Street Symphony

by Rachel Wyatt

  “I’ll still speak to you,” she said.

  After she’d gone, after he’d listened to her talking about her new responsibilities and her rise in pay, that “I’ll still speak to you” cut through his mind like a knife. It pierced him to the core. He, who had in his time supervised the construction of buildings and bridges, had become less than the girl who managed the kitchen department of a low-price warehouse.

  He watched her go out to the street and sighed, “Let it go, boy.” He realized he’d spoken the words aloud so he said them again, more softly, to himself.

  Mary Jo and Susan always bought a large latte each and a biscotti to share. Perhaps they’d been to Italy. They had the look. A place in Tuscany on the side of a sunny hill. The sea. Lucca. They would have visited Puccini’s house and most likely played operatic CDs in the car.

  “I’ve mostly been attracted to the wrong kind of man,” he heard Susan say.

  He’d been the selector in his time, the picker. Twice. Once, blinded by curly hair and perfect teeth, he’d fallen into a trap but escaped before it closed on him. The second time, reaching out beyond his perceived range of possibility, he’d been amazed at the, “Yes I will, Arthur. Yes, I absolutely will.”

  Ellie came to the table and smiled as she sat down. She said nothing and Arthur wasn’t about to ask what she wanted with that fellow who, he now realised, was the developer. None of his business. But he would’ve liked to know all the same.

  “The way they build nowadays,” he said. “Wouldn’t have been allowed in my day.” Then he remembered the Towers and held his tongue.

  She never looked unkempt, Ellie, in spite of the stained jeans and oversized shirt. Long, dark hair in a swath over her right shoulder. Walking shoes that looked too big but they made them that way now. Tons more shoe than foot. Whatever happened to moccasins?

  “What are you doing at Christmas?” he asked, and bit his tongue

  He half expected tears but she didn’t cry. He hovered over the word expectations and knew that he had none. Jazzy would be off somewhere with her latest boyfriend. Graham and Ed served turkey dinners to the homeless in the soup kitchen downtown. The café would be closed on the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth. Long ago, there’d been the excitement of the morning, the gifts. And the fun of buying things for her. The Christmas Day they’d spent in bed. He put those scenes on hold and stood up, reaching for his cane. “Got to get to the office,” he said.

  Here in the Caffè Italia, the customers had their lives invented for them or made them up as they went along. It was the way of it. He considered his day; the spread of all the hours till bedtime were laid out like paving stones and he would hop from one to another. Now till 9.30, another coffee in the Smoky Bean. Ten till twelve, buy something for dinner and tidy the apartment. Twelve to one, lunch. One to two, rest. Three to four, sort out stuff for the Heart and Stroke charity walk. Four onwards, tea and the crossword, surfing the Internet, TV, dinner, bed. And so on and so on and so on. He poured his coffee into a takeout cup and covered it with a lid. After all, these people only existed when he was here. By leaving the premises, he could blow them away like so much dandelion fluff, and that included Ellie.

  He walked around in the chill of early morning, sipping his warm drink. A homeless man was lying asleep on a blanket in the doorway of an office, his possessions in a shopping cart beside him. That could be me, Arthur thought. Could be me. What have I done to deserve a pension and the right to sit in a café every morning? Cheryl had changed. Ellie had no need of him. Graham and Ed would invite him to their place for New Year and he would take unwanted gifts and be shy because he didn’t speak the same language as his son any more. They were great guys but their attitude to life, “sentimental socialism” he called it but not out loud, lacked a sense of reality. So there would be affection but no communication. Surely these weren’t tears. It was unseemly to snivel in the street. There was no funeral here. Get on with it, Arthur.

