Six Metres of Pavement

by Farzana Doctor

  That afternoon, like all the others, Ismail knew Nabil was phoning from his Mercedes M-Class SUV while speeding along the Gardiner Expressway. He often wondered why his brother liked to call on the same day and time. Was it a scheduled task in his BlackBerry? Perhaps one of the highway exit signs along the way reminded him of his only sibling, or maybe his filial duty kicked in whenever he passed the Brother Cookie Company in Etobicoke.

  Ismail envisioned him with his Trekkie-style headset hooked on his ear, as he simultaneously talked, drove, checked his text messages or whatever else needed doing, while traveling 120 kilometres an hour.

  “Nabilbhai. I’m just leaving work and —”

  “— Good, good. Life treating you well, then?”

  “Yes, things are pretty much the same. I’m thinking about another renovation in the dining —”

  “— One minute, another call is coming in.”

  And Ismail waited patiently, dutifully for his older brother to return.

  “Sorry, sorry. What were you saying?”

  “Oh, just that I was thinking about another renovation in the dining room, but will have to start getting estimates on —”

  “— Yes, always get a minimum of three. Sometimes four, even. And check their references. So many of these contractors are such scoundrels, under-quoting on price and time just so you will say yes and then doing a lousy job. I’d refer you to one of the guys I know, but they don’t tend to like small jobs in the downtown core.”

  “That’s all right, Nabilbhai. I have worked with a few good ones already.”

  “But Ismail, how long can you keep upgrading the house? Haven’t you done enough with that place? Seriously, how long can you stay in that house with its sloping floors and thin walls?” Ismail cringed while Nabil continued to insult his home. “Why not let me sell it for you? Then you can find a bigger place near us. Or if you want, we have so much space, you could even move in with us, take over the entire guest suite.” Ismail had always felt a deep aversion for suburbia, but his brother’s suggestions of family closeness, albeit geographical, felt like affection to him.

  “I think I prefer the city, Bhai. But thanks for your offer.”

  “Alright. Just think about it. Have to go. When will we see you next? Maybe on the weekend?”

  “Yes, maybe. I’ll look at my schedule.”

  “Good. Call Nabila and schedule it. See you.” Nabila was his brother’s wife.

  “Okay, I’ll call Nabila. Bye.” This was how the brothers ended most of their conversations, with promises to arrange to see one another soon. In truth, they tended to meet up every couple of months, Ismail’s inertia and Nabil’s momentum wearing at their filial bonds.

  Ismail did consult his day planner, but instead of calling his sister-in-law, he reviewed the short to-do list he’d compiled earlier: compare prices on new windows, go to Ikea and look at drapes, research sofas at The Brick.

  Ismail and Rehana bought the Lochrie Street house in Little Portugal as a starter home. It was a modest three-bedroom row house, bound to six others, all with the same postage-stamp backyards, flat roofs, and aging facades. The adjoining walls were thin, the joists of the entire row connected, so that when Mrs. Ferreira two houses down sneezed with vigour, her neighbours knew of her allergies.

  A starter home is supposed to be temporary. Ismail was supposed to be the sort of husband who would ascend through the ranks of the public service, his income rising with each annual promotion. Their two children were supposed to be born while they lived there and then, before the first little one started kindergarten, they’d move to a detached four-bedroom with a big backyard and a two-car garage in an postal code where the property taxes were higher and the schools better. Such plans! Unimaginative, perhaps, but ambitious, at least. Ismail soon gave up on those dreams, but Rehana steadfastly maintained them, later finding those children, that husband, and the tawny house in the suburbs, without Ismail.

  In their divorce settlement, Ismail bought out Rehana’s share of the Lochrie house. Besides the customary division of other financial assets (which were fairly meagre at the time), she took little apart from her clothing and jewellery, perhaps wanting to leave behind anything imprinted with their life together.

