by L. R. Wright
“I’m going to bed,” she said when they were in the house. She turned on the kitchen light and struggled out of her jacket, hanging it clumsily on one of the wooden hooks on the wall by the door.
“Sure, hon,” said Tom. “Can I get you something first? Juice? Cocoa?”
Mrs. O’Hara was filling a glass with tap water. She fumbled the vial of pills out of the drugstore bag, checked the directions, and swallowed two of them. “I don’t think I can get up another flight of stairs,” she said. “I’m gonna sleep on the couch.”
“I’ll get you a blanket,” said Tom, and he scampered upstairs.
When he came back, Mrs. O’Hara was sitting on the couch taking off her pumps. She curled up with her head on a throw cushion and Tom tucked the blanket around her.
“You have a good sleep there, hon,” he said. “And tomorrow we’ll talk.”
Mrs. O’Hara closed her eyes and was almost instantly asleep. Was there a way to go here on demand? she wondered as she drifted off. It was such a blessed destination—sleep.
In the morning, pain awakened her: a throbbing head, an elbow in agony. She pushed back the blanket and sat on the edge of the couch, ineffectually tugging at her skirt, and she stayed there until the dizziness had subsided.
She found Tom at the kitchen table with the radio on low, digging into a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. He looked at her in astonishment; Mrs. O’Hara wondered if he had expected her to vanish in the night.
“Hiya, hon.” He looked down at his plate. “Can I get you some eggs?”
The smell of his breakfast was making Mrs. O’Hara nauseous. Clinging to the edge of the counter, she swallowed repeatedly: throwing up was one of the things in life she found most disagreeable. “No,” she gasped, finally. “Nothing.” She took a couple of pills with some water and left the kitchen.
Tom got up from the table and followed her to the bottom of the stairs. Mrs. O’Hara felt his eyes on her as she plodded upward, and was mortified.
In the bathroom, she stripped, laboriously washed herself, and dressed in clean clothes—slacks, a short-sleeved blouse, and sandals. Then, leaning heavily on the sink, she inspected herself grimly in the mirror. Jesus god. No way could she make it in to work today, not looking the way she looked. And she was relieved to have made this decision, because her whole body had been just slightly atremble ever since she stood up from the couch. She had been ignoring this, but she knew that ignoring it was unwise: she had, after all, lost a lot of blood. She peered more closely at her image in the mirror. Her face was pale, her eyes looked as if they’d shrunk, and her hair, combed straight down around the edges of the bandage, appeared dank and lifeless. Her task for the day would be to find a scarf and practice wrapping it around her head.
Mrs. O’Hara went back downstairs. Tom was washing his dishes in the kitchen sink and said to her over his shoulder, “I’m gonna get at those steps first thing.”
Mrs. O’Hara picked up the phone and called in sick for work. “Yeah, maybe tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t know. I’ll call you in the morning. Thanks, I will.” When she showed up with her head wrapped, everyone would know that she’d been more than just sick. But what the hell, she thought. So what?
Her heart was beating unusually fast. Mrs. O’Hara sat at the table watching Tom dry the pan in which he had scrambled his eggs. “Okay, Tom. I’ve gotta know what’s going on.”
He turned so quickly that she knew he’d been preparing himself. “It’s Raylene from the diner,” he said. “She had a flat tire one day and I was passing by and I stopped to help her with it and—and one thing led to another.”
Mrs. O’Hara felt as if she had been dropped from a great height. There was too much information here to absorb all at once. “Raylene from the diner,” she said, seeking guidance. Tom’s ears were red at the tips, where they splayed out like mushroom caps.
“Yeah,” he said, turning the dishcloth in his hands. It was dripping soapy water down the front of his jeans and onto his cowboy boots and the floor. He was a small, slight man but he had a wiry strength that Mrs. O’Hara had always enjoyed in bed.
There was, however, nothing much else to recommend him, she reminded herself.
“She’d just split up with Dean,” said Tom, “and she felt kinda miserable about it.”
Mrs. O’Hara knew these people, Raylene and Dean. She considered them now in a daze, unwilling to believe that they could have ripped her life apart.
She asked Tom when, and for how long, and then she said, “And what do you want to do now?”
“We want to get married, Raylene and me,” said Tom. He tossed the dishcloth into the sink and sat down opposite Mrs. O’Hara. “I’m sorry, hon. But you know how much I want to have kids.”
He talked on for quite a while. Mrs. O’Hara didn’t hear much of what he said but she watched his face intently and saw several things there: regret, compassion, sorrow—and a sly, mean triumph that sealed his fate.
When he finished speaking, she asked him to leave.
“But hon,” he protested, throwing out his hands, palms up. “I want to fix the steps for you. And—and—”
“Tom,” said Mrs. O’Hara. “You just told me you want to marry somebody else.”
“Yeah, but not right away,” he said, very seriously.
Mrs. O’Hara felt like laughing: hysteria, that’s what it was. “It’s my house,” she reminded him, almost kindly. “And I want you to leave. Now. Today.”
While he packed, she remained at the kitchen table with her mind in neutral.
“I can’t carry it all at once. I’ll have to come back another day,” he said to her from the door.
Mrs. O’Hara nodded, fixing her gaze elsewhere.
Why hadn’t they adopted?
“Do you want my key?” he asked.
But perhaps it was just as well.
