by Trevor Cole
“If I think about it I get too depressed,” said Fran. “So I try to stay busy. Or I listen to Céline, and she just drives those thoughts right out of my head.”
“I think about it all the time,” said Jean.
“Well, you know what they say about getting old,” Fran chuckled. “It’s better than the alternative.” When Jean said nothing, Fran took her eyes off the road just long enough to glance over.
“Don’t you think?”
She had so little time.
Halfway home, with the afternoon sun hanging just above Jean’s passenger-side window, Cheryl sat up, awake.
“I’m hungry.”
When Jean looked back, she felt a surge of relief, because the woman she saw, even with sleep-flattened hair, was so much more like the Cheryl she’d known years before. Her eyes were clearer, she had more true colour in her cheeks – not just the grapefruity pink of washcloth abrasion – and she smiled at Jean, for the first time, as if she really knew her.
“Hi, Jean,” she said.
“Hi, Cheryl.”
“Is there any wine in the car?”
Fran said she was overdue for a pull-off, and so the women started looking for signs announcing a town that might have a nice restaurant. Fran also whispered to Jean that she didn’t think it was wise for Cheryl to stop drinking all of a sudden, since it was the sort of thing that could lead to erratic behaviour, of which Cheryl had already proven herself quite capable. And they were, after all, in a moving vehicle.
“You’re very practical, Fran,” said Jean. “My mother would have loved you.”
They were passing a sign for Priormont, population 23,896, and Fran was giving it a thumbs-up, when Jean’s phone rang again. She looked at the picture and felt sick, because it was Milt’s face. Which meant it probably wasn’t Milt, it was Serpico in a fedora. It seemed to Jean as if those detectives had stolen her husband’s face from her.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” piped Cheryl from the back seat.
“Not just now,” she said, and slipped the ringing phone into her purse.
Fran curved off the highway at the next ramp, and as they drove toward Priormont in search of a place to eat, Cheryl regaled them with stories from Jean’s youth. It was if she had risen from a sleep of decades and even the smallest event was fresh. She told stories about beloved boys, and broken bra straps, about reading Tillie Vonner’s diary, watching Dorothy Perks kiss, and the time Jean got a mouthful of dragonfly when she was bicycling down the Conmore Avenue hill. There was never a moment in Cheryl’s account of the past when the two of them were not friends, when they felt betrayed by one another, or abandoned, and when the stories were over and they were pulling into the parking lot of a tidy-looking steakhouse, Jean was more depressed than ever. Because all of her deep affection for Cheryl had come rushing back, and the thirty-seven years of friendship the two of them had lost stretched behind her like a petrified forest, agonizing in its near-beauty, its almost-life. And she wanted more than ever to do for Cheryl what she had done for Dorothy, and for Adele, and for Natalie, which time and circumstance now made impossible. She wanted to give her a moment of pure happiness that sank deep into the muscle and bone of her soul, and then save her from the pain that would surely come spilling in the moment Cheryl remembered that she was a disaster.
From the restaurant’s parking lot they made their way up a flagstone path, past the log-look exterior and a wide, plate-glass window through which Jean caught a glimpse of a fireplace. Forever, it seemed, she had wanted a home with a fireplace – the smell of wood smoke coming from chimneys in the fall always sparked in her a great longing – but it had always been denied her, because when she and Milt were house shopping, the sorts of homes that had fireplaces were the sorts they couldn’t afford. Milt had told her at the time that one day he would build her a fireplace, and of course that had never happened. Walking into the restaurant it occurred to Jean that she had lived the best years of her adult life without so many of the things she had wished for – her dear friend Cheryl, a fireplace, her mother’s spoken respect – and the combined tragedy squeezed and packed the sadness she was feeling even deeper inside her.
