A Year Less a Day

by James Hawkins

  Jordan had usually ended up seeking satisfaction from the image on his own, while Ruth had shuffled, embarrassed, to hide out in the kitchen.

  A new world had opened up to Jordan when they had subscribed to the Internet, and his interest in Ruth had flagged entirely as he surfed porn sites and dating agencies.

  “I can’t sleep,” he’d complain to Ruth as she crashed after an exhausting day. “I think I’ll send some emails,” he’d add, stealing quietly out of the bedroom and softly closing the door.

  Ruth caught him eventually, the morning he fell asleep at the monitor with his hand in his pants and a live sex show streaming across the screen. She had promptly stopped the monthly cheques.

  “Sorry Jordan, we can’t afford it,” she had explained when his screen died.

  “You can’t do that. We need it for business,” he had insisted. “Everybody’s on the Net now.”

  But Ruth knew which bodies on the Net he was most interested in, and held firm. “We managed all right before.”

  Ruth weeps quietly as she continues holding Jordan in the kitchen. “It’s not going to happen,” she whispers in his ear. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “But what about you, Ruth? I worry about you.”

  Ruth collapses to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, unable to deal with the knowledge that her dying husband is burdened by a future that he will not be party to. But her grief is deeper. For the first time in her life someone actually cares. No one has ever cared before. Not even her parents. On the contrary, apart from fleeting satisfaction at the moment of her conception, neither her mother nor her father had taken any pleasure in their daughter.

  To her father, Ruth does not exist and has never existed. The few minutes it took to inseminate her mother, a seventeen-year-old devotee of the Fab Four, when she was high on their music and pot, is a distant hazy memory in his mind.

  “I’m one of the Beatles, luv,” he had claimed to the young Canadian woman, and had the Liverpudlian accent and a guitar case to prove it.

  “He’s a famous English musician,” Ruth’s spaced-out mother confessed to ten-year-old Ruth one night—but when wasn’t she spaced-out? In fact, had she not been high the night of the Beatles concert, she probably wouldn’t have splayed herself to a complete stranger in the middle of “Hard Day’s Night” when he was supposedly banging away on his guitar with his cohorts on stage.

  “It was dark in his dressing room,” her mother had continued to the confused ten-year-old who was demanding to know why all the other girls in her class had fathers. “But there was a star on the door and he definitely said his name was George.”

  To the tormented offspring of a single mother in a rural Canadian community in the sixties, the probability, however bizarre, that her surname was Harrison was gold. Armed with the first bit of good news in her short life, Ruth had gone to school the next day full of vengeful thoughts. “You can’t play with us, you haven’t got a dad,” the other kids had frequently taunted, but it wasn’t them talking, it was their mothers, well aware that Ruth’s mother had a certain reputation.

  Word spread and, despite the scoffing of a jealous few, was widely believed. That April day in 1975, and only that day, Ruth had shone in the glow of her supposed father. But, by the following morning, a dark cloud had descended and left her in a deeper gloom than she could ever have imagined.

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” chanted the entire school, fuelled by the scornful skepticism of their parents, and then they had thrown rocks at her—schoolyard gravel in truth, but the cuts went much deeper than the scratches bathed and tended by the school secretary.

  “Double home burger with super-size fries,” yells Cindy through the intercom, and Ruth drags herself up and pulls herself together.

  “What are we going to do, Jordan?” she asks, not expecting a resolution.

  “We’ll just have to carry on,” he replies, offering none.

  It’s only eleven-thirty, but lunches have started and Ruth will be trapped in the kitchen until three. The café is starting to fill with regulars, but there is an interloper. Detective Sergeant Mike Phillips of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is new to the area, though he has quickly sniffed out a coffee shop. Tom, with his roll of fake fifties bulging in his jacket, has a nose for the law and has eyed the newcomer guardedly from the moment he entered, but he’s trapped as Phillips sits directly across from him and starts a conversation.

  “It’s still raining,” says Phillips.

  “Vancouver,” says Tom in explanation, then he downs half his coffee.

  “I’m from Toronto,” says Phillips and is mentally preparing a potted biography when Tom drains his cup and slides out.

