The Miracles of Ordinary Men

by Amanda Leduc

  “Of course.” Lilah, Roberta, Timothy — they’re all fine. They say good night and hang up at the same time, and miles away she imagines that Roberta folds her right hand in the crook of her left elbow, just as Lilah is doing right now.

  —

  “Listen to this,” Timothy says. He presses down on the pages of a book and ignores the food Lilah spreads out on the grass. More apples, more sandwiches, more chocolate. Fruit Roll-Ups. Juice boxes, and plastic pointy straws. A careful picnic. “Rilke. ‘Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.’”

  “Where did the book come from?”

  He looks away from her, hurt. He is so thin. “The library. I got it at the library.”

  “You don’t have a library card.”

  He won’t meet her eyes. “I go there, sometimes, and sit. The librarian gave it to me because I look at it all the time.”

  She takes a juice box and struggles to manoeuver the straw out of its plastic. Her fingers are stiff and cold. “So. Infinite distances.”

  He nods. “It made me think of you.”

  “Why?”

  “You,” he says again. “You and me.”

  She stabs the juice box with her straw. “I’m right here.”

  “I know.” He closes the book and puts it down. “But — you’re not, at the same time. You never were.” He breathes hard, and his hands shake like those of an old man. “You understand, Lilah, don’t you?”

  “No,” she says, even though it isn’t true. “No, I do not fucking understand.”

  “Don’t swear,” he says.

  “Well?” She throws a hand out for emphasis and the juice from the box dribbles onto the ground. Her scarf slips. “I come to find you. And you tell me the same goddamn thing every time. I need something, Timmy. I’m not the one who’s not trying.”

  He ignores her. “What’s that?”

  “What?” Her hand goes to the scarf automatically, hiding the bruises beneath. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “That’s not nothing.”

  “We’re not talking about me.” She clears her throat. “Anyway, I have to tell you something. About Mom.”

  Timothy nods. “There’s a lump.”

  She can’t hide her shock. “You talked to her?”

  He shakes his head. “I knew.” His voice sounds strange. “I just knew.”

  Lilah pushes her unease away. “It’s not good, Timmy.”

  He still won’t look at her. “Cancer’s never good.”

  “I mean, really not good. She’s going into the hospital.” Roberta, alone in the house on the other side of the water. “She wants to see you.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “Stop swearing!” and this time his voice goes up. “Anyway — I don’t see you over there.”

  “I’m going over,” she says, and she can tell by the way his shoulders slump that he believes her. “Tomorrow.” Unbelievable but true — days off in the middle of the week for administrative sludge. Penny, who had initially said no to her request, backed down after Lilah played the cancer card. She’d considered playing the Israel card as well — fucking the boss, yes, and what are you going to do about it — but Israel, as it turned out, was not in the office. So she’d muddled through alone, apologized profusely, given Debbie the rest of her workload. Thankful, in some unapologetic part of her soul, for the fact that he’d been silent for the rest of the weekend, for the fact that he was not at work, sleek and powerful and troubling. “I thought — I don’t know. I thought you could come with. And then you could come back here, if you wanted.”

  “Why are you so concerned when you hate her so much?”

  “I don’t hate her.”

  Timothy laughs, an ugly sound. “You can’t stand her. I knew that when I was five.”

  “That doesn’t mean I hate her.”

  “Doesn’t it, Lilah?” and now he swings around to face her, his eyes dark, his arms spread wide. He waves the book in his right hand — a preacher, a prophet of words and solitude. “You could have fooled me.”

  She pulls her coat close and checks that the scarf is still in place. “So it’s my fault, then. Everything.” No answer. “What do you want from me?” she says quietly. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Never mind,” Timothy says. He tosses the book into her lap. “Here. You have it.” Then he grabs a chocolate bar and shoves it into the pocket of his ragged coat. “It’s just more for me to carry, anyway.” He stands and starts walking away.