  He skipped his visit to the Smoky Bean and went home to study the maps again. It would be a long drive to the Yukon but something called him back to the place where he’d been most happy: the time before Anderton Towers, before guilt had moved into his soul. After he’d tidied up, he decided to walk into town, buy some fish for dinner, roam around a little. Exercise was good for his hip, the doctor said. He set off across the path through the park, considering his plan. No point in heading north till late May next year, but then – he looked up and there was Ellie walking towards him pushing a wheelbarrow with what looked like a lump of stone in it. She had gone mad. He was in his final dream. A Bergman movie had developed round him. The cold park. The homeless man earlier. And that stone, maybe it was the fatal lump of debris that slipped down from the tenth floor of the high-rise. She was taunting him, reminding him of his nightmare; the dead passerby on the sidewalk, the woman holding her face and howling. Or was it a head in the cart? He was frozen in place for a second. Was there a nearby guillotine? Had he moved out of time into eighteenth-century Paris?

  He walked towards Gorse Street as fast as he could, hobbling, afraid. The traffic and street sounds reassured him. Ellie was making a rockery at her house. That had to be it. Sense returned. The figure pushing the wheelbarrow was a city gardener, most likely, and not Ellie at all. He tried to laugh at his own foolishness but was still shaken. Tomorrow, he might tell Ellie how dumb he’d been and would by then have figured out an excuse for running away just in case it was her, and not someone of a similar shape.

  He wandered towards the stores considering Dementia and Death, those twin Dreads. He had to plan for the certain one. Cold, hard ground or fiery furnace? It was time to make that choice clear in his will. Scatter my ashes in the Denali, please. That would give those two guys a chance to see one of the most beautiful places on earth and maybe bring his son closer to him than he’d been in life.

  “This is what I want,” he heard a woman saying. “That’s what I want.” She seemed to be addressing the world at large. When he came closer, he saw that she was pointing at a forty-inch flat screen TV in the store window. Yet, at least from the back, smart brown coat, red scarf, high-heeled boots, she looked as though she could have afforded to buy one or even two. Then he saw the real object of her desire. She was looking at a car: A convertible, a low-slung, two-seater Mercedes!

  “Nice,” he said.

  “Uncle Arthur!” she shrieked.

  Jazzy. His niece. Had she always been this large and this loud? She’d been a cute kid, this middle-aged woman, a really pretty and gentle sort of girl, and had seemed to love him then.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Fine. Fine,” she answered, still hysterical.

  He felt a sudden onset of responsibility that Clary would have warned him to ignore.

  “Look, Jazzy,” he said and made it sound tentative, a non-invitation. He could hear in his voice a repelling, keeping-at-bay tone, but before he knew it, he was asking her to come and have lunch with him at the fish place near the Harbour. He’d fill her up with carbs and maybe settle her down.

  “I don’t usually shout out in the street,” she said. “I suppose it’s because of Christmas.”

  “It’s only November.”

  “Uncle Arthur! So practical. Did you see that car? If I had one of those I’d be just, well, absolutely happy.”

  Oh, child. What has brought you to this?

  Aloud he said, “Remember the fisherman’s wife.”

  “I’ve been meaning to call you,” she said. “I want you to come and have dinner with me and James one Sunday.”

  Any specific Sunday? A date? This month? Next month? Next year? Ever? He didn’t ask. Instead he said, “ So what about lunch today at Harbour Seafood? ”

  “I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

  He watched her run up the steps of an office building and hoped she would cause no mayhem. He hadn’t seen her since the bus incident two years ago and all that time she’d been “meaning to ca
ll”. He went back to look at the screen in the window and then stepped inside the showroom. The magnificent metal animal was a silver-grey wonder. Alone in the centre of the floor, its sleek body rested on wheels with shiny hubs. The top was down. The dash held a grand mystery of dials and numbers. He patted the leather upholstery and then, as if his touch had released the spring of a trap door, a man appeared beside him. And the man, even as he looked at Arthur’s coat and worn shoes, did not despise him: Millionaires came in all guises.

  The car door was opened. Arthur sat in the driver’s seat at the man’s command.

  “I’m Jeff, by the way. She’s lovely, isn’t she?” Jeff pressed a button and the top quietly emerged and covered them.

