phone thinking it was Buzzy. There were times when things would get so cloudy and confused she would pick up one of these ringing, warbling things and fight it, bash its head against the wall, strangle it, while growling the bird’s name. “ Buuuzzzzzzyyyyyy.”

  And late the next morning when Cheryl pried open her eyes, Buzzy would still be there, perched and happy in his cage as if the world had not come undone.

  Chapter 8

  Young Jeff Birdy’s orange Barracuda throbbed and gurgled at the corner of Calendar and Main while he waited for the light to change, and Jean could see him pointed across her path as she slowed to a stop. When the light turned she got the full spectacle of that boy easing his car into the intersection and curling left just in front of her. He took it nice and slow, like he was riding a show horse around an arena full of people who’d come to watch only him, letting the sunlight flash off his chrome and not seeming to care that there were cars behind him with drivers impatient to get somewhere, not seeming to care about anything at all in the world. Jean watched him in his dark T-shirt and Labatt’s baseball cap, one arm dangling limp out the window as if it viewed disdainfully the task of gripping the wheel, and she wondered at the influences that must have led to such a display of … arrogance was the word. Ash had never been like that, had he? Jean didn’t think he had. So how could this boy of twenty-two, who had accomplished no more than a clean car – a car that, as it made that clotted, back-of-the-throat noise sounded bronchially infected to Jean’s ears – how could he smile with such enormous self-assurance at people he hardly knew? It was a paradox.

  The paradox of Jeff Birdy’s smile.

  But he rounded the corner and he was gone, and Jean pushed the image out of her mind, because on this bright day she had before her a bit of a challenge. She needed to convince Dorothy to leave Roy at home for an evening and come out to dinner with her. They hadn’t really had a heart-to-heart in a long time, just the two of them, and as Jean set herself the task of making a lasting experience for her – or, not lasting, but exquisite – she was feeling a little under-equipped.

  Over the past few years she had lost track of what made Dorothy deeply happy. Her friend had become someone who personified resilience and endurance, someone you admired for facing a hardship you were grateful to have avoided yourself. It had made her a little severe, though. There were walls around Dorothy, and whatever sense Jean had of who was inside, the woman of secret joys and wishes, came from her memories of the Dorothy she’d known in high school so many years before.

  That Dorothy, the regal seventeen-year-old with a fall of chestnut hair, had loved track and field, and swimming in cold, cold water at the lake. November wasn’t too late for Dorothy Perks to dive in, so it was said; and one October 31st, after a Hallowe’en dance, Jean had actually seen her splashing away from that showoff Frank Rennick (and who’s to say they weren’t still in the water when people lost track of them long after midnight?). Dancing, of course, that was another thing she loved to do. Jean used to envy Dorothy for having her choice of tall, covetable partners for the “Stairway to Heaven” finale of every event, and the way she so smoothly managed the song’s awkward transitions from slow to fast to completely rhythmless. During those last fifteen seconds, when everyone else stood around motionless like a closetful of poorly hung clothing, Dorothy zeroed in on the eyes of whatever boy she was with, draped her long arms behind his head, and pulled him forward so that their lips touched for the first and only time the instant Robert Plant eased out the word “Heaven.” For Jean, who was usually standing against the wall with Cheryl, it was like watching the end of a famous romantic movie you’d seen over and over and over, predictable and unavoidable but still a little enthralling.

  Swimming and running and toying with boys: there were surely now more depths of joy to survey in Dorothy Perks than that. But when Jean had called last night, Dorothy had insisted that she couldn’t come out for dinner, or that if she did she needed to bring Roy along because she said there wasn’t anyone left willing to sit with him. And Jean knew that if Dorothy brought Roy, then she’d be forced to invite Milt, because he was acting so needy lately it wasn’t worth the aggravation and pouting to leave him behind. So she pulled the car to the curb and tried again.

  “Dorothy,” she said when her friend answered the phone, “I know you’ve said no already but I want to insist on you coming out with me this evening. We deserve a girls’ night out, just the two of us.”

  There were some strange sounds that Jean couldn’t quite place coming through the earpiece, and when Dorothy spoke she seemed distracted. “I’m sorry, Jean,” she said. “I’d love to, but I can’t. Do you want to know what I’m doing right now?”

  Jean was fairly convinced she didn’t want to know, but Dorothy was a friend, so the word “yes” came out of her mouth.

  “I’m watching my husband tear the stuffing out of his favourite chair in big handfuls.”

  “Why is he doing that?”

  “He says the chair is against him. It’s making his ass sore, because he’s been sitting in it all day, so now he’s teaching it a lesson.”

  “I see,” said Jean, and she waited while she heard Dorothy yell at Roy to clean up the mess he was making because she was sure as hell not going to do it. “Well, then – Dorothy, are you there? – I guess we
could have a couples’ night out.” In the background, Roy was shouting something unintelligible. Jean tried to make her voice bright. “And we’ll go someplace casual.”

  They went to Ted’s Big Catch, which was a fish and chips place way up on Main at the corner of Primrose that was nicer than it sounded, with wood panelling and heavy varnished tables and those big captain’s chairs that gave a big man lots of support and had only a little vinyl padding for the back.

  The two couples arrived at almost the same time, and they settled around a table in the big dining room where there were lots of hurricane lamps and seashells and fish netting, and it was a lovely picture, Jean thought, reassuring herself. She said, “I wish I’d thought to bring a camera!” probably a little too enthusiastically. Dorothy looked much less frazzled than she had a few nights before at Jean’s house. She had on black slacks, and a thin black cardigan over a peach jersey top, and she had her hair tied back to show off her long neck. She looked very slim, almost pert, and not at all her age, and Jean made sure to compliment her.

  Roy had on a sports jacket, which he filled out with an impressiveness bordering on the grotesque, and his thinning hair was gelled and combed back in silvery strands, like a wire grille. When he spoke, his words came out slow and ponderous, and he seemed very calm, if a little confused, not knowing quite why they were there, or who Jean and Milt were, even though they had met many times before. Dorothy had encouraged him to wear a tie, she said, by which Jean felt she meant to explain the jumbled knot bunched against his thick neck. And Milt was Milt, wearing his usual checkered shirt and khaki pants with the black running shoes that Jean absolutely hated. “They’re comfortable, and they look just like dress shoes,” he insisted, even though that last part was not even close to true.