Only when Ismail became utterly exhausted from this mental torture could his mind offer him rest and sweet affections. It led him by the hand to an imaginary world, fabricating a different day with a different outcome. It invented alternative plot twists and divine interventions.
As I left Rehana at work, I hardly thought about the tasks of the day ahead. Instead, I looked at Zubi in the rearview mirror. Something roused her from her sleep and then, suddenly awake, she cried in that way children do — as though shocked and appalled — when they wake up someplace different from where they fell asleep. I spoke to her in a soft voice, “Zubi, did you wake up? Were you sleeping?” When her whimpering started to slow, I sang to her, “I’m a little teapot, short and stout, here is my handle …” With one arm, I did the accompanying arm movements, my hands dancing with the song. This soothed her until she laughed. At the next stoplight I unbuckled my seat belt, found her soother, and popped it into her waiting mouth. Her dark brown eyes looked at me with adoration. The light changed, I turned back to the driving, and pulled up at the daycare. She only cried a little when I said goodbye. Then I watched her for a few minutes from the hallway, peeking through the door’s glass pane. The teacher placed her down on a spongy rubber carpet and gave her brightly coloured plastic rings to play with.
His mind’s favourite time for these mental games was late at night, when all was quiet in the neighbourhood. It happened only after the children were called inside, the neighbours stopped yelling out to one another from their porches and locked their doors, and the murmurings through the shared walls went silent. That’s when Ismail was left all alone with nothing but his remembering brain. Eventually, it would grow tired of the exercise, or alcohol would slow it down, and he could finally fall asleep.
— 8 —
Nearly Naked
Ismail saw Lydia’s mother again, a week after he caught her looking at him from her window. He was on the front porch wearing only a bathrobe, the late autumn winds lapping at his bare legs. He was searching for his Toronto Star, which the delivery guy invariably tossed anywhere but within easy reach from his door. Finally, Ismail discovered it wedged precariously between two porch steps, threatening to fall beneath. He reached down with both hands and yanked the heavy roll out from between the steps.
Unfortunately, the effort left him unarmed against a sudden gust of wind that lifted his terry-cloth robe high above his skinny, goose-pimpled thighs. He pulled the thin fabric around himself with one hand, held onto his beloved paper with the other, and rushed back into the house like a self-conscious schoolgirl. Before closing the screen door, he scanned the street to check that no one had witnessed the spectacle. And there she was, peering at him through the clear glass of the living room window. After their encounter the previous week, Ismail wasn’t terribly surprised to see her there. Their eyes met for a moment, and then his peep-show audience let the curtain fall from her fingers and she disappeared from sight.
Ismail mused about what the widow had seen in the immodest moment before he’d run back inside. Studying himself in the hallway mirror, he imagined himself a brown, male, middle-aged Marilyn Monroe caught over the gusts of a sewer grate. Did the lady notice his knocked knees, veiny legs?
Ismail patted down his wet-from-the-shower hair, straightened his robe, and looked in the mirror again. He’d never considered himself a handsome man, but didn’t think he was all that bad, either. Crow’s feet sprouted around his eyes, fine lines that implied he smiled more often than he did, but he was otherwise mostly unwrinkled. He proudly surveyed his full head of hair with its distinguished-looking grey flecks at the temples. Sucking in the slight paunch around his middle, he decided that he was still slim. And he only needed reading glasses when the light was poor.
Ismail locked the door, and soon forgot about his neighbour, allowing the fat Saturday paper to consume his thoughts.
— * —
“Come on, Mãe! Do something! You’ll feel better if you do something. You’re making yourself into a depressed old woman!” Lydia chided. She did not like her mother’s habit of sitting by the front window.
Celia did not have the energy to be offended by the comment, and anyway she did feel like a depressed old woman, even though she’d just turned fifty. She nodded as though she were listening, and promptly returned to her post by the window, which caused Lydia to sigh loudly.