  “A beautiful machine, yes. What’s she like on gas?” As if, assuming he could afford this thing, he’d care about the price of fuel!

  “You’d be surprised. Really quite economical. And good terms if you’re interested.”

  “The basic price?”

  Arthur knew that it must be around a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, maybe more. A wealthy man wouldn’t need to ask. He saw himself driving the Mercedes to Jazzy’s apartment and handing her the key. Merry Christmas, sweetheart. He could be a magician. A wizard. He refused to think “fairy” even with wings and wand because. Well, because.

  Never repress a generous impulse. Who had said that? Sell everything you own, mortgage your future, and buy half a car for your niece. He walked out with the brochure Jeff had given him and sat in the restaurant reading the details, the fine print. An airscarf would blow a gentle warm breeze round Jazzy’s head and shoulders so that she could continue driving with the top down well into the fall. She would pick him up and take him for rides, both of them wearing wide-brimmed hats. She would drive him to Whitehorse in the spring.

  The waiter poured water into two glasses.

  “Have you decided, sir?”

  “I’ll wait for my niece.”

  There was a clatter in the restaurant. A group of men came in talking and laughing, making a great noise as if they owned the place and were the only people who mattered. Arthur saw himself in a similar group, only nine years ago. How easily that life had sloughed him off like a spare skin.

  When Jazzy arrived, he welcomed her with a hug. His erstwhile magnanimity had pleased him, given him a warm glow. He pushed the brochure underneath the chair cushion. So here he was, on this November Monday, sitting with an attractive, lively woman, and looking out at the sea. The Clipper was coming in from Seattle. It was an all right day. This so aptly named Jazzy was someone who knew of his life. She knew what he had been. She’d known him in the days of his importance, the days when he mattered in the world. She gave him his due.

  “Would you like a glass of wine? “ he asked.

  “Are we celebrating something?”

  “Yes,” he said but couldn’t tell her exactly what.

  She leaned across to kiss his cheek. It was enough.

  The waiter wrote down their order for halibut and fries and two glasses of Chardonnay and said, “Coming right up.”

  Jazzy called after him to say she’d like a salad too, please.

  “You know what, Jazzy. Maybe not that car. You’d have to be a multi-millionaire or charging it to expenses to be driving one of those, but I could buy you a small one.” Those few words erased his savings, his trip to the Yukon, even his mornings at the café. Without tips, his two-cafés-a-day habit came to about thirty-five dollars a week. Every month, a hundred and forty dollars, and that didn’t account for extra days. So how much in a year? He was amazed. He’d never done the reckoning before.

  His niece was taking a deep, deep, breath perhaps to prevent a scream of delight and gratitude. Finally she said, “This is costing me, Uncle Arthur. I am trying not to say this. But – ” She looked beyond him out the window at a seaplane gliding along the water. “You’re doing it again,” she said when she turned back to him. “I know what this is about. You could – well, you could be wearing better shoes.”

  For God’s sake, she was tearing up now.

  “And you could be living in a nicer place. A condo downtown.”

  The waiter brought their wine and Arthur picked up his glass and drank from it before he said, “But I’m okay. I’m okay.” His heart seemed to expand and then contract without reason. No one in all his life, as he recalled, all his adult life, all the time anyway since he was thirty, had treated him in this way. She was excavating the business of his life just because he’d offered her a gift.

  “I’ve been seeing a therapist,” she said. “And I’ve learnt a few things. I know about transferred guilt. Well, I don’t want your guilt transferred to me because then I’d feel guilty too.”

  “But that’s not it,” Arthur said, wanting to cry himself but not following her logic. “I felt – I felt generous. I wanted to give you something.”

  Jazzy reached for his hand. “You’ve never got over it, really. Aunt Clary said you took all the blame to yourself. The piece of wall that killed the guy. It was not your fault. The inquiry – they never mentioned you. And the woman that got hurt. She’s okay. I see her sometimes at the supermarket.”

