— * —
The sound of metal scraping against pavement distracted Celia from her reverie. That morning, she’d been crawling back in time to the day she’d found her late husband dead in the kitchen. Yes, she’d been doing that again, troubling herself in an endless loop of finding him, trying to revive him, failing to save him. Her chest would grow heavy, a phantom, sympathy pain. She’d have to catch her breath and then the pain would recede, leaving behind a residue of resentment. With a hand over her breast, she looked out her window to distract herself. The snow made everything look clean and tidy again.
Down the street, people were clearing their walks. Lydia had been nagging Antonio about it all morning. We could get sued, you know! He was busy ignoring her, focused instead on the hockey game, just like José used to be. He was a fan of all kinds of sports, spending a good deal of his free time in front of the idiot box, a glass of Imperial in his hand. And then in futebol season! He was crazed, like most of the other men in the neighbourhood, drinking at the café, cheering like lunatics in the streets. Celia never could understand what all the fuss was about.
Outside, the Indian neighbour was making good progress with the snow. She doubted he watched sports. She pulled on her coat, grabbed a shovel, and went outside, her departure unnoticed by her family inside. She pushed the shovel along with a light touch, knowing that she would finish the short walk much too quickly if she worked too fast.
She waited for the Indian man to come over, be the gentleman she really didn’t need him to be and offer to help her finish her work. She peered his way, watching him struggle to push a pile of snow over the bank that had formed by the side of the road. She decided to rest a moment, closed her eyes, and focused her thoughts. When she opened her eyes again, he was crossing the street, tromping her way.
Up close, his lips reminded her of José’s. Her husband was almost as dark at this man, too, but stockier. A short man, he wore his bulk uncomfortably, his heart eventually caving in from its burden. Her body remembered his heaviness, too, his weight on her in the middle of the night, when she found herself awakened by her husband’s needy body. Surprisingly, this thought warmed her, and she found herself looking down shyly at her feet. She focused on her neighbour’s thick rubber winter boots, footwear that resembled little Marco’s.
Her eyes travelled up the man’s blue corduroyed legs to his brown jacket, and then back to his thin face. When they finally spoke to one another, she found herself listening to his foreign accent, noticing the flush on his cheeks, the sweat on his brow. He told her that they had met before, but she already knew this. She took his hand, and although the winter air was frosty, it felt warm in hers.
— 14 —
Therapeutic
The weekend brought a thaw after Friday’s freeze, dangerous conditions for roads, tunnels, and bridges. By Monday there were reports of crumbling infrastructure in neighbouring jurisdictions; a man in New Jersey almost died when a piece of asphalt and a guardrail came down on his windshield. The thought made Ismail somewhat anxious, but also smug. Under his purview, Toronto’s bridges continued to be in good shape.
The local media loves the idea of falling-down city structures. His department had already received numerous calls from reporters scoping out information and in an attempt to pre-empt scrutiny, an emergency meeting was held to review their inspection plans. Ismail was charged with leading a team to look at one specific tunnel of concern. Luckily, the cracking at its centre turned out to be superficial, and it needed only minor repairs.
He was on his way to present a verbal report to his harried manager. It took him a few minutes to find the office, because his boss had recently moved to the new, previously abandoned and now refurbished managerial wing. He’d heard people on his floor grumbling that the higher-ups were going to be relocated to roomier offices with fresh paint and carpeting. He hadn’t taken part in those water-cooler conversations but had to admit he felt envious of the generous suites he passed along the corridor to his manager’s office.
A secretary sat at an ergonomic metal desk, eyeing him sullenly. Behind her, there was an enclosed glass structure that continuously trickled water across its panes. Ismail contemplated whether the waterfall was soothing or irritating, and he guessed from her demeanour that it was the latter. She directed him to wait in an alcove with red pleather chairs and art posters on the walls. She returned to her work and he watched her chew her gum, her jaw rotating clockwise.
As he sat in the slippery chair, a sudden nausea rose up and his sweat glands prickled. He soon realized that he’d sat in that alcove almost two decades ago, waiting for a previous manager, for another reason entirely.
Ismail’s old boss, a grandfatherly man and efficient civil servant who later became a city councillor, pushed him to see Dr. Robarts, the city-funded psychotherapist. The less-than-subtle threat that Ismail’s job was conditional on his therapy attendance insulted him, but what could he do? His work was all he had left. After Zubi’s death, his marriage had lasted only a year, and he fell into what people now refer to, rather casually, as a depression. Back in the early nineties there were no Dr. Phils to expound on commonplace mental-health issues and Ismail had little self-awareness about his symptoms, which his boss listed as: lateness on more than three occasions, general lack of attention to detail, and two missed deadlines.
Of course, his boss was correct about Ismail’s “Post Divorce Work Performance.” For the first two months after Rehana left, Ismail had difficulty waking up, his sleep constantly interrupted by dreams and nightmares about Zubi. He often slept through his alarm, forty minutes of CBC’s Morningside blaring from the clock radio beside him. He’d race to work, slipping into meetings mumbling apologetic excuses about bad traffic. Even when he set the clock radio for an hour earlier, he somehow still managed to snooze through Peter Gzowski’s radio-host ramblings, which Ismail had to admit he found quite soothing.
