Street Symphony

by Rachel Wyatt

  Josh emerged and called out, “How was it, Mom? A triumph?”

  “People loved it,” she said. “They want more.”

  “Great. I’m glad, Mom.” He returned to his own shelter.

  “Oliver,” she said to the cat, “Fresh salmon for you tomorrow. There’ll be money. More work if I want it. But what’s the use if no one understands?”

  The cat looked at her as if to remind her that Chekhov saw his plays as comedies. Did the poor man turn in his grave every time an audience stood up to applaud a dreary production of Uncle Vanya like the one she’d seen last week? Probably the great writer merely sighed and thought, let people make of it what they will. There’d always be one person who understood. And maybe one was enough. She began to draw the outline of the shattered house, Margery’s house, and to think of the child who was saved while her parents perished. It would be three-dimensional again but black and white, a scene of devastation. The piece would be called Next Door. People who got it would know exactly what it meant.

  Caffè Italia

  1. Early Morning

  Fiona liked to get a “start of the world” but it was rarely “majestic” at 6:30 a.m. A sliver of moon hung low over the rooftops and streetlamps cast cones of light on the damp paving stones. At least it wasn’t raining.

  She should have put on something smarter for this encounter and looked like a woman of consequence, whatever that meant. She pulled her raincoat around her to hide her old shirt and patched jeans, and smoothed her hair. But this wasn’t to be a moment of seduction; it was High Noon with Monsieur Fromage cast as a guy in a black hat. Behind her, instead of a rickety saloon, were the windows of the fabric store and the deli. Beyond the florists, the dim light from the café kitchen showed up the half-finished Xmas design on the window; outsize Santa, dog-like reindeer. Next to the café was the health store with its display of herbs and pills and whose owner, Franco, would have advised against indulging in any of the café’s products or, indeed, much of what was sold in the small supermarket on the corner. This brief row was hardly a strip mall; it was merely a strip, stretching between Maple and Lark streets. One short block.

  Three mornings last week, the man had parked his grey BMW over a white line, taking up two spaces and preventing Sara Habbard from leaving her car in the end spot as she’d done for the past six years. The café didn’t open till 7:00 but Sara usually arrived at 6:50 and the kindly barista, whichever one it was that day, would let her in and pour her a mug of coffee. She’d sit in her corner by the door reading the newspapers, little noticed by the other customers, and slip out again around 7:30 to her first appointment. She rarely spoke to anyone, but on Friday she’d told Fiona about the man’s bullying, dismissive, behaviour. Small, and not likely to invest in the costly brie and paté on offer in the man’s delicatessen, Sara, at first glance, perhaps appeared eccentric. A retired teacher, she was now a volunteer who drove the elderly and infirm to their medical appointments. Her crime, according to the man, was that she’d annoyed the woman who arrived early to take deliveries in his store.

  The handicrafts store window, always lit, was still offering pumpkins, spiders, filmy cobwebs made of wool, masks for small monsters. Their Christmas goods were probably still being knitted, woven or tatted by the talented. A bus went by, its lights silhouetting profiles of early workers heading downtown. A blast of music screamed from the open window of a passing SUV, the driver perhaps deciding that since he was up, everyone else should be awake. A smartly dressed woman walked by holding the hand of a reluctant child to be dropped off at Granny’s or daycare. It was a safe area, this, and the chairs and tables outside the café remained on the sidewalk overnight under the canopy. They didn’t get wet, just cold. Fiona didn’t want to be caught sitting down when the enemy appeared. She wished she’d worn a hat. She hoped he’d arrive soon. It was chilly work being an avenger.

  Two spandexed women ran past. She moved to let them go by. Goodmorning. Chilly today. At least it’s not raining. Fiona imagined them as statues, action figures, expressing what exactly? The desire for good health? The human dynamic? The moving thinker? The day, for now, belonged to the few. In another hour the buses would be full and traffic would add gasoline fumes to the unclean smell of dead leaves, stale breath, yesterday’s leftovers.

  She heard the smooth sound of the expensive, late-model car as the wheels, carefully guided, straddled the white line once more. The driver turned off the engine. He opened the car door and stepped out. He reached into the trunk and took out an oblong box. He turned. Fiona looked at his rough morning face. She let him set foot on the sidewalk before she began.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Hm?”

