Six Metres of Pavement

by Farzana Doctor

  — * —

  It was ten o’clock already and the nurse who came to check José urged Celia to go home for the night. “Have a rest, take a shower. He’ll still be here in the morning,” she said, clicking her pen open and scribbling something down in a chart. She efficiently moved around the bed, inspecting her husband’s limp body and the beeping machines that sustained him.

  Lydia had been by earlier, bringing food during her lunch hour and a change of clothes after work. Celia hadn’t thought to ask for toiletries, and so she’d had to swish her mouth with water and wash her face and armpits with the harsh cleanser and brown paper towels in the public washroom down the hall. She guessed the nurse could tell she needed a bath. Later, she questioned why it hadn’t occurred to her to just go down to Shoppers on the first floor for travel-sized containers of toothpaste and face cream.

  She picked herself off the chair, glad for the nurse’s permission to leave. By then, she’d spent two days at her husband’s sleeping side while others in the family had come and gone. The doctor had checked in twice and reassured her that his condition was improving. He’d looked at her sternly, as though José’s angina was her fault, and warned that there’d need to be lifestyle changes. She’d nodded dumbly and listened as he discussed recommendations for medication and future surgery.

  She decided to walk home, even though Antonio, her son-in-law, had offered to come pick her up. She’d told him she’d take a cab, didn’t want to make a fuss. Anyway, she was glad to walk after sitting for so long, and the crisp night air was fresh against her skin.

  At home, she took a shower, and then listened to eight messages of concern on the answering machine, pressing the orange button that meant they’d be saved. She would ask Lydia to call everyone back from work the next day. Hopefully she’d remember the password she programmed in for them; Celia had forgotten it long ago.

  She wandered the quiet house and peeked in on her sleeping mother. She watched as the bedclothes rose and fell, something she used to do when her children were small, checking to make sure they were still breathing. José used to tease her for it; he rarely feared for their safety the way she did. She wished now that her mother was awake to comfort her, to bring her a plateful of fish and potatoes, to tell her what to do next.

  She looked at the wall clock, calculating that it was only nine-twenty in Vancouver, and dialed her brother, Manuel. No one picked up. She rooted around the fridge for something to eat and found a bottle of wine José had opened a few days ago. She poured herself a tall glass, gulped it back, and then turned off the downstairs lights. By the time she landed in her bed, she could feel the cool wine heating her belly and carrying her off to unconsciousness.

  — * —

  Ismail lay in his bed, his head still cottony from the booze. It was a good way to fall asleep; his muscles relaxed and thoughts slowed down until they almost stopped. But alcohol wasn’t fail-safe. Its soporific effects only lasted so long before he’d dream his way into memories that would wake him in the middle of the night. That night, at 3:00 a.m., he saw Zubi’s ghost at the foot of the bed, staring at him blankly. Then her pupils grew large, darkening her gaze, and he grew afraid. From somewhere outside the window, he heard Rehana’s shrill voice yelling, “You forgot her! How could you have forgotten her?”

  He backed up against the headboard with such force that he knocked himself fully awake. He switched on the bedside lamp, exorcizing Zubi and Rehana from the room. He left the light on a few more minutes before settling himself down to rest again. Before he fell asleep, he repeated the resolution he’d made earlier that evening: to stop drinking.

  Right after the divorce, almost a year after Zubi’s death, he saw a psychologist for forty-eight sessions. Almost a year, but not quite. He attended each appointment faithfully, following the mandate of a manager who felt he needed assistance with his “post-divorce job performance.” It sounded like some kind of human resources category, but when Ismail looked it up in his employee handbook, he couldn’t find it.

  All of Ismail’s colleagues signed a condolence card with platitudes to “take care” and “time heals all wounds,” but none attended Zubi’s funeral. A great cloud of silence crept over the cubicles of the Transportation Infrastructure Management Unit when anyone came close to mentioning the circumstances of his daughter’s death, at least when he was present. Over the years, a new life story was created for Ismail at the office. He became a “bachelor,” a “loner,” “single without kids.” He didn’t tack any family photos onto his cubicle walls. No one expected him to attend the annual office holiday party.