At work it was hard to concentrate, his mind easily shifting away from his duties, meeting agendas and the reports he was supposed to write. Colleagues would sometimes find him staring off into space when they dropped by his cubicle.
Dr. Robarts was most interested in Ismail’s unconscious mind, encouraging him to recount dreams in which he’d spot his daughter off in the distance, usually across a field, or a city block away. He’d run after her small form, trying to catch up, but she’d remain forever out of reach. All night long he chased after her. These dreams would make Dr. Robarts’s brows furrow slightly. Sometimes, the corners of her mouth turned up or down. Once in while she would murmur, “hmmm.”
Often, Dr. Robarts employed a technique she called Empathetic Logic, a term she’d coined and was having trademarked.
“It was a human mistake you made. You are human and any human could have made this mistake. Therefore, you should forgive yourself,” she’d explain.
One plus two equals three. Ismail felt the logic was beautiful and he thanked her for trying, for assuming his humanity. But he questioned her assumptions: Could any human leave a baby alone in a car on a hot summer day? Leave her to die in the blistering summer heat of a closed-up car parked on a busy Toronto street in mid-August? No, only a terribly flawed human being could do such things, and flawed human beings did not deserve forgiveness, he argued.
At this predictable point in the sessions, Dr. Robarts would remove her glasses, their arms folding in neatly with quiet clicks. She’s rub her forehead, stretching out the thin, pale skin between her eyebrows. She’d glance wearily at the clock. In the remaining few minutes, she’d tiredly reiterate her challenges to Ismail’s self-blame, while he listened to her as though he were an obedient pupil. He figured that when she gazed at him across the glass-topped coffee table, her temporarily uncorrected myopia somehow made him appear more agreeable.
“Shall we review, Ismail?” She pronounced his name Is-male, and Ismail thought this was a Freudian s
lip for a Jungian. “You were exhausted after many months of interrupted sleep. You were off your usual routine because you usually dropped Zubeida at the daycare and then Rehana at work and then you’d head to work. These were the conditions that led up to your human mistake. You missed a step,” she concluded.
He tried to see himself through his therapist’s sympathetic lens, as the ordinary man who woke up, drank his Orange Pekoe, buckled his daughter into her car seat, dropped his wife at work, all while listening to CBC Radio. This man then parked on a side street, grabbed his briefcase from the passenger seat and rushed into work. He went about his normal routine that day, like any other day. Except that he missed a step.
After nearly a year in her office, Ismail was sure he’d worn the poor woman down with his constant self-flagellation. One day, during her bifocal-removing, temple-massaging routine, she gently suggested that he take a break, take stock, consider other ways to forgive himself.
“Ismail, I don’t think this is the way you are going to reach a resolution. Perhaps you should consider your goals for therapy, take some time off, and see if there is another path for you.”
She fired him, and he didn’t blame her.
He later borrowed a book from the library called The Self Forgiveness Journey. It said that one could imagine the process as a long road ahead of oneself. At times the surface would be smooth, and at other moments, bumpy with reproach. He supposed his gravel-covered road of self-forgiveness was marred by potholes of his own making.
At least he had Rehana’s forgiveness, more or less. As they left the cemetery, she dried her tears and said, “Ismail, I forgive you. You did not do this on purpose. You never would have hurt her.” Her words were like pure oxygen and he breathed them in gratefully. Later, he wagered that for her to forgive him, she had to hold herself responsible. He thinks she cursed herself for marrying him, for giving him a daughter he would later kill. For asking that the routine be changed that day. For trusting him with the simple of task of driving their daughter to daycare and for not checking in with him later. In truth, Ismail didn’t know if his perceptions were accurate, because the couple hadn’t spoken about it since Zubi’s funeral; she’d refused to speak of it again.
Silence began to pervade their Lochrie Street house like a toxic gas, making it difficult for them to breathe in one another’s presence. They choked on their own unexpressed words.
— * —
Celia stood outside Marco’s preschool class with the other mothers and grandmothers, waiting for the bell to ring. A couple of the other Lochrie widows had taken her under their wing during these pickups, welcoming her and making introductions to the others. She was appreciative of their company, for she hadn’t seen much of her old friends. After José and her mother died, they came to her with condolences and casseroles, but were less sympathetic about her husband’s gambling. They told self-glorious fictions about how they kept their own husbands and children in line and offered her abundant advice on how to successfully maintain order once she reached her daughter’s home. Celia thought that maybe this was easier for them than having to step into her shoes, having to imagine bearing such betrayal and loss themselves. Eventually, she stopped picking up the phone or answering the door, and now there were too many stale calls between she and her old friends. She attended church less often to avoid their sad glances and inquiries. It was only seven city blocks that separated Celia from her friends, but it felt like a hundred miles. With the Lochrie widows, she could almost start anew. With them, she didn’t have to be the naive, misled wife. Instead, she could just be a loyal, grieving widow.