  “It’s about the woman who usually parks here.”

  “So?”

  “She doesn’t like to park on the street and she likes this end space because then she doesn’t get trapped between two cars.”

  “That’s her problem.”

  “She doesn’t cause any trouble.”

  “She bothers my assistant.”

  “How?”

  “If she doesn’t like it, she can take the bus,” he said.

  Fiona felt her nails dig into the palm of her right hand as her thumb closed down on the knuckle of her first finger. Unusual strength flowed into her arm as she drew it back. Sensing attack, the man stepped backwards and fell onto the chair behind him. The two of them stayed frozen in place for a moment and in that moment, Fiona knew that the aggression she felt, that power, that impulse to strike when up till now she had never hit anyone in her whole life, contained a multitude of targets. The blow, if it had come, would also have been aimed at Roger who had, for a time, destroyed her self-confidence; at Doctor Hanson who had misdiagnosed her sister’s cancer; at the kid who’d left his cigarette burning on her couch; at certain members of the current government. And that only named a few.

  If she’d followed through, if her fist had landed on that man’s face, she might have broken his jaw. And he might have hit her back even harder. South of the border, this could have been a moment when each of them pulled out a legal, concealed weapon, him from his belt, her from a pocket in a specially designed shoulder bag, and life would have depended on the speed and luck of the draw. His body lying on the sidewalk. Your honour, he was a bully. Oh well then, he deserved it. Go free.

  He stood up. Slowly, her fingers relaxed.

  “I own these two stores.” He spoke the words as if they were standing on Madison Avenue or Robson Street, and not in an area where none of the houses was worth more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. There were no multi-millionaires here. He seemed to expect a measure of awe. She saw him then. Saw him for the man he was. A possessor. She didn’t know where he’d begun, how or why he’d bought his first wheel of cheese, his first bottle of cold-pressed virgin olive oil. She looked at his black coat, his smart pants, his shiny shoes. She took in his unhandsome face, sparse brown hair, and saw back in time a boy who didn’t share his toys, a boy who perhaps didn’t have many toys. And then she snapped out of it. This was her habit, her bad habit, feeling sympathy where none was deserved. He was a grown fifty-year-old treating a good woman badly and she was here, a cowboy in white hat and Levis, to speak up for that woman.

  He opened the door to his store and was about to go inside. She followed him.

  “We don’t open till ten,” he said.

  “So what’s your problem?” She nodded at the parking area, empty except for his car.

  Oh dear! He looked at her again and his eyes were those of a man for whom Christmas is a sad day when, through no fault of his own, he has to keep the doors of his stores closed. If she wasn’t careful, any moment now, she’d be asking him if his mother had liked his brother best. That was if he had any siblings. There was such a lack of humour in his eyes, such a lack of perspective, that she could only wonder about his family life. And what did he see when he looked at her? Frustrated. Hasn’t been laid in how long?
Middle-aged. She wanted to shout back to his imagined thoughts. I have a life. I’m not looking for sex right now.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business,” he said.

  He went inside his property.

  Instead of going straight to the café Fiona leant on the trunk of the maple, most of its leaves gone in Friday’s gale, and took a deep breath. She who had never hit anyone in her entire life had come close to violence. Her hand was shaking. And at the same time, she felt a small thrill in knowing that she might have punched that man. She watched the woman who lived on the opposite corner run across the road, wearing slippers and dressing gown, and drop a full plastic bag into the garbage bin on the corner. Fishy remains perhaps.

  There was no need to mention this encounter to Sara or to anyone. It had been a waste of time. She could, of course, come early every day and stand in the end parking spot to keep it free. Her few minutes of anger had been about a piece of ground six feet by twelve. Ridiculous really. And yet! And yet, a few weeks ago she’d yelled “No!” in response to the words on the placard that strange woman carried around town. Are you content to be nothing? Certainly not!

  Dave, another early coffee drinker, arrived and attached his bike to the metal bar.

  “Been up all night?”

  “Feels like it,” she said.