  Although he was an outsider, an immigrant among his immigrant neighbours, often without language in common, Ismail grew to see Lochrie as his home, became accustomed to its noise and bustle. It was the kind of place where people yelled across fences to greet their friends. During soccer season, revellers crammed the main roads and blocked streetcar tracks, waving flags and singing their allegiance to countries they hadn’t visited for far too long. The old men there, the ones too old to work, spent their evenings watering cemented-over gardens. Somehow, Ismail felt he belonged there, too.

  Over the following eighteen years, the neighbourhood shifted a little, taking on new tones and shades with each decade. Ismail watched the Portuguese kids grow up and move to the suburbs, leaving their parents to grow old alone. He witnessed the Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants move in, co-mingling with their Old World European neighbours in uneasy and unfamiliar ways. He observed the yuppies strip down houses, cultivate native plants, waiting for gentrification to move their way.

  Meanwhile, Ismail stayed put, and altered little in his life. Even at work, except for one promotion caused by a co-worker’s death, and a bureaucratic restructuring that had him changing cubicles, he never really changed jobs. He remained, as always, a Municipal Engineer with the Transportation Infrastructure Management Unit of the Transportation Services Division at the City of Toronto, a moderately interesting, low-to-medium stress position with civil co-workers, good benefits, and more vacation and sick days than he could tolerate to use.

  He believed inertia would prevent him from being hurt by life. Mostly, he wanted to avoid making another mistake.

  Ismail sighed, closed his daytimer, no longer interested in his renovations list. He drove home, all the while considering his brother’s words and his empty house. He parked his car partway between his home and the bar, and half-walked, half-jogged into the Merry Pint, where he found his friend Daphne sitting alone at a table near the front of the bar. He allowed her to distract him with a drinking game. It was the one where its players watch The Simpsons and then take a drink each time one of the characters says something predictable, like when Homer says “D’oh!” or Flanders mentions God. The booze and Daphne obliterated the rest of the night.

  — * —

  A few miles away, in a hospital room smelling of sour breath and floor cleaner, Celia sat beside José’s bed, watching him sleep. She’d been there a full twenty-four hours already, and still wore her clothes from the previous day. She pulled her coat tight around her neck, and shivered; since arriving at the hospital, she hadn’t been able to shake off a persistent chill. Although José looked warm enough, she tucked his sheet and blanket around him, which caused him to grunt and grimace in his sleep. The familiar sounds were a comfort, evidence of him still alive, still with her.

  Someone in a neighbouring bed started to cough, first quietly and then erupting into a cacophony of hacking. She hoped the patient was covering his mouth. She’d seen all the new public health notices on the hospital walls telling people to sneeze into their sleeves and she wondered whether the cougher had seen those posters, too.

  She stood up and closed the curtains around them, blocking out the three other patients’ noise and germs.

  — 4 —

  Arresting

  The vestiges of a bad hangover from the previous night’s Simpsons game were still with Ismail the following evening. He’d had a terrible day at work, unable to concentrate during his unit’s third-quarter budget meeting. His unsettled stomach had him tasting bile a few times that morning. By the time work ended and he was walking to the Merry Pint, he had determined to quit drinking, a resolution he’d mad
e many times before. Soon. I’ll do it soon. Today will be my last for a little while. Then, tomorrow …

  The cravings whispered their sweet nothings in his ear: A cold beer would be perfect right now, what a terrible day! Cold on the tongue, warm in the gut …

  He endeavoured to drive away those thoughts with a mental list of why he should stop:

  1. Work performance suffering.

  2. Stomach perpetually upset.

  3. Spending too much money on drinks.

  The quitting side prevailed for a minute or two, almost changing his mind about going to the bar. But then the drinking side, staggering and steadying itself, reasoned: You really want to try quitting again? It won’t work, you know. Besides, you can handle one.

  Ismail never related to the proverbial rock bottom that most alcoholics talk about, where people lose their lives to alcohol. He rationalized that his lowest low had already come and gone, a rocky bottom that still left him scraped and skinned at the knees. In his mind, drinking couldn’t possibly take him lower than that. In fact, alcohol often rescued him from that barren place.

