by D. D. Miller
When the bar closed, I asked her over for a drink. On the walk things got quiet.
“I don’t usually do this,” she said, hands in her pocket, shoulders drawn in. “Go home with guys I just met in the bar.”
“Well I don’t usually ask girls over who I just met in the bar.” Which was the truth; I hadn’t been with a woman since I’d left home. “I really do want you to come over for a drink. I didn’t mean nothing by it.” Which wasn’t totally the truth; you couldn’t help but think.
“All right, John,” she said, as if coming to a conclusion. Then she laughed.
We hung out in the kitchen and had more than a few glasses of rye. The kitchen was a mess. We had this toaster that didn’t have a crumb tray and neither Derek nor I ever thought of cleaning it. Mice used to eat the crumbs, but then we let one of the neighbourhood cats in and he caught a couple of them, so the crumbs started to build up again. There were grease marks all over the fridge, food lying on the counters and a pile of beer bottles and cases in the corner that had once been stacked but had fallen over and never been cleaned up. And the dishes, scattered among takeout containers, probably hadn’t been done in a month.
But Sandy was drunk enough not to care and, before I even knew it, we were dancing around the kitchen. I felt like an idiot, there wasn’t even any music or anything. But it felt good. She talked. Turned out she had just gotten over an engagement, her second. She admitted that she fell too quick and too hard for guys and ended up scaring them away. And in the end, I probably learned everything I ever needed to know about her that night.
“You got me drunk,” she said, then kissed me, a little peck on the side of my mouth. We were dancing close together, one arm wrapped around each other, a drink in the other, and we didn’t even try to keep proper time or anything. And then she started to undress, right there in the middle of the kitchen.
“Do you think we were supposed to meet tonight?” She pulled her shirt over her head first. I could see her nipples through her thin white bra. I wondered if I could undo the clasp or not. “I was supposed to be on a girls’ night out,” she said, pulling her belt through the loops. She undid her pants and stripped them right off. “You know, I even said to myself that I wasn’t going to be with anyone. Not for a long time.” She walked toward me still talking. “I really don’t always do this,” she said, but it seemed then – it was so comfortable – that we had always been doing this. So I reached my hand out and put it there on her chest and touched, just ran my ugly hands round in slow circles, as if I’d done it a hundred times before. I let her kiss me and start to take off my clothes, and if I wasn’t so drunk, it would’ve ended right then. But it didn’t, and we did it right on that dirty linoleum floor, her on top, little pebbles and pieces of crud scraping my back, me too drunk and fuck-dumb to say a goddamn word, to do anything but stare at this woman who I didn’t really know, and think of cars, actually, and what a side panel feels like when it’s had a dent killed and it’s been properly sanded and prepped for a paint job.
Damn. I stood up, shaking my head to remind myself that I was on a clean kitchen floor in Scarborough. A new home, no crumbs on the counter, floors washed within the last week and grease marks wiped away before they got a chance to be stains. As I was walking around the kitchen I started wishing that we still did it like we did that first night. But things got real easy for us real quick. No more crazy sex on dirty floors or dancing without music. Fighting instead of fucking.
The phone rang, and I rushed to answer it.
“It’s nights like tonight that make me want to drink again. I swear to God.” Everett sounded pretty tired. “Mom went to Caroline’s. I tried to get her to come with me, but you know what it’s like with Caroline.”
“How’s she?”
“She’s not doing that well right now.”
There was a silence then that I didn’t like. “So, Eve, we got no daddy,” I joked, because I didn’t know what else to do.
“I don’t know how to feel, John.” He remained quiet, and I started to wonder if I was supposed to tell him, or if maybe I upset him with my joke. “I thought I would be pretty relieved,” he finally said, “but it makes you think. You just can’t help it. I don’t know how I feel.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What’s it made you think about?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothin’ I guess. Lots a stuff.”
“Like what?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I feel guilty about not getting to say goodbye,” said Everett, “but I don’t know why. I can’t even think of the last time we had a decent conversation. Or even a normal one.”