At the little sign asking them to wait for service they stood politely. The restaurant was not very busy, because they had arrived before the dinner rush, but even so it took a while for someone to come and seat them. Beside Jean, Cheryl was rubbing her arms as if she were cold, and her breathing was becoming panty, like a dog’s. Fran and Jean exchanged a glance that said they both knew what was happening, that it was the withdrawal and they’d better get a glass of wine into Cheryl as fast as they could. So when the waitress finally came, wearing a crisp white shirt and her hair tied back with a black ribbon, and led them to a booth with orange vinyl upholstery, the most important thing was getting in an order for drinks before she was gone. It took a minute then for Jean to notice that they’d been seated with a view of the fireplace she’d seen through the window. When she realized it, her throat became suddenly tight with emotion. Sitting near the fire, with Cheryl next to her in the booth, and Welland’s reminder echoing in her head, it seemed to Jean almost as if she were being given a taste of the life that could have been.
“This is quite nice,” said Fran, getting comfortable on the seat opposite Jean. “I think I’m hungry enough to eat a cow.” She paused, and giggled. “Jim and I were in India once, and I said the same thing and got some very sharp looks.”
Cheryl seemed unamused by Fran. She was sitting hunched and more dog-panty than ever, and in her lap she was rubbing the knuckles of her hands as if she had just punched someone. “Where’s that waitress?” she said.
“She’s coming,” said Jean, “don’t worry.” She tried to use her most calming voice, and patted Cheryl’s arm, and she could see the slightest easing of the distress in Cheryl’s face. The thought passed through Jean’s mind that if the two of them had remained close for all those lost years – if she had not abandoned her friend – it might have given Cheryl the support she needed to never become an alcoholic. She felt more protective of Cheryl in that moment than she had for any of her friends, and worse than ever about herself.
Jean’s phone rang again as the waitress arrived, and she picked it out of her purse while the drinks were being distributed. Fran took a sip of the cranberry juice she’d ordered.
“You’re very popular today,” she said. “I only wish my phone rang half as much.”
Cheryl, who was obviously not happy that her drink was the last to be served, half turned to Jean. “Well?” she snapped.
Jean said nothing. She simply stared at the ringing phone in her hands. There was no picture in the little display, which meant the call was from an unrecognized number. She never got calls from unrecognized numbers, and she was at a loss for what to do.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Cheryl. She put down her glass, which was already half empty, grabbed Jean’s phone and opened it, then she shoved it against Jean’s ear. “Speak,” she said, and went back to drinking.
Jean opened her mouth, and a second later formed the word, “Hello?”
“Is this Jean Horemarsh?” said a man’s voice.
“Yes?”
“This is Detective Rinneard again. You hung up on me before.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jean. She cleared her throat. “That was a mistake.”
“I would like to speak with you in person, Jean. It’s very important. Can you come to the police station right away? We can meet in your brother’s office.”
“Do you mean Welland’s office? Or Andrew Jr.’s?”
“I mean Chief Horemarsh’s office. I don’t know any Welland.”
Jean straightened in her seat. “I have two brothers,” she said. “Welland Horemarsh is also a police officer. Which obviously Andrew Jr. forgot to tell you.”
“Where are you now, Jean?”
“I’m on the road. About to eat a nice meal.”
Beside Jean the waitr
ess appeared and pulled out a palm-sized pad. When she saw that Jean was on the phone she turned to leave, and as she did, Cheryl lifted her glass and made pinging noises against it with her fingernail. “Actually, make it two,” said Cheryl.
“Are you alone?” said Rinneard.
“No, I’m with friends.”
There was a very deep silence at the other end of the phone.
“Jean, listen to –”
She snapped the phone shut and set it down on the table’s glossy surface.
“Lose the connection?” said Fran. She shook her head sympathetically. “We’re probably not close enough to a city.”
“Why don’t you just turn it off?” said Cheryl.
Jean looked up and smiled at them both. She realized what it meant now that the detective had called from another phone. “I might get a call from Milt,” she said. Her husband’s face had been returned to her.
“Milt?” said Cheryl. “Do you mean Milt Divverton?”
“That’s right.” Jean beamed. “We started dating after you left, and then we got married.”