  He knew it was ironic to be making plans to quit drinking while entering a bar (in fact it sounded like a bad joke: A man walks into a bar …), but a compromise between the two sides had been reached: Okay, tomorrow. Tomorrow I will stop. I’ll just have one tonight and then go home. Hair of the dog … He saw Daphne at the bar in her usual seat, her hand clasped around a beer glass, and Ismail felt a rush of tenderness and camaraderie for her. At the same time, worry bubbled up. Only one drink. Remember, no matter what Daphne says, just one drink!

  “Hey, Ismail. I saved you a seat,” she said, smiling affably, sliding her jacket off the stool beside her.

  “I’m just here for one tonight, Daphne. I overdid it last night. I have to go home to bed early.” He climbed up onto the stool, balancing uncomfortably, his feet barely brushing the ground. He gestured to Suzanne, the regular bartender.

  “No worries. I’m probably going to head home soon, too. I’m keeping it light tonight.” Suzanne headed their way, carrying a fresh pint of beer, the froth sloshing a little over the glass’s rim. Daphne gulped down the last of her beer, and exchanged her empty glass for the full one. Ismail had watched her do the same thing with cigarettes, too; lighting one with the smoking butt still in her mouth. He ordered a Blue for himself.

  Within an hour, Ismail had abandoned his self-imposed limit and bought the next two rounds. He was on his third and Daphne on her fourth or fifth when the police arrived.

  A pair of officers, one tall and white, and the other slightly shorter and South Asian, approached Suzanne, asking her something Ismail couldn’t hear. Then they swaggered along the length of the bar, pausing just long enough to study his and Daphne’s faces. Ismail reflexively averted his eyes, looking down into the depths of his beer glass. A warm breeze of manly smelling cologne wafted by as they passed.

  “Fucking pigs,” Daphne muttered. Ismail shushed her before she could say more. Alcohol usually made her prickly edges soften, but once in a while something could provoke her into an intoxicated belligerence. “Useless sons of bitches,” she hissed once they were barely out of earshot, “coming in here to find someone to beat up, I bet.” Daphne carried on with her venting while Ismail watched the police exit from the back-alley door. He didn’t much like their presence either, but for his own reasons.

  Ismail would never forget his arresting officer, Bill Todd, a man whose surname was also a first name. He was middle-aged, with an East Coast accent and a paunch that strained his shirt buttons. Puffy skin bags rested under his blue eyes. He surveyed Ismail’s crowded cubicle, a nine-by-nine space large enough for a desk, filing cabinet, and a couple of chairs, and suggested that they speak somewhere more private. The office was quiet that afternoon, and so Ismail assured him it was fine to talk confidentially. He invited Bill Todd to sit down, and offered him a cup of coffee. Although he didn’t often speak with police in his role at the City, their responsibilities sometimes overlapped and he assumed the matter had something to do with a tunnel or bridge, matters under his jurisdiction.

  Bill Todd declined the coffee. He peered cautiously into the vacant neighbouring cubicles and then sat down only after Ismail did. His careful movements made Ismail grasp the seriousness of his visit and his body responded before his mind, sending perspiration to his palms and armpits.

  “What can I help you with, Officer?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly, betraying the outwardly calm countenance he was trying to affect. “Is this about a municipal issue?”

  “No. I need to ask you a few personal questions, Mr. Box —,” he said, hesitating and reading the silver name plate at the front of his desk. Nabil had gifted him with it the previous year, on his thirty-fourth birthday. Everyone needs a spiffy name plate, Ismail.

  “It’s Boxwala. Personal questions? About what?”

  “Yes, Mr. Boxwala —” he said, again consulting the name plate.

  “— has something happened to my wife? Has there been an accident?” Ismail interrupted. He slipped a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his damp hands, but quickly stopped and put it away when he saw the officer observing him. His heart began to race and the air felt hot and stuffy.