It struck me that I hadn’t talked to the man in months myself. The last conversation we had was him answering the phone and saying, “Yer mother’s right here.” It seemed, suddenly, that this had all come on real fast. “I’m only twenty years younger than he is, you know,” I said. “You don’t think much about it when you’re fifteen. How old your parents are. Shit, makes you think you don’t have much time left.” I heard him light a smoke and I wanted one too. “When’s the funeral?” I asked.
“Are you going to come?”
“I don’t know, when is it?”
“Think Sandy will come?”’
“I don’t think we can afford it really, the two of us. She won’t wanna go.”
“What did she say?”
“Never told her yet.” I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
“Haven’t told her. Why not?”
“Been sittin’ here thinkin’.”
“What about?”
“Nothin’,” I said, and pulled my mouth away from the phone to take a long haul on the smoke. “I don’t know.” The two of us were pretty tired, I could tell. “What’s Jason got to say?” I finally asked.
“Not much. He said, ‘Sorry,’ but he’s probably afraid to say what he wants to. Like, ‘At least you don’t have to worry about that cruel bastard anymore.’” Everett laughed a weak laugh, probably because he knew it was true, and he knew that was what he actually wanted to say.
We sat there smoking, not talking for a while, like we were sitting together across the table, not halfway across the country.
“I think I might leave him,” he said out of the blue, just like that.
“What?” I said. “What the hell for? You guys been fighting?” Another shock to add to it all.
“No, but I feel so dependent on him. He’s my boss and I live in his place, and, well, it seems so final somehow. Like this is it, it’s over. This is my life, and I haven’t even lived it yet.”
“You’re too young to be thinking like that. Christ, Everett, you just turned thirty-three. It ain’t the rest of your life.”
He paused, taking his time like he does. “Well, I feel like I should have something stable, that I should be set now, ready. You know? Look at you, moved away, own a house, married. And look at me, thirty-minute bus ride from Mommy, living in my boss’s apartment. And we feel like an old married couple. I already know everything there is to know about him.” He paused again and took a drag; he was getting all excited, I could hear it in his voice, the way it rose just a bit. “I jerk off more than we have sex.”
“Jesus Christ, Everett! I don’t need to know that.”
“Well, it’s true. What about you and Sandy? You get all you need?”
“I guess . . .” I stopped myself before I gave the usual answer that everything was just fine. “I guess not. It ain’t like it was, that’s for sure. I’m getting old, though. Older. I’m more worried about that than how much I’m getting.”
He didn’t say anything right away. Sometimes, when calm, my brother thought real hard about everything he said. I appreciated that. Appreciated having a younger brother who could think things through for me.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“About what? Gettin’ old? Not much to do about it.”
“Yes, there is.” He
said it right away, direct. Like there was something more to what he was saying, but I didn’t know what. “You can do something about feeling old.”
“You really gonna leave him?” I asked after I’d pulled out another smoke and lit it.
“Eventually. When I figure out how I can manage it.” He didn’t pull his mouth away from the phone when he took drags of his cigarette and I could hear it every time he exhaled right into the receiver.
We didn’t talk much more after that. He was exhausted, and I was too, but I felt uneasy and couldn’t sit still. I stood up and walked around the kitchen for a while, memorizing all the objects and where they belonged, starting to think no matter how hard I tried, I’d never figure it out.
I shivered, remembering that it was cold in the house. I rinsed my glass, put it in the sink then went upstairs to the bedroom. I took off my housecoat and slipped into bed, lying right down on my back, afraid to get too near Sandy and wake her up with my cold. Everything rushed through my head. I was so tired and yet so full-up with thoughts that I couldn’t focus on anything and certainly couldn’t sleep.
Sandy moved a bit, shuffled closer to me, and I slid over toward the edge. She smacked her lips.