  “Tim,” she calls. He doesn’t turn around. “Timothy.” But nothing. She watches until he disappears out of the park, down the street, and then she gathers the juice boxes and the leftover sandwiches into a little pile. She leaves them there, on the bench, and as she walks away she hopes that rain won’t come, that someone else will find the food and take it. She fingers the spine of the book and then opens it to the last page, where the stamp is faded and grey but still there. Discard. Left behind, just like the food.

  —

  She calls Roberta on the ferry. “I’m late,” she says. “But I’ll be there before seven.”

  “I made dinner. I’ll keep it in the oven for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is Timothy — ”

  “He’s not here,” Lilah says, looking out over the water. “I couldn’t find him.”

  “But last you saw him, he was okay.”

  “Yes.” She remembers the book. “He’s been going to the library.”

  “He was always reading,” Roberta says. “Maybe our lives would have been easier if he’d been into sports.”

  “Maybe,” Lilah echoes, but she can’t laugh, as much as Roberta wants her to. Timothy is scrabbling on the streets of Vancouver as they speak, ducking into libraries and avoiding them both. “Do you want me to bring you anything?”

  “I’m fine,” says Roberta. “Be careful when you come in. They’re calling for rain.”

  “I’m sure I’ll manage.” She tightens the scarf around her neck and checks, once again, that her sleeves cover everything. “I’ll see you soon. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Roberta hangs up. She always does this — no drawn out goodbyes from this mother, no hesitant words of farewell. Lilah closes her phone and once more looks out of the window, to where the setting sun glints over the waves. It hurts to sit down, but she’s not moving. She tosses her phone lightly from hand to hand and thinks of her brother, scuttling in the streets.

  She has chocolate and cigarettes in her purse, and a change of clothes in the overnight bag Roberta gave her years ago. Another sweater, another scarf. In the bathroom, just before the ferry docks, she pats concealer over her neck and ignores the other woman, a mother with two girls who pretends not to look at her bruises. Outside, she pays for her rental car and glides out of the parking lot, her hands steady on the wheel. She turns on the radio — Emmanuel does not have music when he drives — and flicks through the stations until something fits. Mahler, Symphony No. 5. Chopin when that is over, Schumann, and then Debussy, the notes long and soft. She smokes out the window for the entire drive, and throws her last cigarette out into the bushes that lie by the side of Roberta’s lawn.

  Her mother does not open the front door, just as she never says goodbye. Lilah walks into the house and puts her shoes at the door. “Mom?”

  “Here,” comes Roberta’s voice. The kitchen. Lilah flicks on the hallway light as she pads into the house. The first thing she notices is that all of the plants are dying.

  Roberta sits at the kitchen table, leafing through photos. A cigarette dangles between her fingers. Her ha
ir is the darkest red it’s ever been. She has lost weight, and skin sags in folds around her neck.

  “Since when did you start smoking?” Lilah asks.

  “I don’t know. A month ago?” Roberta does not get up. “It can’t possibly make much difference now.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Lilah says automatically. She wraps a towel around her hand and opens the oven, pulls out a tray covered in foil.

  “Chicken stuffed with feta,” Roberta says. “And olives. Your favourite, if I remember.”

  “Yes,” Lilah says. “Thank you.”

  Roberta waves her hand in the air and weaves trails through the smoke. “It’s not like I had anything else to do.” She taps ash into a tray and watches Lilah spoon the chicken onto a plate. “Do you want more? I have extra in the fridge. I didn’t feel like eating.”

  “I’m fine,” Lilah says. She takes a bite. The chicken is soft, juicy, delicious.

  “I can turn the heat up,” Roberta says, nodding to Lilah’s scarf and long sleeves. “If you’re cold.”

  “I’m fine,” she says again. She pulls out her own cigarettes and dumps the chocolate on the table. “I brought you this. It’s Timothy’s favourite.”