  “See ya,” says Tom. “Gotta check on my investments.”

  “Weird,” mutters Phillips as he sits back with his Caffe Americano and looks forward to an upcoming visit to England.

  chapter three

  “Detective Inspector David Bliss,” cries a London Guildhall usher, running down a list on a clipboard.

  “That’s you, Dad,” says Samantha Bliss as she prepares to help her father to his feet. “Can you manage,” she asks, “or should I come with you?”

  “I can manage, luv,” Bliss says, though he wobbles alarmingly as he tries to rise from the deeply-cushioned chair. Bliss’s prospective son-in-law, D.C.I. Peter Bryan, steps in and steadies him. “I’ve got you, Dave.”

  Daphne Lovelace, a sparky and spry septuagenarian who has lied about her years so often she’s forgotten her true age, holds out a pair of crutches to her old friend, saying, “You really ought to be in a wheel-chair, Dave.”

  “I’ll be fine, Daphne. You and Sam should go on in. The show will be starting in a minute. I guess Sergeant Phillips isn’t going to make it.”

  “We’ll be in the middle of the front row,” says Samantha proudly as she gives her father’s tie a final tweak; then she takes Daphne’s arm and leads her toward the Grand Reception Hall with Peter Bryan at her side. Bliss barely controls a laugh at the sight of Daphne’s giant polka-dot hat as the crowd parts to let it through. “Made it myself, ’specially for the occasion,” Daphne had beamed when she arrived, but Bliss felt that the word constructed or erected would be a more accurate description of the process.

  Bliss takes a final look around the Guildhall’s opulent foyer and is disappointed that RCMP Sergeant Phillips is not amongst the fast-thinning crowd. Then he takes up his crutches and slowly heads for the antechamber where the Commissioner, dignitaries, and the other award recipients are assembling for their grand entrance to the award ceremony.

  “Hey, Dave,” calls a cheery Canadian voice as Bliss nears the small side door.

  Bliss spins and winces as his injured leg scrapes the ground, then he beams at the sight of the Canadian Sergeant in his ceremonial dress uniform. “You made it, Mike.”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t miss your big day,” says Phillips. “Where am I supposed to sit?”

  “Front row. Samantha and Peter Bryan are keeping a seat for you.”

  “Detective Inspector David Anthony Bliss is hereby awarded the Commendation of the Commissioner of the Grand Metropolitan Police Force,” reads Samantha from the vellum scroll, as the five of them await the hors d’oeuvres in the main dining room of the Dorchester Hotel two hours later.

  “That was quite a ceremony,” says Phillips.

  “For service above and beyond the call of duty,” adds Daphne, reading over Samantha’s shoulder.

  “It’s hardly an OBE though, Daphne,” says Bliss, knowing that the somewhat reckless Canadian adventure that brought him the award pales in comparison to her wartime heroics in Europe and Asia. Bliss ignores Daphne’s black look and sloughs off the praise as he encompasses his daughter, his boss, and the Canadian officer with a gesture. “You three deserve this more than me. I would have been dead if you hadn’t rescued me.”

  “It all sounds jolly exiting,” carries on Daphne. “I read it in the Times—how you’d been
shot and left for dead on an island. How the Natives attacked ...”

  “They didn’t attack,” protests Bliss. “The newspaper got it wrong.” They just pointed their guns at me when they realized I threatened their dodgy little exploit.”

  “But the bear attacked you. That bit was right, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” cuts in Phillips. “It sure is, Daphne. Biggest damn bear I’ve ever seen. Took a dozen shots to scare him off.”

  “That’s why I’m glad you could make it,” says Bliss. “I wasn’t in a fit state to thank you properly before I left Canada.”

  “My pleasure,” says Phillips. “Anyway, I always wanted to take a look at London. But, how are you doing now?”

  Bliss’s head goes down. “It’s going to take quite awhile—nearly lost the leg—infected wound, a lot of nerve damage. Good job I’ve got my daughter to take care of me. Sam’s been great.”