— * —
It wasn’t like Celia never suspected that José could be involved in dubious dealings — she wasn’t a stupid woman. She knew to be concerned when he came home late from the café. She made tearful accusations of his infidelity and, once or twice, checked his pockets, and asked discreet questions of his buddies for clues of dishonesty. But his clothing and his reputation always remained clean.
Perhaps if she’d only asked the right questions, or looked at their chequing-account statements, things would have turned out differently. He might not have sunk them so deeply into debt. He wouldn’t have been under so much stress. Perhaps a heart attack could have been averted. They could have kept the house. If only.
The school bell rang and she watched as one by one the children ran out to greet the women who would take them home. Marco came to the door and searched for her in the small gathering, his eyes scanning left to right, down the line of women in black. She waved to him, her fluttering hand distinguishing her from the rest. Their eyes met, and he flung himself at her.
— 15 —
Three Good Days
Ismail was on his lunch break, buying a hot dog from a street vendor. Behind him in line, were two sets of mothers with young children strapped into their strollers. The mothers talked to one another about a movie they’d recently watched, one that starred Angelina Jolie. One of children, a boy perhaps, was fast asleep, while the other one kicked her pink Wellington boots up in the air, her heels slamming up against the stroller’s footrest. With the next jerk of her leg, she punted Ismail in his calf. He inched forward in the line.
Toddlers are a whole species unto their own. They are adorable and loud, drawing attention to themselves, celebrating their recent emancipation from the confines of babyhood. They run with nearly coordinated limbs, finding ample opportunities to raise sharp-shrill voices with just-acquired words.
Ismail began noticing them after Zubi was born, but felt bombarded by them after her death. It seemed as though they’d call out to him in the mall food court, in the lobby at work, from strollers at the park; a perpetual reminder of what was lost. Usually, he kept his gaze averted when they passed by, his eyes studying shop windows, or salt stains on his winter boots.
In moments when Ismail was less guarded, when he didn’t manage to look away, he found himself staring too long, lid-locked. Faces would shift before him, blue eyes turning brown, white skin darkening, boy children morphing into girls.
He quickly paid for his hot dog, kept his head down, and didn’t bother to squeeze out a red line of ketchup for fear it would take too long. He rushed back to his office.
Bill Todd allowed Ismail to call Rehana from the station. He was led to an old metal desk which held nothing but a phone, the Yellow Pages, and a blunt pencil. Ismail thought it appropriate that there were no scissors, or staplers, or mail openers available to criminals and madmen. He got Rehana’s voice mail. He gasped into the receiver, unable to find words for what he had to say. Bill Todd leaned over and coached, “Tell her to meet you at fifty-two division.” He passed Ismail a card so that he could give her the address. Ismail didn’t know why Bill Todd would treat a killer so nicely. It made his eyes well up, and as soon as he hung up the phone, he turned away from the officer to hide his tears.
Ismail watched the clock, waiting for Rehana to arrive. It was the same type of bulk-order, institutional clock they used at City offices, with a stern face and silver rim. Twenty-five minutes passed, the second hand moving slower than his heartbeats. She entered the police station, her hair loose around her shoulders, bobby pins having long lost their grasp. Ismail tapped on the glass wall that separated the offices from the waiting area and her eyes travelled to where he was. Relief replaced the apprehension marking her face. For a brief moment that would never again be repeated, his presence provided reassurance.
He stood up to meet her, but Bill Todd restrained him, guided him back to his seat.
“Please wait here. Is that your wife? I’ll go out to see her.” Ismail helplessly watched as the officer strode out to meet Rehana, his thick body forming a barrier between the couple.
“Toddler Dies in Heat of Car, Charges Being Considered.”
“Expert Says: Sleep Deprivation Caused Parental Neglect.”
“Investigatio
n Reveals that Father Left Baby in Car for over 3 hours.”
“Horrible Tragedy Should Not Be Viewed a Homicide.”
Ismail read the headlines, watched the news, listened to every radio report he could find in the days following his daughter’s death.
“Turn it off! I can’t take it anymore,” Rehana screamed, shortly after the funeral. Ismail complied, switched off the television and crossed the living room to hold his wife. She stood rigidly in his arms, her hands at her sides.
“I’m going to bed,” she said and he felt her arms finally reaching up, but only to break from his hold. She hurried up the stairs, her back curled into a stoop. There was the sound of a toilet flushing, water running, a door opening, and another closing.
—
Three months later, Rehana declared that she wanted another baby. Ismail was uncertain about the timing, but acquiesced, as he knew he must; he was aware that he was not entitled to an opinion on the matter.
And so the couple set out to work at having another baby. He learned that most women have just three good days in which to be impregnated, a piece of women’s fertility information he never needed to know before then. Rehana bought a special thermometer, and they opted to strengthen Ismail’s sperm count by abstaining on all other days except when Rehana was ovulating. Not that abstinence was difficult; after Zubi’s death, they were both too physically drained and emotionally distant from one another to be interested in each other that way.
On those few precious nights of fertility, Rehana waited for Ismail in the bedroom while he nervously stalled in the bathroom, examining his face in the mirror, searching his conscience for an answer to his endless moral questions on the matter of having another child. He secretly hoped that Rehana would fall asleep waiting for him.
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