  Soon after therapy ended, Ismail found an almost perfect way to dampen down his memories. He’d been walking home from Dufferin Mall one Saturday when he saw a large yellow vinyl “grand opening” sign flapping in the wind above what used to be an empty storefront. For years, a dusty display of men’s briefs occupied the front window, and he’d often wondered if anyone was going to come along and revitalize the old haberdashery. The new owners transformed the property into The Merry Pint, a typical-looking drinking hole, with a few tables spread along one side and a long bar down the other. The back had a refurbished pool table and a few booths where local drug dealers set up shop. The lighting was always on the dim side, although its south-facing windows drew sunshine on bright days. The bathrooms downstairs were kept fairly clean, but still managed to exude a faint smell of urine.

  That day, the fluttering banner advertised, “Come in for a $1 beer — this week only!!!” and so Ismail followed its enthusiastic command, and went inside, intending to have a cheap drink and then go home to his leftover Patak’s curry. It was during the frightful restructuring days at work, and perhaps he’d been a little more on edge than usual. That one beer turned into two more, drinks that provided him with a giddy, enlivened intoxication he eagerly welcomed. Until then, he rarely drank, except on special occasions: a sip of champagne at New Year’s, a glass of wine at dinner with his brother’s family.

  And then there was the companionship; amiable chatter from a few patrons who, along with Ismail, would soon become Merry Pint regulars. By his third visit, he realized that none of the others recognized his name, were not interested in his history whatsoever. He was welcomed into their drunken tribe, and together, they enjoyed a perpetual present.

  At first, a few drinks once or twice a week permitted him a respite from his life. Then, those drinks weren’t enough, and he found himself there every night after work, drinking a few, talking nonsense with the regulars and eating lukewarm battered cheese until he was sleepy and nauseated. Not surprisingly, the tipsy fun was soon replaced by a dull, drunken routine:

  Sleep. Work. Beer. Cheese. Sleep. Work. Beer. And so on.

  This regimen had great staying power, but of course, it finally dawned on Ismail it wasn’t sustainable. About a dozen years into his tenure at the Merry Pint, just after his forty-eighth birthday, he awoke with a strange radiating pain in his side, uncomfortable enough to force him to go to the local walk-in clinic. After an hour’s wait, the young doctor took his history, twirling a strand of blond hair with her left hand, while she took notes, in green ballpoint, with her right. Her eyes widened when he calculated that he’d been drinking heavily for over a decade. Ismail attempted to avoid looking down her tight blouse or noticing her low-riding trousers while she strapped on a blood pressure cuff and listened to his quickened pulse.

  In serious tones, she suggested residential alcohol treatment, and warned him about high cholesterol and liver disease. She sent him away with ultrasound and blood test requisition forms and called him in two weeks later to review the results. Despite the fact that she reminded Ismail of Britney Spears, he took her counsel seriously, shocked that he had let things advance to such a sordid place.

  So, two years before his fiftieth birthday, he tried for the first time ever to quell his urge to drink. For about eight months, he ma
naged to quit the fried cheese, switch to light beer, and not surprisingly, lost about twenty pounds, returning to his previous slender physique. He visited Dr. Britney at regular intervals, and since the mystery pain had disappeared, she seemed pleased with his progress. He never told her he hadn’t quit drinking, that he’d only switched to light beer. Week after week, usually on a Sunday evening, he resolved to do so, making plans to take a few days off from the sauce. Some of the attempts lasted a day, maybe two. Most of the time, though, he spent his evenings hunkered down in his living room, sipping Blue Light and watching TV. Ismail’s Sony Trinitron became a nonjudgmental, consistent companion and a somewhat adequate replacement for his old drinking friends.

  But it wasn’t as depressing as it sounds. Ismail discovered entertaining and productive shows on home décor, which reminded him a little of his old self, the person he’d been before Zubi died and Rehana left. Back then, he’d been a tidy sort, even slightly fastidious, according to Rehana, who hadn’t been used to a man who knew how to use a vacuum. He’d lost some of that while his drinking was at its worst. Rings of grime coated his bathtub, empties piled up by the back door, and dust and cobwebs accumulated in every room’s corners.