  “The stairs at your little place must be a nightmare,” says Daphne to Samantha—forever practical—then she turns to Bliss. “Why don’t you come and stay with me for awhile? The country air will do you good, and I could make you up a bed in the study.”

  “Hmm ... Westchester,” muses Bliss, with memories of a previous secondment when he’d first encountered Daphne—the police station’s cleaning lady.

  “That sounds like a great idea, Dad,” jumps in Samantha just a fraction over-enthusiastically.

  Bliss catches on immediately. “I smell a conspiracy,” he says, looking from Daphne to his daughter. “Are you two ganging up on me?”

  “No ...” starts Samantha, but can’t get her expression to agree.

  “It’s a waste of time lying to me, Sam,” says Bliss with a smile. “I guess you’ve had enough of me under your feet all day.”

  “Oh, Dad ...”

  The arrival of the waiter gives Samantha thinking space and Peter Bryan comes to her aid. “Actually, Dave, I think it would be a great idea. In fact, I’m pretty sure that admin will actually pay Miss Lovelace to take care of you ...”

  “I don’t expect ...” protests Daphne, but Samantha stems the dissent with a warning look.

  “I’m not going to argue,” says Bliss, catching them all by surprise. “Daphne makes the best treacle pudding I’ve ever had. Anyway I haven’t seen the old General for a year or so.”

  Daphne slumps at the thought of her old tomcat. “The poor thing died of old age back in the summer,” she tells Bliss, and he knows her pain.

  “That’s a coincidence,” he says. “Balderdash, my old cat, died as well.”

  “Oh, dear,” sympathizes Daphne; then she perks up a little. “Actually, I’m getting a kitten next week. She’s the fluffiest little thing, and her fur looks almost red at times. I was going to call her Madam Rouge but I thought that made her sound a bit like a Parisian street walker, so I’m calling her Missie Rouge instead. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m looking forward to meeting her,” says Bliss.

  Now it’s Daphne’s turn to smile, though Bliss holds up a hand in caution. “But it won’t be for a few weeks. I’ve got my physio to finish first.”

  “Anytime you’re ready, Dave, and I’ve got room for you as well, Mike, if you’d like.”

  “Thanks Daph,” replies Phillips. “But I’ve gotta get back to Vancouver in a day or so. The place might fall apart without me.”

  chapter four

  Vancouver may still be standing, but Ruth’s world is crumbling by the time Jordan’s fortieth birthday approaches, though a new-found purpose has bolstered her through the darkest moments.

  A month of intense therapy has taken its toll on both of them, and Ruth tries hard to hold back the tears each time she sees him off with his neatly packed overnight bag, hoping it will be the last time he’ll have to go. But hope cuts both ways, and she vacillates between hoping he’ll suffer little and die quickly, and hoping he’ll outlive his prognosis, despite the misery he may endure in the meantime.

  “I’ll be fine,” he’d assured her the first morning as she desperately clung to him at the curbside in the thin dawn light.

  They really couldn’t afford the cab, but Jordan wouldn’t hear of her leaving the café to drive him into the heart of the city at rush hour. “Cindy can’t do breakfast on her own,” he’d said, “and you’d barely get back in time for lunch.”

  “I’ll visit you this evening,” she’d promised, perking herself up as she’d helped him into the taxi.

  Jordan’s face had dropped. “It’ll just make things harder for me, Ruth. You’ll come all that way and I’ll be asleep, or you’ll get upset.”

  “I don’t mind ...”

  “I do, Ruth ... I mind. I don’t want you remembering me hooked up to a machine. Besides, the evening girls will have their boyfriends in and turn the place into a rave joint if you’re not watching them. I’ll phone, OK? And it’s only a few days.”

  “But, I can’t ...” she’d started.

  He’d shushed her with a finger to her lips, and she hadn’t asked again. Each week thereafter he had quietly slipped out of the apartment’s rear door when her back was turned, like a womanizer on a date.

  “I didn’t want you getting upset,” he would tell her when he’d phoned as promised, as he had done each week, his watery voice trying to lighten their short conversation with a “doctor” joke. “The doctor said I had to drink plenty of liquids,” he’d laughed one night, “and I asked him if that meant I had to give up drinking solids.” Then, after two or three days, he’d arrive back, struggle up the stairs, and barely hit the bed before falling asleep.