“Wha’s going on, baby?” Her voice was sleep-slurred, eyes still closed tight, lips bashed up against the pillow, and I got a little mad that she was sleeping so soundly while I was there wide awake, noticing the room getting lighter with every moment. “John?” she mumbled, but then was quiet again except for the steadiness of her breathing.
I didn’t answer her. I didn’t move. I just listened to her breathing and stared up at the light fixture, watching the glow from the rising sun slowly make its way across the ceiling.
ast week a group of New Agers set up in Christie Pits and meditated in shifts next to the temporary garbage dump that had been set up there: frizzy hair and hoop earrings; stretchy clothes from Lululemon; beards and dreads and thick-rimmed, oversized glasses. They sat crossed-legged, lining the makeshift fencing around the mountain of trash. Facing inward, they closed their eyes and Zenned themselves right through the smell. I heard about it on the radio and read about it on a blog. The blog posted photos where you could see crowds watching the people meditating, scarves and hands clutched to their noses and mouths as they stared.
It’s been seven weeks now since the city workers strike began, and the smell of rotting garbage is beginning to overwhelm. The odour hangs with the humidity. It clings to the hairs on my arms and to my sweat-damp T-shirts. It rises from the mounds of garbage lining the streets, stacked in absurd piles at the ends of driveways, overflowing from public bins on street corners and building up in the city’s parks.
There are other important services down: no one’s been married all summer, home renovations have come to a halt, permits for whatever needs permitting are not being given. In the beginning, that’s the kind of stuff people talked about: daycare and summer camps. Now, just the garbage.
Our realtor told us that there was an elderly couple – the Hamiltons – living in the other side of the duplex, and on the day we moved in Mrs. Hamilton sat in her bay window and watched us intently. For the hours that it took us to get all of the stuff out of the truck and into our home, she never left her perch at the window. Only her eyes and the top of her head were visible, and her gaze followed our every move. At one point, I looked up and waved, and she waved back without hesitation.
Heather and I bought this place – our first home – in spring, and we were in by the first of May. We live at the end of a dead end just off of Weston Road in the west end of the city. Red brick, two floors, half-finished basement, back deck, a white picket fence down the middle of the yard cutting off our side from the neighbours’. The lawn is small, but the grass grows evenly and green. This summer I’ve taken to sitting out on the back deck with a six-pack and my laptop, streaming XFM, one of the local rock radio stations. Our yard backs onto the rail lines, and I know when all the go trains pass. It’s got so that I can feel them even before I can hear them.
I met Mr. Hamilton at the end of the first week after we moved in. It was warm for early May, and he was out back watering his lawn, standing with the hose in his hand and a smoke dangling from his mouth. He wore a pair of black canvas Converse sneakers, white socks pulled up over his calves, a bucket hat with a full brim, a pair of khaki shorts and an unbuttoned, multicoloured Hawaiian shirt. His skin was so white it almost looked blue.
“Mr. Hamilton,” I said, trotting over to the fence.
He nodded briefly. His eyes were hidden behind a gaudy pair of sunglasses, and I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or the spray from his hose. I was wearing only cut-offs and felt very naked. I had a beer in my hand, and it struck me that it might’ve been too early to be seen drinking.
I stopped at the fence, shifted the beer to my left hand and stretched my right in greeting. He eventually put down his hose – the water still flowing – and walked over and accepted it.
“Jake Masters,” I said. “My wife and I just moved in.”
“Yup,” he said, and stood there. He had a well-trimmed, white beard that was yellowed around his mouth where the cigarette smoke weaved through the hairs.
“Nice lawn,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. The water kept rushing out of his hose. “How long have you and Mrs. Hamilton been here?” I’d still only seen Edna Hamilton sitting at their bay window.
“Twenty-five years.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth and squeezed the tip of it so that the ashes fell flickering to the ground. He put the butt in his shirt pocket. “Lot changes in twenty-five years,” he said.
I wished I could see his eyes beyond those sunglasses.
“Gonna be a hot summer,” he said, turning. He bent down and grabbed the hose, his back to me, and resumed watering his lawn.