  And now, here was Sara walking towards the café. She’d parked her car on Maple Street round the corner and would worry because she couldn’t keep an eye on it. Fiona sighed and left her opponent to his chores, whatever they were: Scraping the mould off the cheddar, moving the oldest bottles of olive oil to the front, stacking expensive bottles of cherries in liquor. She glanced back. He’d come outside and was staring after her. She moved a little closer to him, looked into his eyes and smiled. It was useless to talk to a block of a man who no doubt had all the weight of business in his head with little room for anything else. But Fiona realized that he, who likely never gave anything away for free, had given her a great gift. She turned away again, she raised two fingers to her mouth and blew smoke off her imaginary gun before she re-holstered it.

  “I’ll have a latte this morning, please,” she said to Terry when Sara had taken her mug to her usual seat.

  “You won the lottery?” the boy asked.

  “Kind of,” she replied.

  The only Italian notes in the Caffè Italia were the jar of biscotti and the word written in silver on the coffee machine. Jurgen, the owner, simply said he liked the name. The customers were beginning to drift in, bringing cold air with them when they opened the door. Arthur would be here soon. He’d moved from Vancouver to retire and seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders some days. His deafness led to him calling her Ellie when she’d told him her name was Fiona Ellis. He’d built a life for her too. She would for now continue to be sad Ellie, mother of Marybell and Lincoln. One day she would break it to him gently that they were cats, killed by smoke when her apartment caught fire. She’d cried that morning, cried out of guilt because humans were supposed to save their pets from disaster. And Lincoln had been hers for twelve years. She’d been too upset and incoherent at the time to explain the truth to a stranger.

  She hadn’t come into the café for weeks after that bleak day. Too busy sorting out the mess, moving. And by the time she returned, there were other things to talk about and she’d accepted Arthur’s unspoken sympathy with unspoken gratitude. When she showed interest in his travellers’ tales, and pretended to believe in the ‘office’ he had to get to, he’d begun to share her table and she hadn’t minded. It filled a gap.

  There was a comfort in the daily appearance of the regulars, as if life could go on like this forever. Soft rock, Gloria Estefan this morning, added background sound to the start of the café’s day. As she came in, Kate nodded a greeting and put her backpack on her chair by the fireplace.

  Fiona looked out the café window and saw the cheese guy moving his car into a single space. This man, a man she’d crossed paths with a few times but had never seen, that head, that face, the past she’d endowed it with, all were hers now and she couldn’t wait to get to her studio and make the first sketch. And perhaps he was kind to his mother or his cat. Maybe he too had seen something, a hint of her thoughts, a picture of himself in her eyes. Who knew? From now on, whether he liked it or not, she would always smile at him when they passed, and he would take her smile for the gratitude of a simple woman and would not smile back.

  2. Here. Or to go

  My name is Kate Gillian Brent. Tikki-tikki-tap-tap. In comes the blond on her high heels. But oh, what has become of her? Previous upswept golden hair is now a neat, dark cap. Previous cross look replaced by a smile. She actually thanks Terry. She’s up to something. Or has she finally dipped her toes in the Sea of Awareness? Arthur moves closer but is rebuffed. Hardly a rebuff, though, as she pays no attention to him. And Fiona is sitting with Another. Arthur is Distressed/Dispossessed. Poetry in repetitive sounds. Painter hides in corner, almost lying down. Afraid of her? I wouldn’t want to rile the now ex-blondie either. She hands her Thermos to Terry and waits. Up gets old Arthur. He asks how I am. “How ya doing, Kate?” I tell him another lie. “Fine, thank you.” Do I feel a song coming on? John leans over and offers me his paper. He knows I’m not okay. When he gets up to go to the counter for his second cup, he puts a heavy hand on my shoulder, expressing silent sympathy. I refrain from taking his hand and biting it. The day will come.

  One mug of coffee lasts me the hour. Final drops are cold. Could afford a refill. But won’t. Some places it’s free. The refill. Two years now since I followed Arthur in here planning to shout, J’accuse! Didn’t shout. Kept quiet. My life changed and I acquired the café habit. This is my scene now and I will preserve the peaceful atmosphere.