  “Chocolate,” Roberta says. She picks the bar up between thumb and forefinger, as though it’s covered in mud. “Please tell me you’re feeding him other things. Did you give him the toothbrush?”

  “Yes, I gave him the toothbrush. And yes, I’m feeding him other things.” Hope. Despair. Fear like gut rot in her stomach, always there, always moving.

  “Good.” Roberta breathes out smoke. “Maybe I can bribe him the next time I’m in Vancouver.”

  Lilah laughs. She finishes the chicken quickly, surprised at how hungry she is. Then she goes back to the fridge after all. “Maybe. He’s not much into bribes right now.”

  “Isn’t he,” Roberta says. She rubs her free hand against her hip. “But he’s all right. He’s alive.”

  “Yes. He’s alive.” Lilah slides her second plate into the microwave, presses the button, and taps her fingers against the counter. This is where Timothy made her hot chocolate, all those years ago. He’s such a strange little boy.

  “Well. That’s something, I guess.” Roberta nods to Lilah’s scarf again. “Are you sure you’re not cold?”

  “Really. I’m okay.” The microwave beeps. Lilah takes her plate out and sits back down at the table. The words come out of her mouth and hang in the air. “I’m seeing somebody.”

  “Joel.” Roberta’s voice dips. “You told me about Joel. The one who doesn’t have a job.”

  “He has a job,” Lilah says automatically. “But no, it’s not Joel. I’m not seeing Joel anymore.”

  “Oh. So who is it, then?”

  “Someone I work with. He’s from Mexico.”

  “Does he speak English?”

  “Of course he speaks English. What a stupid question.”

  Roberta shrugs and stubs out her cigarette. “So what does he do, then?”

  “He’s in HR. In management.” She stops, suddenly aware that there’s not much else she can say.

  “Mmhm.” Roberta fingers another cigarette but does not light it. “And you’re happy? Things are okay?”

  Happy. Happy? “Things are . . . okay,” she echoes. “As much as they can be.”

  “Mmhm,” Roberta says again. “My therapist says that Timmy has abandonment issues.”

  “Wow. Some therapist.”

  “He says,” Roberta continues, frowning, “that everything goes back to your father. Do you think so?”

  Lilah pushes her last piece of chicken around. Timothy, who was four when it happened, has never mentioned their father. Not once. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you feel abandoned?” Roberta presses. The word sounds strange in her mother’s mouth. “Does it bother you?”

  Lilah shrugs. “Why bother feeling bad about an asshole?”

  Roberta stares at the table. “I keep thinking,” she says, “that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have followed him, or tried to keep him closer, so that he could see the two of you. If there had been a man in Timmy’s life, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Carl thought Timothy was strange,” Lilah points out. This is what she remembers most. “I don’t see how keeping him around could have helped anything.”

  “He didn’t,” Roberta says faintly. “He didn’t think he was strange — he just didn’t understand.”

  “He called Timothy a fucking spastic. That’s the kind of role model you want for your kid? Really?”

  “Well, if you’re so sure, Lilah, then what was it? What happened?”

  So this is what she thinks about, their mother, alone in this house with her dying plants. “For God’s sake — I don’t know. Doesn’t your therapist tell you not to dwell on shit like this?”

  “Don’t swear,” Roberta says irritably. “My God — you always look so beautiful until you open your mouth.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” This time Roberta stubs out her cigarette half-finished. “I’m tired,” she announces. “I think I might go to bed. You know where to find everything, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Lilah stands up and carries her plate to the sink. She watches out of the corner of her eye as Roberta gets up, her hands clasped against the table. She moves like a woman twice her age. “Do you need help?”

  “No,” Roberta says. “I’m tired. That’s all.” She puts a hand against the doorframe. “Will you want breakfast? I don’t have that much food — we might need to go shopping, depending on what you want.”

  “I’m fine,” Lilah says for the hundredth time. “If I want something, I’ll go and get it. No big deal.”

  Roberta nods. “All right. Well — I’ll see you in the morning.” She shuffles into the hall.