Lydia never knew what her mother was looking at, and even if Celia told her, she likely wouldn’t have approved, anyway. She nagged about her eating and sleeping habits, whether she had gone out that day, if she’d washed her hair that week. She constantly asked her when she was going to stop wearing black, had even brought up two boxes of her regular clothes from the basement. Celia understood this to be her daughter’s way of caring for her, and not so different from the way she, herself, had raised Lydia or cared for her own mother. But now that she was on the receiving end of this treatment she found it disconcerting, their roles reversing in a clumsy dance; neither really knew the steps, and Celia wasn’t sure she wanted Lydia taking the lead.
Celia disregarded her daughter’s entreaties to join the family for breakfast. She smelled the scent of biscuits wafting warm and sweet, but didn’t have much of an appetite those days, and besides, she was involved in something far more interesting.
She was watching the man across the street, who at that moment was standing in the cold, wearing a striped bathrobe. She stared at his chicken legs, uncombed hair, and smooth chest. Celia felt a twinkle in her eye, and mischievous thoughts crackled through her melancholy, surprising her. It had been some time since saucy ideas had come to mind, so at first she didn’t know what to do with them.
Marco came and sat in her lap. He watched a tiny spider — barely the width of a fingernail — construct a web in the window pane: Look, Vovó, a spider! She smiled at his four-year-old sense of glee and then pursed her lips at the insect, blew into its web, frightening the spider and delighting her grandson. You made it windy for the spider!
While she listened to Marco’s laughter, she looked up to see a sudden autumn wind blow under the neighbour’s robe, its terry-cloth stripes transforming into exclamation marks. High into the air they went, revealing bits of man flesh that Celia hadn’t seen in much too long. She giggled at the sight, stroked her grandson’s hair, and recalled a walk on a cool autumn’s day, and the warmth of her dressy burgundy coat. She peeked through the curtains again, watched the man’s retreating back, and saw a flock of Canada geese cross the blue sky over his house.
Memories are like roving magnets that attract others along for the ride. As the Canada geese honked at her from the past, ambulance sirens pulsed fear through her body. The taste of too-sweet chocolate cake brought bile to her throat. She felt her palms pushing against a heart, willing it to beat again, and saw empty eyes, a spirit already displaced. She watched arthritic fingers make eyelids close.
Celia felt Marco scamper to the floor. She had a feeling that he’d been talking to her, but his words blurred in her mind. She wiped away wetness from her cheeks and then saw that his were wet, too. Lydia called him away and he ran into her waiting arms.
— 9 —
Sweeping
Ismail’s next widow sighting was from behind the cloak of his living-room drapes. It was a cool December day, and she wore only a long, dark cardigan over her dress. A plain black cotton kerchief covered her mostly grey hair. Ismail squinted through the streaked glass, trying to determine her age. She swept the sidewalk in front of her house, her stooped posture and slow movements making her seem much older than he guessed her to be.
At one point, she straightened up and peered in his direction, perhaps sensing his presence. Ismail stood back and after a moment, he parted the fabric again. He saw that she was no longer looking in his direction, her attention being diverted by someone calling out to her from the doorway. She replied in Portuguese and gesticulated cros
sly at her daughter, Lydia, who strode out of the house, carrying a black woollen coat in her arms. Ismail drew closer to the window again, and opened it a crack so he could hear better, too.
Ismail didn’t know much about Lydia, except that she seemed a friendly enough woman. She, her husband, and young son had moved in a few years ago. He noticed they hung a Liberal candidate’s sign on their fence during the previous federal election (Ismail also voted Liberal, but preferred not to advertise this), built a new porch, and planted flowers out front that bloomed well into the cold months. Earlier that year, Ismail had admired the size of Lydia’s Black-eyed Susans.
Lydia’s voice rose, penetrating through the crack of his window, distracting him from all matters botanical. “Mãe, it’s cold out!” she yelled. In the same scolding tone, she said something in Portuguese and draped the coat over her mother, who tried, unsuccessfully, to wave her off. Lydia took hold of her mother’s arms, struggling to coax them into the sleeves and after a bit of pushing and pulling, Lydia won the battle, and her mother admitted defeat, standing obediently, like a preschooler, while Lydia fastened each big button from her mother’s knees to her chin. How the young treat the old. What insolence! Let her be! he protested silently from his post. There was something in how the widow allowed her daughter to dress her that told him her acquiescence had chilled her more than any late autumn winds could.