  “I went to the hospital to talk to her but she’d left and they wouldn’t give me her address. I looked for her. I know I wasn’t there that day but it was my responsibility. That building. It seemed to have a curse on it, the whole project. One thing after another. And the guy who died was so young.”

  Jazzy touched his hand and said, “I know.”

  There was a moment of silence before she went on, “And I know something else. After lunch, we’ll go back and look at the car. That’s all. We’ll look at it. We’ll admire it. Because it’s a fine thing, a very fine thing. “

  He managed a smile. She got that poetic touch of language from her Irish mother.

  “You know me, Uncle Arthur. I get excited. The car was a dream for a moment. And you’re not to buy me a car. Our Jeep will last for ages. You could live to be a hundred and you’ll need your money, so let’s have another glass of wine and then,” she went on, “we’re going to buy you a pair of lovely, guilt-free shoes.”

  Later, he walked home carrying his old sneakers in a bag, treading lightly and avoiding dirt, and considering his epitaph. Arthur Brown, mourned by his niece, Jazzy, loved by his wife, Clary, died doing what he liked best: living. He leaves an only son and son-in-law, and will be missed for a week or two in the Caffè Italia.

  4. Jazz Festival

  As she manoeuvred the Honda out of the café parking lot, Muriel was singing, “One fine day.” This, she hoped, she knew, was going to be her fine day, the first of many. The so-far legless Santa on the window made her think of Scrooge after the third visitation: Christmas was going to be different this year. She drove by the hairdresser’s and wondered why she’d never patronized that small salon instead of letting Gilles charge the earth for what any other stylist could have done just as well for much less. Sheer snobbery.

  She hadn’t expected to be made Financial Supervisor, Large Personal Accounts, before she was forty. The promotion, after only three years with the bank, had given her great pleasure, and she’d accepted the responsibility with humility and a promise to continue the good work done by her predecessor. (Only later had they discovered Amber’s habit of transferring little sums of various clients’ money to her own account.) The pleasure had worn off in the first six months, and now she was beginning to wonder whether she’d drunk from a poisoned cup. All right, so she wasn’t Chairman of the Board or even Provincial Manager but, given the size of her office, the blue-and-green wool carpeting on the floor, a second chair, the three computer screens, and access to the vaults, she surely had a right to a measurable amount of respect and esteem.

  Lately, when she went to the communal printer, Muriel thought she heard Mahood, the junior investment advisor, refer to her as “Mu” or, as it came out, “moo”. Occasionally she thought she’d heard mooing when she walked through th
e open area to the manager’s office. True she was not small, but neither was she of a size that justified being called a cow.

  I do my job well, she assured herself. Just last week Hodgson told her that had it not been for Indira getting that client to invest his savings in their Two4One plan, she, Muriel, would have been employee of the month for a record third time. She put her briefcase down beside the desk, set her Thermos and muffin on the bookshelf and woke up the computers.

  New York was into its day and the Dow was down. In London, the FTSE had closed on red. In Asia, the markets showed a similar trend. She stared at the figures. The graphs resembled her life, so what did she have to do to raise her own stock value? Her mother hinted almost daily that without Muriel, her loving, caring daughter, she would be leading a sad, lonely life. But her mother lived on irony and was possibly lying and, though not really mercenary, would like her loving, caring daughter to keep on paying her share of expenses.

  She checked her hair in the mirror and quickly looked away. Eight years of being a blond had brought her neither a gentleman nor respect in the workplace. She shook the new dark strands on her head and hurried to the meeting set up to promote team spirit and enhance efficiency when the staff might have used the time more efficiently by preparing for the day ahead. She sat down beside Wayne and leaned forward as if she were taking in every one of Jack Hodgson’s words. It was a trick she’d perfected at school. When she looked back at those days, she saw the good pupil who appeared to pay attention. She saw a girl whose only friend, Thea, also won prizes, played no games and was thought to be well-behaved. They were false paragons, two of a kind, and few of their classmates invited them to parties.

  “Are you with us, Muriel?”

  “Of course.”