  The nights without Jordan’s comforting presence are an awful prelude to the future, but during the day, Ruth has found new zeal. Trina started it. She’s a home care nurse whose patients always die, though only once was it her fault. Generally, by the time she gets them, they’ve been hacked about and patched up beyond endurance and are simply awaiting the inevitable. Trina’s greatest contribution to their well-being is her unintentional ability to make them laugh as she changes incontinence pads and colostomy bags, and her only culpable failure occurred when she dropped the contents of a fully loaded bag on the aging patient’s cat. “Oh, crap!” she’d cried, and the bag’s owner had laughed himself to death at the sight of the shit-covered creature racing around the room like a greased pig, with Trina in hot pursuit.

  It was Trina who’d brought light into Ruth’s dark world. She knows about Jordan; she’d guessed—not the specifics, but enough to force Ruth’s hand one morning when Jordan was away, getting his “fix,” as he called it.

  Trina had blustered into the café’s kitchen in search of a condom for Cindy, and found Ruth in tears. Ruth’s snivelled claim of “onions,” as she wiped her nose and gestured to her baking table lacked credibility. Trina’s culinary creations may have included such unlikely exotics as “creamed cabbage cheesecake with oyster sauce,” but even she knew that cherry tarts rarely contained onions.

  “It’s Jordan, isn’t it?” Trina had correctly surmised as she threw her arm partway around Ruth’s shoulders.

  Ruth had easily capitulated. The crushing weight of dealing with Jordan’s illness without family assistance was overpowering. In any case, she’d told herself, it was just a matter of time before Trina would be calling professionally.

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” she had begged Trina, before tearfully explaining Jordan’s condition.

  Trina had cheerfully leapt to Ruth’s aid—here was someone to rescue who wouldn’t defecate all over the bedsheets or drop dead at her feet—and she started immediately.

  “Just take a look at you,” she’d fussed, dabbing at Ruth’s swollen eyes with a tea towel, and taking out her makeup. “You’re going to have to pep yourself up and give Jordan something to live for.”

  “I know, Trina.”

  “And you need to take care of yourself. It’s no good you getting sick as well.”

  “I will, Trina.”

  “And look at your
clothes. There’s room for me in there as well. You look like my husband’s blow-up doll did when I got jealous and stuck her with a hypodermic.”

  Ruth had laughed for the first time in more than a month, and her new found mentor laughed with her, then Trina stopped and pulled a face at the clock. “Shit. I’m late for work again,” she’d said, heading for the door. “I’ll be back. You’re taking this evening off.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ruth had called. “Why the hell does Cindy want a condom?”

  “Don’t worry,” Trina had shouted, “it’s probably too late now.”

  It’s two days to Jordan’s birthday and he returns from his treatment to be met by a new woman. Trina has worked a miracle, thanks to Marcie, her next-door neighbour. Marcie is a large woman who suffers from a compulsive possessive disorder, and she plunders oversized-fashion houses with as much abandon as a welfare mom in a thrift store giveaway. But, like all addicts, Marcie has remorseful periods, and it hadn’t taken much for Trina to trigger a guilt attack and help her clear some closet space.

  “You look nice,” says Jordan returning from his latest “fix,” and Ruth smiles as she helps him up the stairs to his bedroom. She has long since moved her bed into the apartment’s sitting room, so as not to disturb him morning and night, and even reinstated the Internet subscription, though she is careful not to catch sight of the screen in his room.

  “Thanks, Trina,” says Ruth, when she has skipped back downstairs to the waiting woman. “I think he liked it,” she adds, pirouetting in her new size sixteen Alfred Sung from the Marcie collection.

  “Great! And we haven’t even started yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “See what I’ve got for you,” Trina says, holding out a complimentary pass to Fitness World. “Three months’ free trial,” she adds enthusiastically. “We’re going to have you looking absolutely great. I’ve even gotten you an appointment with my manicurist.”