  “It’s not your wife. Mr. Boxwala, do you own a Honda Civic, with the license plate number —” Ismail didn’t hear the rest. He instantly understood what was wrong. Zubi. His eyes lost their focus, and everything seemed to vibrate. Ismail’s mind dashed ahead of him: I took Zubi to daycare this morning, didn’t I? He tried to picture the daycare’s doors, its hallways, her teacher, but couldn’t. He stood up to get more air, but no matter how much he inhaled, there still there wasn’t enough. He understood that the reason for the officer’s visit was in the backseat of his car, just as he’d left her, asleep, her soft black hair resting against her baby seat.

  “Excuse me, I must go, I have to check on something —” Ismail said, rising from his chair, stepping around his desk. He wanted to go backwards in time, get Zubi from the car, parked just a few minutes away. And then he would take her to daycare as he should have. Bill Todd stood up and blocked his way.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Boxwala. Sit down,” he repeated sternly, his beefy hand gently guiding Ismail back around his desk and into his chair.

  “You don’t understand, you see I must go check … I usually drop the baby off first … my daughter, Zubi … then my wife at her work, and then I come to work … but the order got changed today … I have to go get my daughter. Please, let me go to her!” Ismail sputtered, gasping for breath.

  “It’s too late, Mr. Boxwala. She was found about an hour ago.” He barely heard the words; they were travelling away from him, faint, barely comprehensible syllables.

  “What? What do you mean? Then she is … okay?” Ismail grasped for any possibility, any hope that Zubi was all right. Bill Todd shook his head, bit his lip, grimaced. For the first time during his visit, he didn’t make eye contact with Ismail.

  “No, it can’t be. Oh no … oh no … Zubi!” Ismail wailed, forcing himself up out of his chair again. “Please, I have to go see her.” His mind refused to let go of the fantasy that Zubi was still alive: Yes, of course her crying would have alerted a pedestrian, a Good Samaritan who would have called the police, freed her from the car …

  “It’s too late. She was found in your car, like I said, about an hour ago. Deceased. Most likely from the heat.” This time he did make eye contact, icy blue ponds.

  “Oh no.” Ismail gasped, holding his chest.

  Each time Ismail remembered this next part of the story, he viewed it in near-cinematic slow motion. A millisecond before he closed his eyes and fell to the ground, he saw Officer Todd’s anxious expression as he lunged forward to steady him. A co-worker, young, pretty, recently hired Chitra Malik, peeked into the cubicle, alarmed by the commotion.


  He had no fear as he lost his balance and the world spun away from him. Rather, he had an amazing and naive thought: he believed he was dying, his life being snatched up in a great dizzying whirl, and he was on his way to greet little Zubi so that he could hold her one last time. He might cuddle her on his lap, kiss her sweet-smelling head, and then, in the vast wisdom of all things celestial, switch places with her.

  Daphne had finished ranting and was now watching him with curious eyes.

  “What?” he asked nonchalantly.

  “You’ve kinda been staring off into space for the last few seconds.”

  “Oh, sorry. Just tired I guess.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said and turned her gaze to the back doors, where the police had re-emerged. They travelled through the bar, the same way they’d entered, taking their time to scrutinize patrons. Before they could reach the front where he and Daphne sat, Ismail pulled some bills from his wallet, and muttered a quick goodbye to Daphne.

  He walked the few blocks home, the glaze of intoxication making the sidewalk crooked beneath his feet. At his front door, he searched his coat and pants pockets for his keys, fumbling past loose change and bits of paper. Eventually he found them within his coat’s inside breast pocket, an unlikely place, and he wondered how they’d gotten there. Dangling before his eyes, they seemed unfamiliar, like someone else’s misplaced keys.

  A silver key met its matching lock, a bit of grace on a graceless night. He crossed the threshold, and although he knew the house was empty, he sensed he wasn’t completely alone.