Charleswood Road Stories

by Joudrey, M. C.

  The shower drooled warm water onto her head and Kendra realized she hadn’t pulled the faucet knob all the way up. She sometimes forgot to do this on the days that she woke up really tired. She gave the knob a firm yank and the faucet head spit water at her three times before a steady even flow rushed forth. She moved her body beneath the water and felt the chill on her skin wash away with the wet heat rushing down around her. This feeling, for a very long time, had been the best part of her day.

  She took a towel and wrapped her head, then took another and wrapped it around her chest. She opened the bathroom door an inch or two to let out some of the accumulated steam that was fogging the mirror. She stood and watched as the steam slowly melted away from the small vanity mirror and her worn face appeared in front of her.

  “I look a lot older than thirty-three.” She didn’t actually say the words out loud; she thought them and for a moment stared at her reflection with disbelief.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she thought, looking at the thin lines that had formed around her eyes.

  Her head fell forward and the wrapped towel came free, allowing dark tendrils of wet hair to dangle in her face. She patted them dry and continued with her morning routine.

  She dressed and stood in front of the full-length mirror and inspected herself one final time. The phone rang. She did not want to answer but instinctively moved towards it. She picked up the receiver, cursing herself for doing so. She was already late.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, hi Mom. No, I’m just rushing because I’m late for work.”

  “I haven’t heard from him. No, I’m not going to call him. It’s over. It was over more than a year ago.”

  “Sometimes things just stop working, that’s what happened. I can’t get into this right now, I’m late. How do you feel today?”

  “Are you happy to be home?”

  “The nurse has been with you all week, right?”

  “Good, I’ll be by this evening after work.”

  “Love you too. Bye.”

  She set the phone back in its cradle and stared blankly into the openness of her apartment. Her mom was sick, really sick, the kind you don’t get better from. The last few years had been tough on both of them, what with the diagnosis, then the chemo. They were close, always had been and now her mother was slipping away. In fairness, her relationship with Craig probably would have fallen apart despite her mother’s illness but it certainly didn’t help matters. Things just piled up and time slipped away from everyone.

  Sometime after 10:00 a.m., she realized she was still idly thinking about the affairs of her life when the phone rang at her desk. She picked it up.

  “Oh, hello Sean.”

  “Your office in five. Okay, talk to you then.”

  Sean Kelso was her boss’s boss. They rarely spoke and it was strange for him to want to see her. She felt a sharp nervous pang ripple through her body. There had been so many layoffs in the last six months and she feared she was next.

  She put her phone on call forward, set her email to meeting status and decided to head for the washroom to check her makeup.

  She ran the faucets in the washroom until the water was warm and dipped her wrists beneath the soothing water. She looked up at herself in the mirror. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it had to do with the new project she was heading up. She turned the faucets off, and looked at herself in the mirror one final time. She was going to be let go.

  Sean told her it was only temporary, until they finally completed the merger. Then all the company assets would no longer be frozen and in fact, once the merger was completed, loyal employees such as her would most likely receive a pay increase.

  The big boys had been saying this for almost two years now while the company slowly sliced away the fat and then trimmed the meat. Now they were picking clean the bone. The economy was tight and the few colleagues she did know who were still working were facing a similar loaded weapon. She would have no choice but to apply for government assistance.

  Back at her desk, she sat in her chair and looked around the office at her co-workers. She felt exposed beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting. Every few moments, someone would look up from their computer and make eye contact with her. Did they know already? She felt a sudden urge to leave. She filled her purse with a few personal effects and did not bother to touch her computer or phone. She moved quickly through the reception foyer and out the glass doors. It wasn’t until the elevator arrived and the doors opened that she realized she wasn’t breathing. The elevator sounded like an Italian church bell when it chimed for the ground floor. She stepped out of the elevator and hastily made for the outside world.

  Outside, she felt a small momentary sense of relief. She was suffocating inside the building and only now was able to regulate her breathing and gain some composure. She wanted to cry but didn’t. She decided to wait until she got home to let it out, in the safety of her bedroom with the door closed. But she didn’t. Rather, she climbed into her comfy bed, pulled the blankets up around her and fell asleep. It wasn’t until the phone rang that she woke up.

  “Hello?”

  “What, no, but I just talked to her this morning.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “What hospital?”

  “No, thanks for calling.”

  She hung up the phone. She knew at that very moment this was it; her mother was going to die.

  She sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at the clock. It was already well into the evening; she had slept almost eight hours. She rubbed her eyes, stood up and started to change out of her work clothes and into something more comfortable.

  After that she didn’t remember much. Her mind was drowning in various thoughts until she realized she was sitting in the waiting room holding a half-empty cup of coffee that she didn’t remember buying and didn’t remember drinking. She brought the paper rim to her lips, titled the cup and took a sip of the now warm liquid. It was bad coffee, the kind you get from a vending machine in a cup with a little paper handle that you can slip a finger through. She didn’t care though about the quality of the coffee. She just needed something to hold onto, something tangible, something to keep her from losing her grip. She was alone in the waiting room. She didn’t have any other family other than her mother. She missed Craig a little; he was not very good at much but he knew how to comfort her. Sometimes.