Lydia marched back into the house, blowing warm air into her bare hands. Only then did Ismail notice that she was dressed in a thin T-shirt, jeans, and bedroom slippers. The widow turned away from her daughter and looked across the street toward him. Beneath her tired expression, he saw that she had a pleasant face. He recalled that her irises were shaped like flowers.
She stared back at him blandly while he attempted to overcompensate for his presence at the window by grinning and waving gaily. She did not return the gesture, and so he quickly retreated behind the camouflage of his curtains, feeling foolish.
— * —
The bustle of her daughter’s household encircled Celia but couldn’t break through her lethargy. The days became endless and the nights short. She wished they would reverse themselves so that she could sleep sixteen hours and be awake for only eight. Sometimes she’d lounge in bed as long as possible, squeezing her eyelids shut, willing herself back to unconsciousness, but her treacherous body rarely allowed her to sleep beyond sunrise.
She’d been busy all her life, and there had never seemed to be enough time in her day for all the many tasks she needed to do: the cleaning, cooking, caring for sick children, laundry, and gardening never seemed to end. When the kids were young, she’d even managed to take in a small brood of the neighbours’ children to open a small at-home daycare. The days flew by. But on Lochrie Street, time slithered like a snail, dumb, slow, with nothing to direct it.
But that Sunday afternoon was different. As she sat at the front window, she looked out at the sidewalk and irritation crackled through her. The blustery winds of the night before had blown garbage onto the walk. And the dust! So much of it coated the normally white sidewalk. Usually, her lassitude allowed her to ignore such trifles, but on that day, dust and garbage were urgent matters. She rose from her perch at the window and went looking for a broom.
She stepped outside, and as she worked, she felt a little of her old strength returning, her muscles stretching and straining with each movement. A steady energy spread from her body up to her brain and she found herself humming a popular song she’d heard drifting from a neighbour’s window last week. She couldn’t remember the words, but the melody was familiar: Da da dee. Dum dum da. Da da dum. Dum dah!
She lifted her face to the sunshine, sniffed the air, and admired the blue sky above and sensed she wasn’t alone. She looked across to the Indian neighbour’s house and glimpsed him peeking through his curtains. She didn’t mind. After all, she’d been the one watching him these past few weeks. Perhaps she liked the thought of a man, and that man in particular, looking at her, reciprocating the watching. She blushed as she recalled the day she’d seen his thin legs and privates. He wasn’t an unattractive man, certainly. She hummed a little louder.
She didn’t know why Lydia had to come out right then and ruin her mood. It wasn’t so cold out and for once, she’d been enjoying herself. She didn’t need a coat. And more than that, she wished the man hadn’t witnessed her daughter treat her so stupidly. After Lydia forced the coat onto her, she felt all her energy drain right out of her, down her legs, out her feet, and pool on the sidewalk. She left the broom on the lawn and went inside to take a nap.
— 10 —
Knees
The next week, Ismail finally saw Daphne at the Merry Pint. She moved through the bar, greeting the regulars with smiles, handshakes, and hugs. Although only a few months had passed since they’d last seen one another at an AA meeting, she seemed changed to him and at first Ismail didn’t recognize her; her usual outfit of blue jeans, T-shirt, and sweatshirt had been exchanged for a red overcoat and a yellow dress that stopped just short of her knees. Thick white stockings came all the way up her calves, making her look like a teenager. She sat down beside him, he finally realized it was her, and Ismail instantly felt nostalgic for the good times they’d shared. She leaned over and embraced him from her bar stool.
“You look good, Daphne. New girl in your life?” Ismail probed, hoping for some ambivalence around her sexual orientation that would permit him a place in her bed once again.