  But from April to November of that year, Martha, Debbie Travis, and Mike Holmes motivated Ismail to bash down a living room wall, and install a skylight that let bright shafts of sunlight into his office. He painted the kitchen walls various hues of yellow and orange, back-splashed with new ceramic tiles, hung expensive-looking and pensive artwork in the dining room, and planted an attractive perennial garden out back.

  With the encouragement of HGTV, he worked steadily, devoting himself to his projects each evening, weekend, and statutory holiday. He even used a few sick days for the really time-consuming and tricky jobs. As he destroyed places within the house that reminded him of the old days, he hoped to make homeless the memories that lingered long in that old row house.

  Bad memories are like relatives who visit and overstay their welcome. Soon your irritation builds when night after night, you return home to find them lounging on your couch, or raiding the refrigerator. And bad memories can be a noisy lot, keeping you up late at night with their endless chatter. Sometimes, you rouse at night to find one of them standing next to your bed, pillow in hand, about to smother you to death.

  Evicting them is futile, for memories are slippery and sly, able to find new hiding places and cubbyholes in which to live. They grudgingly vacated for a night or two, fooling him into thinking they were gone, only to make their appearance once again. When he repositioned his bedroom furniture to improve the feng shui, he found a pair of Rehana’s socks trapped behind the dresser, coated in pinkish-grayish dust. He brushed them off, and, unsure of what to do with them, meekly folded them into a tight ball and tossed them to the back of the closet.

  One day while digging a hole for a new Rose of Sharon bush, he spied something buried a foot down in the soil. He poked it with his trowel, yanked it free from the earth, and held it in his gloved hand. It was a bright yellow car, encrusted in grime, just the right size for a toddler’s grip. Tiny cartoon faces peered out from its dirty windows: a father at the steering wheel, a mother in the passenger seat, and two children in the back. A gush of high-pitched babbling filled the air. Ismail looked around for children in neighbouring yards, but there weren’t any. He closed his eyes and listened until the sounds stopped.

  Sometimes, on rainy days, he’d enter Zubi’s nursery, an abandoned, closed-up area of the house. He considered redoing the room, perhaps turning it into a mini-gym. He planned to donate the dusty pine crib, dresser, and change table to charity, but never managed the task. At least the closet was mostly empty; Rehana had packed up Zubi’s clothing, photo albums, and toys long ago. She left behind three framed photographs of Zubi on the dresser. He hadn’t moved them from where they’d been placed, and could hardly bear to look at them.

  Over the years, the room turned musty and the wallpaper shabby, its edges peeling and curling up into itself. Rehana and Ismail had hung the wallpaper together, one of their first home decorating efforts. They had an argument about whether to go with a balloon or teddy bear motif, and as usual her choice prevailed. Rehana steadied a ladder for Ismail, and her seven-month tummy got in the way, rubbing up against the paste. After he’d hung the paper, Ismail painted the ceiling sky blue, with puffy white clouds, so that their baby would have something soothing to look at when she woke.

  His renovations stopped there, at the threshold of Zubi’s room. In the rest of the house, the lovely walls, new finishes, and garden left him feeling lonelier than ever. He returned to the Merry Pint for solace, and within days, was drinking to get drunk again.

  For a spell he had cheerless sexual encounters with the not-so-merry, half-sauced women he met there. They seemed to efficiently manage their dance cards through some kind of unspoken agreement with one another, switching partners on alternate nights. Ismail was among the dozen or so men who frequently vied for their attentions, buying them drinks, going home with them on a weekday evening. The luckiest, the ones most in the women’s favour on a particular week, got a Friday or Saturday night of inebriated tangoing.

  They filled the vacant space in Ismail’s cold bed, their panting or snoring distracting him a little from the ghosts who lurked at night. But like the rest of his survival tactics, the results were temporary. It took him a few months of drunken sex to stumble into the realization that middle-aged white women with smoke in their hair can’t erase memories. He gave them up, and instead, found Daphne.