  Finally the operating doors opened and a young man came through in full scrubs. He looked weary and she knew the results before he started to speak. Her mother, her Mom, Lily, was dead. After years of fighting and suffering in horrible pain she finally let go. The doctor offered her the opportunity to see her mother and she accepted.

  The body had been moved from the battleground of the operating room to another area. The room was empty except for the stretcher on which her mother lay. The light overhead illuminated her mother’s features in a way that seemed almost holy. She looked down on her mother’s face and reached beneath the surgical blanket to find her hand. It was cold already. The room felt cold too. Her mother looked haggard and worn yet there was still a small presence of peace on her mother’s face. She started to sob softly and put her free hand into her mother’s hair and leaned in to hold her mother close. She gripped her cold hand as tight as she could and sobbed.

  When she left the hospital, the air was cold. The temperature had dropped quite a bit for early fall. She started to cross the street heading towards the hospital parking lot and then stopped before fully crossing. She stood silently for almost ten minutes. There was no traffic, not at this time of night, not on a Monday.

  “You son of bitch! How do you think I could ever understand you in all this, this shit! I’ve lost everything. I’ve tried my best but I’m not built for this, I can’t take much more!” She fell to her knees on the damp street.

  “Damn you,” she whispered hoarsely, clenching her fist until her knuckles turned bone white.

  “You’ve even taken the hope out of me
. I don’t want grace when I die, do you hear me? I want a little right now, tonight, this very moment. I need it. Because I want to live, not hold out for something when I die!”

  She paused as though she was going to say something else but didn’t.

  She felt foolish there on her knees in the middle of the street in the dark. She shook her head and let out a short hoarse laugh, then stood up. She looked up into the night sky like so many fools had done before her, searching for something that couldn’t be seen. She didn’t find anything but she couldn’t quit looking.

  She got in her car and drove home. She climbed up the stairs to her bedroom, did not undress, fell on her bed and slept for twenty-three hours.

  Two weeks later she received a phone call from her employer advising her that the merger was completed and they were delighted to invite her back to work with an embarrassingly modest pay increase. She accepted. Her life at work was better with the pressure of upper management drama now gone and she delved in to reprise her role with the company.

  At night though, when she was alone, she cried a lot. She cried over various things in her life but mostly she just felt a terrible void all the time. She had no purpose and moved through each day robotically. Every day was a routine for her. It needed to be as such to maintain order in her life.

  Two years later, she was leaving the grocery store and her items came out of the bottom of her bag. Nothing broke but her fruit scattered all over the pavement, her oranges rolling away like escaped convicts with freedom in sight. A man stooped to help her gather her items and even walked her to her car. He said his name was Michael. They married almost three years later in Mexico.

  On her thirty-eighth birthday she developed flu-like symptoms that lasted almost a week and decided to see her doctor. The doctor advised that she was pregnant. When she was with Craig and trying to conceive, a doctor had told her that she was not able to bear children. This was only one of many reasons that culminated in their split.

  “How is this possible? I was told I couldn’t have children.”

  “Well, that may have been the case then but right now you are most certainly pregnant.”

  “I am?”

  “You are. Congratulations Mrs. Dodd.”

  Lily Elaine Dodd was born on a hot July afternoon. As the doctor handed over the newborn child, she took her daughter into her arms and held her baby cheek to cheek. She felt a little bit of hope once again.

  The Mustang

  Skating in heat upon plain

  Haunches full

  The last runs and final breadth

  With final breath

  Hooves pound out thunder

  Soil tears betwixt each beat

  Not for distance

  Not for stride

  Nor pride

  But borne of will

  And of freedom

  Because he can

  Then gone forever

  Plastic Query

  THE PHONE RANG TWICE AND then someone picked up.

  “Argenti Manufacturers.” The voice was soft and somewhat effeminate. It was impossible to accurately determine the person’s sex.

  Wendell suddenly felt foolish and asked, “Have I reached the ordering department?”

  “Yes Sir, you have. May I have your store ID and PST number?”

  Wendell fumbled through some papers on his desk and quietly cursed underneath his moustache for being so disorganized.

  “Sorry for the wait,” he said, adjusting his glasses so they perched correctly on the bridge of his nose. “The ID is 35862ARP and the PST number is 334560999002.”

  “Thank you sir, and how may I help you today?”

  “Um, well, I need to order some mannequins.”

  “Yes sir of course, we only sell mannequins.”

  “Ah, right.” Wendell felt lost and the person on the other end of line tried to help by continuing to probe with questions.

  “How many do you need sir?”

  “Um, I would say six would do fine.”

  “Female or male?”

  “All female, it’s a women’s store.”

  “With nipples or without?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you want the female mannequins to have nipples or not to have nipples?”

  “Don’t all women have nipples?”

  “Real women surely do sir, but with our mannequins you have the choice.” Wendell slumped back in his chair and rubbed his fingertips across his perspiring brow.

  “I see, well, I’m not sure. Why do you make them two different ways?”