The strike ended up killing Mr. Hamilton before the summer ended. At least, that’s what I joked. My wife said my joke was in bad taste. “Dead people don’t have taste,” I said, but she didn’t laugh at that either.
I’d been laid-off by the time we moved into the house, and have drawn unemployment since. My old boss, Bernard Gould, broke it to me right around the time Heather and I were finishing up the paperwork on the house. The business was Gould’s Fasteners and Pulleys, and it did wholesale distribution and large-project rentals of fasteners and pulleys. It wasn’t a great job, but it was a job, and I’d been there for almost five years working as a salesmen. He paid me as well as he could, added commission when I made big sales. His business was suffering before the strike: construction was down due to the recession. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if this summer has completely destroyed him.
I’ve been lazily looking for work, but there’s not much buying going on, so not much demand for salesmen. The heat’s been making it difficult to think too hard about work but easy to think about sitting on the back deck drinking beer, watching an endless loop of sports highlights and retro wrestling clips online, all with a soundtrack supplied by the classic rock on XFM.
The radio station is a major sponsor of the annual Toronto Summer Fest Parade, which is now being threatened by the city strike. I’ve been following the station’s attempts to fundraise all summer to pay for the extra costs of security and cleaning that the city would have usually covered: the mayor sat in a dunk tank for a full day outside of the downtown studio, the Kids in the Hall did a reunion show that was broadcast over the radio and there is a concert scheduled featuring the Tragically Hip and other local bands.
This morning on the radio, they said that this was the longest we’d gone without rain in twenty-four years. Seventeen straight days with zero precipitation. I don’t know how rain would affect the garbage, but it would give us some relief from the smell, that’s for sure. It would knock it out of the sky at least.
Heather had a much more pleasant first encounter with Mr. Hamilton. “He wasn’t nearly as bad as you said,” she told me during dinner one night. “He
was very polite to me.” She plopped a big purple olive in her mouth. I could see her working to suck out the pit.
Heather eats gloriously. She’s a decent-looking woman: thick and straight shoulder-length brown hair, and an indistinguishable face, except her lips. She has the most beautiful, full lips, shaped like a beautifully written capital M, that are a striking shade of pink. I watched her bring a piece of dripping penne to her lips, press it against them until they eventually gave way, her upper lip forming a sensual arc over the pasta, enveloping it. Her tongue worked its way over the tip of the pasta and drew it the rest of the way. Her lips closed on it, and they were damp with oil.
“He was even flirty,” she said, swallowing.
“Old men like young women,” I said. “They can’t help it.” I looked down at the pasta on the end of my fork. I felt inadequate eating across from her.
“You’re ageist.” Heather works in the provincial tax office. She likes it because she never has to deal with the public. Just documents, she said, and they never complain. She was putting in long hours and beginning to look it. Her face was pale, almost gaunt, around those bright lips.
We ate in silence. I peeked up to watch her catch a sliver of red pepper on the end of her fork and bring it to her mouth. I shivered a little as it parted her lips.
When they were still there, Edna Hamilton rarely left her home. Twice a week a nurse came by to push her in her wheelchair down to the little parkette at the end of the street where they would sit and feed the pigeons that congregated there. Often, Edna would reach down for the birds as they ate. She would stretch out her hand to try to touch them, but they would always scatter before she could reach them, their little heads bobbing frantically, and Edna would sit back and laugh.
Aside from that, it seemed as if she spent the majority of her time sitting at the bay window at the front of her house. Because of the wheelchair, you just had this little rectangular vision of her from upper lip to her thinning hair. I actually felt bad that we didn’t live on a busier street and made an effort to walk by and wave when I could. Once, after I waved, she brought her hand to her mouth and giggled. I could see it in the squint of her eyes, the shaking of her hair, and I couldn’t help but imagine a once young and vibrant Edna, born into the world at the wrong time, fated to become an extension of the man who’d marry her, the children she’d bear. A life spent sitting at a window, watching while the world passed her by.