  — 5 —

  Affairs

  It was shortly after Ismail’s return to the Merry Pint that Daphne became his favourite drinking buddy. Almost every day, she’d arrive just after her shift at a nearby women’s drop-in centre. She told Ismail once that she had a different personality during her workday, optimistic and helpful while she completed housing applications and distributed TTC tickets. By the time 5:00 p.m. rolled around, most of her cheer had run out.

  Ismail found it surprising that Daphne had these two personas, on and off the job. But then, his work was in maintaining structures, not people. His almost singular focus was Toronto’s bridges and tunnels; the city’s great connectors. Ismail tested them for their soundness, inspected them to ensure they wouldn’t fall down on people, applying himself to his job in the same tedious and consistent manner in which he approached the rest of his life.

  It was obvious that Daphne was worn down by her work. She arrived at the bar in baggy sweatshirts and jeans, only in the most sombre of colours. Her attire cloaked her slender figure, hiding ribs and hipbones that jutted out against her skin. Her face rarely saw the sunshine and her fair complexion was the kind that blushed tomato red when she was livid or embarrassed. By the end of the night, her long hair, usually pulled back in a messy braid, would be in further disarray. Later, Ismail would learn that it always carried a faint, but heady scent of lavender.

  She was caustically cynical, and could find a way to flood anyone at the bar, not already depressed, with her hopelessness and despair. Ismail thought she was just his type. Besides her ability to bring people down, Daphne held great powers of suggestion. Mostly, she was a bad influence on Ismail, peer-pressuring him into drinking one, two, five too many shots of whiskey with her. When she was beyond drunk, her mood lifted and she could entertain Ismail with jokes and tales he found hilarious in the moment, but could never recall the following morning. She introduced him to several drinking games involving cards, dice, and whatever TV show was playing on the bar’s ceiling-mounted television. This held Ismail’s attention, amusing him for almost three years.

  Two weeks after The Simpsons game that left Ismail questioning the wisdom of his ways, Daphne shocked him by joining Alcoholics Anonymous. They were in their usual spot at the bar, but she seemed more alert than usual, while he was already feeling a buzz.

  “Wait. Reall
y? You always called them a cult.”

  “I was wrong,” she said with a shrug. “But there are some weirdos there. But most of them, they’re nice people.” Although she’d been to the Merry Pint since joining up, Ismail could tell AA was helping her. That night, he saw her order a ginger ale between beers, a sobering soda pop intermission. Her previous negativity about the program even seemed to be replaced with some hopefulness and a tentative loyalty to its teachings. Without a hint of sarcasm in her voice, she told him about the previous night’s meeting, using phrases like “one day at a time” and “higher power.”

  “Well, isn’t it a contradiction to be here while joining AA?” he challenged.

  “I’m going to go back tomorrow. I’m taking things slow. I’ve never been able to dive into things all at once.” Then she smiled, “Plus, if they really are a cult, it’s a good idea to do this gradually, right?”

  “I guess it’s better to go sometimes than not at all,” he conceded.

  “Come with me tomorrow, Ismail. It’ll be fun.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow, but she continued, her tone growing serious, “I don’t know a lot of people there yet. It would be good to have a friend with me.”

  Ismail didn’t answer just then, and she changed the subject. But while she talked about a new policy at work that was annoying her, he considered her invitation. The pains in his side had returned, and he was embarrassed to go back to see the doctor after his three-year relapse. Besides, Nabil was on a new campaign of nagging, scolding him for his excesses during his weekly fraternal phone calls. By the end of the night, he and Daphne had made a pact to leave the Merry Pint together.

  — * —

  The day before José’s funeral, the young teller closed her counter and guided Celia away, touching her gently on her elbow. They went to the manager’s office, a glass box that faced out to the rest of the bank. She’d never been in an office like that; José had always been the one to do the banking. She was offered a cup of coffee and a seat in a plush leather chair. The teller spoke softly to her, in Portuguese.