“Not a new girl, Ismail! A new life! A new calling!” He watched her eyebrows bob up and down with each exclamation. “Instead of drinking, I write now. I am a writer!” She took a deep breath and then proceeded to talk non-stop about a class she’d taken at the university, the supportive students, her inspirational instructor. Ismail wasn’t sure what to make of this new Daphne, this Daphne with a new calling, inspiration, and yellow dresses and so he ordered a beer and settled in to listen. He noticed that she looked at his drink longingly, sucking hard on her straw, emptying her glass of ginger ale in several long slurps. Ismail guessed she was back at the Merry Pint to reunite with old buddies and maybe test her fragile sobriety, something he understood. He’d attempted evenings of soda water after AA and at first he’d been successful.
“Well, enough about me. What’s new with you these days?” Daphne queried.
“Me? Oh, nothing much. Same old, same old.”
“So … how are things? You still drinking?” She asked tentatively.
“Well, I drink a little here and there. It’s not a big problem for me — I’m much better these days. More moderate,” Ismail said, reaching for the pretzel bowl. It was somewhat true, and now that he was drinking less, he was already feeling the beer’s liquid kiss. Nabil’s voice rang through his head. Moderation is the thing, Ismail.
“I hope you aren’t still spending time with the Mary Pinters here,” she said, glancing at a pair of women sitting further down the bar. Although her expression seemed neutral — there was none of her tomato-red blushing — her voice carried a hint of jealousy, and Ismail felt himself brighten with hope. During their sober intimacies, he’d confided to Daphne about his encounters with a few of the lonely lady regulars at the Merry Pint. It was this gossip that inspired Daphne to coin the term “Mary Pinters.”
As though sensing they were being talked about, one of the Mary Pinters swivelled her stool and smiled at Ismail. He knew her name was Sandra, because they had spent a couple of hazy nights together in the previous few months. He waved feebly at her, and her eyes narrowed into a suggestive “come hither” leer.
“I haven’t slept with a Mary Pinter in a very long time, I’ll have you know!” he lied, laughing nervously. “Not since you were one of them.” Daphne smacked his arm in reply, sending a bawdy sting down its length, rousing his body awake.
“Hey, I’ve never been one of them! I don’t have drunken sex.” Daphne said, p
rotesting, “At least not since I was in my twenties.”
“Yes, me, too. Not for a long while. I think that one three stools over must be missing me,” Ismail joked.
Daphne sized up Sandra.
“No really, I don’t come here very often anymore, not since AA. I drop in maybe twice a week, and only have one or two,” he explained, sipping his beer.
“Really? Just one or two, Ismail?”
“Yes, really. AA helped me cut down. It was good for me for a while, but I didn’t really feel it was for me in the end,” he said, looking guiltily into his glass.
“Well that’s good. I’m still working at it. I almost had a full year and then I slipped, pretty bad. I’ll have a month again next Monday … I probably shouldn’t have come. My sponsor would flip if she knew I was here — she told me to stop associating with people who drink. But maybe I’m like you, I like to test the rules sometimes,” she said with a sad smile.
“I couldn’t stand the meetings without you, Daphne. Those people were so serious, so earnest all the time …” Ismail trailed off, searching her face, fearing he had just offended her, after all she — and Ismail — had been “those people.”
“Yeah, I know. Anyway, the class is a lot like an AA meeting without the AA. Has the same effect on me, maybe better, even. You might like it, too … you should come. It’ll be fun.” Ismail raised his eyebrows, recalling that she used a similar argument to convince him to go to AA with her. She persisted, “Really, you should.”
“I don’t write, except for the very boring reports I do at work. Anyway, I don’t think I’m very creative.” Ismail knew he was being somewhat false. There had been a time, back in his youth, when he fancied himself a creative person. He wouldn’t have ever gone so far as to consider himself a writer — after all he was an engineering student — but he did write the odd poem, and a couple of short stories. One of them, about the sectarian violence that was happening shortly before he left India, was published anonymously in a small journal edited by an acquaintance.
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