  “It depends on how you want your display to look. A mannequin with nipples will create the illusion of firm nipples beneath the garment whereas the mannequin without nipples will not. The mannequins with nipples have a more obvious erotic feature to them. It depends on what you’re looking for.”

  Wendell swallowed hard and wondered if the person on the other end could hear. “I guess I’ll order the mannequins with nipples. It seems more natural, doesn’t it?”

  “I think so sir.”

  “Okay, then let’s do that.”

  “Do you want full bodies or just torsos?”

  “Full bodies. They’ll be wearing pants so I’ll need full bodies.”

  “Fine, sir. Now how about colour?”

  “Colour?”

  “Yes of course, we have all the most popular ethnicities.”

  “White. All white,” he felt he answered too quickly. He realized he had no idea who the person was on the other end of the line. Wendell wasn’t even sure if the person was male or female. “Maybe one bla… ah, African American and five whites.”

  “That’s fine sir, however the Asian mannequins are quite popular.”

  Wendell felt defeated for some reason. “Okay, fine, make it four whites, one African American and one Asian.”

  “Very good, sir. I’ve entered the order and it should ship in about five business days.”

  “Alright, thank you.”

  “My pleasure sir, have a wonderful day.”

  Wendell held the receiver to his ear for a few moments longer, then hung up as well. He leafed through some papers on his desk and found the phone number for his next call. He read the company name on the business card between his thumb and forefinger and somehow felt this call would be worse.

  Elementary Weather

  On my stomach

  The clouds are cotton above me

  Floating stationary

  Soft and supple

  Temperature drops by two

  Cotton daubed grey

  Crusty and firm

  Blue elliptical cut-outs in haphazard sizes

  Fall in great numbers

  Thousands of cocktail umbrellas open

  Angry yellow pipe cleaners

  Bend and thrust from beneath the cotton

  They deck the sky with fury

  Electric upon my skin

  Chill in my bones

  Then the glue weakens

  The cotton falls and disappears

  Reveals a bright yellow painted circle

  A perimeter of orange clay spikes

  On my back

  I watch

  I warm

  Two plastic eyes open

  The black centres shake foolishly

  A row of elbow noodle teeth smile down upon me

  Charleswood Road

  “THERE’S NO WAY YOU’LL EAT that,” I said.

  “Oh really? How much you want to bet?”

  “A Mac Meal. I’ll bet a Mac Meal you won’t eat that.”

  I met Damian in the halls of Oak Park High. I was in my senior year and Damian was two years my junior. We had been introduced by Bill Boudreaux who was in the same grade as I was. Damian was the same age as my younger brother Ryan and they had classes together.

  I subsequently lost the bet to Damian who proceeded to eat the entire earthworm off the side of the road and then enjoyed a greasy burger and fries courtesy of my emaciated pocketbook. Damian w
as a skater, rather I should say he skateboarded and was better at it than anyone I had seen skate in school. Bill skated too and I had met him at the Edge skate park only a few weeks prior. It was Bill and Damian who introduced Ryan and me to the other skaters who attended our high school.

  Oak Park High was located in a south-end suburb of Winnipeg at the corner of Charleswood Road and Rannock Avenue. I had moved from Regina to Winnipeg with my family. While our new house was being renovated, we lived downtown on Hargrave Street in this crappy apartment complex called the Howard Towers.

  My family moved around a lot. My father would move us from one place to another because of work. We eventually moved into a southwest Winnipeg subdivision, which made the bus commute to school much easier.

  Ryan and I attended Oak Park High together. Each morning we had to catch the 66 Grant bus from downtown and bulldoze into the suburbs. We had moved five times in eleven years and although each time became harder than the last, my brother and I were now masters at starting over. We had become accustomed to the subtle nuances of the hormonal jungle known as high school. We also understood that gaining peer acceptance was a skilled art and that having an angle was a big help.

  Skating was that angle. It was the first day of our second week attending Oak Park High and the noon bell had just gone off. I searched my disastrous locker for my lunch bag. Ryan had his locker beside mine. We had arrived a few weeks into first semester so the Vice Principal found us two unused lockers side by side. Ryan stood waiting with his lunch already in hand. Bill came by our lockers to meet up and we headed down to the cafeteria together. When we sat down, Damian went around the lunch table and introduced the others. There was Ash, whom I’d already seen around school. He had a brother the same age as Bill and I but we didn’t hang out with him much. Todd Johnson reached across the table to formally shake my brother’s hand and mine and then asked if we wanted to trade our Dunk-a-Roos for his butterscotch pudding. We both declined.

  We had ourselves a regular high school clique except we had no interest in being cool or popular. The truth was we weren’t popular; in fact we were more social outcasts than anything else. Our peers couldn’t connect with us because we went against the grain in the way we dressed and the music we listened to. Our interests were eclectic and strange. None of us played football, which was the promoted sport at Oak Park High. Our teachers didn’t know what to make of us; they could barely understand us with all the skate jargon we used. We only wanted to skate and joke and prank and skate some more. And then eat.