  Lilah watches her go, then dumps her plate in the sink and walks through to the back room, where the glass doors look out over a dark, overgrown yard. She pads out onto the deck and sits on the step, listening to the wind. Victoria is quieter than Vancouver — quiet and polite, its secrets buried deep beneath the ground. The church Roberta goes to is only a few blocks away. Secrets are buried there too.

  She sits for hours, trembling with cold, until even the faint sound of downtown revellers has faded away. Timothy will be shivering on some sidewalk, alone. Israel Riviera will be sleeping, or thinking about children, also alone. And Roberta, who sleeps behind her in the house, will perhaps be dreaming of those days before Carl left, when their paths were laid like flagstones, ordered and precise.

  When she can’t take it anymore Lilah goes back into the house, where memories drift slowly through the air, and she goes to bed in the room of her childhood, where the old macramé from Roberta sits on the wall like a guardian.

  —

  Roberta has to check in to the hospital late Wednesday afternoon. She was right; there’s hardly any food left in the house, so they go for breakfast at the neighbourhood café. It’s the same café Lilah worked in all those years ago, before she left for Toronto, and nothing has changed. The paint still peels in the corners, and the muffins are still delicious. Lilah almost sneaks one into her bag just because.

  Roberta doesn’t eat anything. Instead, she drinks tea and watches Lilah finish a giant helping of scrambled eggs and potatoes. “You have your father’s metabolism,” she says. “I always envied that.” In the daylight she looks more gaunt than she did in the kitchen; gaunt and smaller and old. “Timothy had it too. God’s gift to both of you, I suppose.”

  “Right. Because God’s been big on the gifts in this family.”

  “You’re so bitter,” Roberta says. But her anger has no force, no conviction. “It’s not God’s fault, Lilah.”

  “How can you say that? Look at you. Look at — if you could see Timot
hy, you wouldn’t say that.”

  “Maybe,” says her mother. “But Delilah, I can’t help it. You can’t possibly understand.”

  She hears the echo of Timothy even as Roberta speaks the words. “I guess not.” Potatoes done, Lilah drops her fork onto her plate and nods to the waitress. “We’d better go.”

  They don’t speak during the drive to the hospital. They park in front of the cancer centre and Lilah, laden with bags, follows Roberta through to the admissions desk. The triage nurse checks them in faster than any hotel receptionist.

  “Room 304,” she says. “They’ll have gowns there for you.”

  They trudge down the hall until they find it — a small room with a single bed, a thin couch against the wall and one TV bolted to the ceiling. The walls are light purple. Mauve. The air smells of disinfectant and bleach. But there is a window that looks out onto green. Victoria is still green, even into these middle days of November.

  “Home sweet home,” says Roberta. She drops her purse on the bed and looks away from Lilah, out the window.

  Lilah’s mouth tastes like dust. “I’m just — I’m just going to go to the bathroom,” she says. She ducks into the ensuite, locks the door, and turns on the fan so that Roberta can’t hear her throwing up. The scrambled eggs and potatoes go straight into the toilet. Her ribs hurt when she’s finished.

  She washes her hands slowly, the fan still on, and then flushes. She shoves a stick of peppermint gum into her mouth. She can hear laughter now, over the fan. Laughter, a faint male voice. Roberta, flirting with the nurses already.

  But when she steps back into the room, it’s not a nurse at all.

  “Delilah!” Roberta says. She hasn’t changed into her hospital gown. She is smiling now. “You didn’t tell me he was lovely.”

  There, sitting on the bed, is Israel Riviera. Looking completely at home against the purple of the walls, and talking to Roberta as though he’s known her all his life.

  “Well,” he says. He winks — at Roberta, at both of them. “Delilah likes to keep secrets. But they are not hard to figure out, I think.”

  “No,” Lilah says. She puts her hand up against the doorframe. The world shifts and rearranges itself right beneath her feet. “I suppose not.”