“But,” Fran leaned in and spoke in a showy whisper, “they’re not together any more.”
“No, Fran, that’s not true,” said Jean. She patted the phone. “I think Milt and I are working it out.”
Fran flopped back against her vinyl seat in a display of utter relief, like someone who had learned her house had not been crushed by a mudslide. “How wonderful!” she exclaimed. “That is the best news. Because those two,” she directed this at Cheryl, “they are made for each other.”
For a moment, the three women in the booth seemed to glow in the warmth of Jean’s announcement, and Jean exercised forgiveness regarding the presumptuous thing Fran had said.
Shortly, the waitress returned with Cheryl’s second and third glasses of wine, and the women made their orders. Jean didn’t have much of an appetite, and she thought a spinach salad would be more than enough, because salads at steakhouses were always paradoxically large. Fran ordered a strip loin, cooked medium, in peppercorn sauce with a baked potato, and Cheryl chose a simple pasta. Jean thought she probably had a queasy stomach.
The waitress stopped at the serving station and picked up a grisly-looking bone-handled steak knife, which she set proudly beside Fran’s other cutlery.
“I’m surprised you’re only having a salad,” said Fran.
Jean drew her fingertip through the condensation beading against her glass of white wine. “Not very hungry,” she said. Her bright mood had been short-lived; in the last few minutes she had slipped from her lovely Milt thoughts to more of her miserable Cheryl ones. Because her mind had drifted back to the tragic situation, which was that the friend she wanted to help most in the world, the friend to whom she deeply wished to make amends, was the one friend she was going to disappoint yet again. You couldn’t escape thoughts like that. They were like water finding its level, like sad condensation trickling down the side of a glass. It seemed to Jean that the knowledge that she had failed Cheryl was going to be with her forever, like a puddle on the floor of her mind, and that whatever happened once they got back to Kotemee, and whatever happened with Milt, she could never be truly happy again.
And did she feel a tiny bit sorry for herself, as she sat in the orange vinyl booth? Probably. No one knew more vividly than her what a great blessing was the bliss that she had provided for Dorothy and Adele and Natalie, a joy that was pure and sweet and that would never dissolve into anguish and pain, the Marjorie sort of pain, just thinking about which made Jean shudder. And so as she dwelled on the misfortune of Cheryl, still drinking beside her, always drinking, she allowed herself to consider her own plight, which was almost as bad. Maybe worse in a way. Because as sad and disastrous as Cheryl was, she really had no idea how bad it was going to get. But for Jean, the knowledge was luridly clear. And in the face of it she was left to wonder, where was her moment of pure beauty, where was her gift of unalloyed bliss? Who was going to save her from the ravages to come? No one was, that was the answer. She was all alone. She was as alone, and as doomed, as Cheryl. Their fates were entwined. Indeed it seemed to Jean, as she glanced up and caught sight again of the logs burning gold against the blackened surround of the fireplace she could never have, that the only thing that could give her true joy now, a joy worthy of her own Last Poem, would be giving the same to her friend. And because Cheryl was miserable and there was no time to do anything about it, that could never happen.
And that was when Cheryl set down her wine glass, let out a deep breath with her eyes closed, and said the most remarkable thing. “Oh, God,” she said with a sigh. “I’m so happy to be going home.”
“I’m sure you are,” said Fran.
The little hairs on the back of Jean’s neck began to prickle.
“What did you say, Cheryl?”
“I said I’m so happy.” She pushed her hair behind her ear and looked at Jean, and leaned over to wrap her arms around Jean’s shoulders. “Thank you, thank you,” said Cheryl, giving her a sloppy, urgent squeeze. “I don’t know what made you come looking for me, Jean. But I’m so glad you did. I’ve been so miserable, for months. And now I’m not any more, because you’re here, and … I’m going home.”
When Cheryl leaned back again she used her napkin to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m a little emotional. Maybe I should just visit the loo.”