  Arthur fancies ex-blond but is too old. He inclines towards her as if blown in that direction. She doesn’t look at him or at me. She cares not, neither does she spin, though that is likely untrue. She tippy-taps off to spin straw, the straw off her head maybe, into false gold. But who am I? Kate Ignored. Kate Ignorant. Kate Furious. That’s me. At any rate Blondie who is now Brunette drives a three-year-old Honda cream sedan with a sunroof. I know that car. A good machine. Not showy. Fair mileage.

  Arthur doesn’t recognize me and I’m not ready to deal with him yet. I recognized him from the photos in the paper and the face on TV at the time of the accident: the project manager. He’d been absent that day but was responsible for the safety of the site. The painter’s back at work. Proportions are wild. Fiona could teach him a thing or two. He’s a plain sort of guy. Maybe forty. Not-quite-made-it-yet written in his bearing. Still some hope maybe of a great leap forward. Dark hair. Broody look. Grandparents, parents, from Ireland, Brittany or some other Celtic spot perhaps.

  The two noisy women who look as though they’ve been to the gym come in now. One of them angry. And then the girl I’ve seen in the big box store when I go for my giant bottle of Tylenol arrives. She chats to Arthur and he loves it.

  I don’t bring my iPad here or my cellphone with its little qwerty keyboard. These folk are nosy and feel they’re entitled to information, so I write on a scrap of paper as if I’m making a shopping list. Anything interesting here? Hardly likely, you’d think. But look around. Local artists get to hang pictures for sale, including the fellow messing up the window with red and green and glitter. That’s what Christmas is now. Red and green and glitter. And food. Muffins are made fresh here. Cookies. Croissants. Coffee. Ordinaries of life. Staff. of. Life. That’s what there is in here, in this small container of people.

  Yesterday in the doctor’s waiting room, I blogged: She sat aware that at any moment her life, when he said what he had to say, could be shattered. Five long words that meant cancer is spreading from breast to lymph nodes. Meant death. My blog-pals like my cryptic style.

  Once I came here later in the day when the chairs are occupied by a different cast entirely, old couples, mothers with kids, teachers on t
heir way home, students writing. But we, the early customers, make the non-Italian Caffè Italia what it is. Sara for instance is often here before 7:00 a.m., before the door opens – one of the desperate. We bring our memories with us, our anxieties, our unhappiness, our small triumphs, into this one small room at the start of the day. Scientists could seal us up in a time capsule. This was our world on Friday, November 19, 2010 at 7:25 a.m. These were our thoughts.

  My main thought today: I negotiated my dealings with the world badly and ended up a loser. Thus I am here every morning looking for a little bit of comfort and a splash of cream in my coffee, and trying to figure out a way to explain myself to anyone who might care – like my daughter. Oh yes, it was arrogant of me to take off with my slight qualifications and think I could be useful in a place where famine and death ruled. But I danced and sang on the way to what I perceived as my future.

  Developer starts like devil. We didn’t have a meeting and agree to shun him but, without discussion, we, Caffè Italia, share a dislike of what his company, an Asian conglomerate based on the Mainland, is planning to do in this town. So no one says hello, how are you? No one even gives him a bit of a smile. He is unaware of this disapproval. And wouldn’t care. Broad-chested fellow, wide face, clean-shaven, pleased with himself. Spends his time thinking of money I shouldn’t wonder, and doesn’t give a damn about ruining a place of quiet beauty.

  Heigh-ho, what do we know! Friendly chat between Fiona and the bad man. Looks as if she’s trying to sell him something. He doesn’t push her away. Shakes her hand. Takes his shiny Thermos full of dark roast. Leaves. Arthur looks like a jilted lover. So anyway, this place. Artwork on the walls. Landscapes of nearby beauty spots. A still life. Artificial flowers on the tables. Four armchairs near the fireplace, one of them mine. Six tables with chairs spread around. Bench and tables along the wall. Toilet down the hallway there. Two tables outside for smokers. And in comes the kindly one. I call her that because she has a nice smile, but I sense cruelty, pleasure in torment. She will sit with me sensing, wrongly, loneliness. Fortunately she only comes in now and then. “Hello Hilary. Cold out there.”