Jean was so lost in thought and possibility that she didn’t twig, immediately, that she needed to move to let Cheryl out of the booth. It was Fran giving a little cough that prompted Jean to slide clear. And as she stood, watching her good friend, her rediscovered friend, making her way a little unsteadily to the washroom, Jean racked her brain and looked around, searching.
“Jean?” said Fran.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. Her eyes drifted, still searching, to the place setting in front of Fran, to the glass of cranberry juice with traces of lipstick on the rim, to the side plate and the salad fork and the bone-handled steak knife.
“Fran,” said Jean, grabbing the handles of her bag, “you stay here. I’m just going to check on Cheryl.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Three tables away, their waitress was busy taking orders from a young family with a black-haired infant in a high chair. A manager dressed in a stiff shirt and striped tie stood twenty feet away near the entrance to the kitchen. The serving station was deserted, so no one saw Jean pick up a steak knife as she walked past, and slip it into her purse.
It wasn’t the perfect solution, she knew. But this was likely her only chance. Cheryl had actually said she was happy – for Cheryl, this was surely something of a peak – and the situation called for improvisation.
She pushed open the heavy door of the washroom. A short, dim passageway led to the main area lined with stalls on one side and sinks on the other, where the walls were covered in a mottled grey tile, and a cool, unflattering light fell from bulbs recessed in the ceiling above. A silver-haired woman – about Marjorie’s age, Jean guessed – leaned against the sink counter with her face close to the mirror and applied a dark pink to lips drawn tight over her teeth. Jean scanned the rest of the echoey room, dipping her head slightly to check under the four stalls, and saw Cheryl’s feet at the far end. Jean knew she couldn’t just stand there, the old woman was already glancing at her through the mirror, so she entered the near stall, removed the serrated knife from her purse, and perched on the edge of the seat.
The old woman took an inordinate amount of time at the sink. And she made a lot of hum-humming noises as she finished her lips, noises that she probably couldn’t, herself, even hear. Jean tried not to imagine the disease that had very likely already begun eating its way through the woman’s insides, but it was too easy to picture her face, mere putty over bone, when the final days came, and the inhuman sounds she would make then. All Jean could do was hope for the woman’s sake that whatever took her would be quick, and that her ch
ildren would be spared the duty of witnessing her agony.
Sitting there, waiting, Jean girded herself. It was going to be different, the thing she planned. It was going to be quite tricky. She wished she’d had time to practise, because it was the sort of thing you didn’t want to get wrong. Closing her eyes, she tried to do what athletes did, which was to visualize success in her mind. Her stance, that was easy – a warm embrace from behind, her cheek pressed against the side of Cheryl’s head. She tried to picture the motion she would use, the way a baseball player might imagine his swing. And her version of the ball going over the fence … hurray! … that was a vision of happy Cheryl, her eyes going suddenly wide, and the light within them dimming, softly but certainly, even as Jean’s own sight – an instant, a stroke behind – began to fade.
Milt … she thought of Milt, even though he wasn’t part of her vision, and her brothers, too, all of them saddened and confused. What could possibly have been going through her mind? Well, never mind. This was one time she didn’t have to explain or justify. Nobody needed to understand but her. Was it too much to ask for a moment of pure elation, and then nothing else?
The old woman’s heels finally sounded a diminishing clip-clip against the tile floor, and the heavy door’s hinges groaned. And when a sudden roar of flushing water came from Cheryl’s stall, Jean slipped quietly out of hers, hurried down the little passageway to the washroom door, and locked it.
When she returned, with the knife’s bone handle in her grip, she found Cheryl already at the far sink. As Jean watched from a few feet away, she washed her hands and then bent to splash water on her face. That was the perfect opportunity, and Jean recognized it as such. She came up behind, squeezing the handle of the knife, her heart jumping in anticipation of what she was going to do, for both of them. To the sound of running water she ran through it all one more time in her mind, a quick replay of triumph – stance, swing, home run, yay! – and waited for her friend to rise.