“When you come back,” she said.
She heard the door open, and close. She heard Tom trot down the outside staircase, and listened for the car. When he had driven away she switched off the radio and sat at the table in silence. She was still shaking, slightly, whether from last night’s physical injuries or the trauma suffered by her ego she wasn’t sure.
Mrs. O’Hara lowered her forehead to the table and let grief engulf her.
If she had known the full extent of its power, she would have at least tried to resist.
Chapter 10 Tuesday, March 26
WHEN SHE AWAKENED that morning, Denise knew instantly that the weather had changed again, that the clouds and rain had been swept away. She was not usually a person greatly affected by weather but the thought of sun, and a sky that was blue again, instead of slate gray, filled her with joy.
She got out of bed, smoothed the duvet, plumped the pillows, hers and Ivan’s, too, and wrapped herself in a robe. She hurried into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee and then opened the front door to look at the gilding sunshine. She discovered that not only was it a bright day, it was another astonishingly warm one.
She turned on the radio that sat on the kitchen counter, though, and waited for the next weather forecast, because she didn’t yet trust the sun shining on her front door. It couldn’t really be as warm as it felt—maybe she had a fever. She would wait, not get dressed immediately, for if it really was that warm she had better wear shorts instead of her habitual weekend jeans.
She realized that she had decided not to go to work today. She would probably pretend to have the flu.
She was on her way to the bathroom when she saw the big vase of tall branches sitting on the bookcase.
For a few seconds Denise felt as if she was in a dream—in someone else’s dream.
It was a good thing she had turned the radio on: its drone provided the real world as a reassuring wash in the background while Denise, frozen, stared at the vase filled with branches.
She didn’t even know what most of them were. There were several different kinds. A plume of yellow broom. A branch with large leaves, loosely fur
led along its thick stem. Another kind was slender and white, with thorns and tiny pink flowers.
Denise rushed forward and touched one of the thorns. She opened her hands, spreading them, and saw flesh that was pricked, flesh that was bruised. She looked at her hands…and her flesh remembered, and sent the memory rocketing to her brain.
Denise sat down slowly on the love seat.
She looked at the branches, concentrated hard, and—and she remembered—yes, she remembered thrusting into the woods, breaking off those branches.
She shook her head disapprovingly as she recalled chewing at them when they were too supple to break. Like a beaver, she thought, shocked. Chewing away like a little beaver. Only instead of building a dam with her branches she had brought them home, a piece of the natural, living, flowering world to live and flower for a while in her living room.
But what a thing to do in darkness! And in rain…
She remembered the coolness of the rain, the sounds it had made. The woods had been alive with the sounds of the rain. And with the smells of the earth and the trees and the layers of rotting leaves dropped to the ground by seasons past. And the rain itself had a smell, too, a pungent metallic odor...
Why had she been out there, in the woods, in the rain, in the black night?
The phone rang, returning her to daylight and sunshine.
“Hello?” said Denise eagerly. “Oh hi, Penny...No no, I thought it might be Ivan, that’s all. He’s in Penticton. At some kind of conference... All week,” she said. “Yeah, poor me... No no, I’ll be fine. We’re busy at work, and I’ve got lots to do around here, too... Tonight?”
Denise hesitated, glancing at the branches in the vase, trying to remember if there was something else she was supposed to do tonight—trying rather frantically to remember.
Suddenly she thought, Screw it, if it’s not right there ready to be remembered, it can’t be that important.
“Sure, yeah,” she said. “I’d love to come. What time?”
She hung up the phone.
Instead of going into the bathroom, she tied her robe more tightly around her waist and stepped outside into the backyard. She shut the door and leaned against it, letting the sun bathe her.
Her mind felt empty. She rather liked having no thoughts rattling around in there—no important thoughts, anyway.
Denise stood in the sun, the hot seductive sun, listening to birdsong and traffic and seaplanes, offering herself to the sun, and soon sweat dampened her forehead, and gold-encircled coals were glowing behind her closed eyelids.
***
Mrs. O’Hara had set her alarm for six o’clock as usual that morning, but as soon as it went off she knew she wouldn’t be getting out of bed any time soon. She had overestimated her strength again, stubbornly insisting that her aging body was more resilient, more recuperative than it actually was. The last three had been too hard on her. It was stupid not to concede that, physically, she was in serious decline.
She turned on the radio and reached, wincing, for the second pillow on her bed, tucking it under her head. And she lay there cautiously assessing her aches and twinges. Maybe she wouldn’t get up at all today. Maybe she’d stay right where she was, listening to the radio, reading, watching television. She had done this several times recently, and sometimes worried about it. What if it were to happen two days in a row? And then three? What if she ended up never getting out of bed again, except to go to the bathroom?
Soon it wouldn’t matter, because her sixty-fifth birthday was approaching swiftly, hand in hand with death.
First, though, she had to finish what she’d started ten years ago: with five months remaining before her deadline, she still had one sweep to go.
She would let the weather decide her day, she thought. If the morning was mild and pleasant and the sun was shining, she would get up. In order to determine the weather, though, she would have to get out of bed and hobble over to the door, because the glass in the small windows of the cabin was opaque, and the walls and roof emitted a constant colloquy of groans, moans, and lamentations that although hushed and, Mrs. O’Hara believed, even deferential, and not at all unpleasant to her ear, did prevent her from determining whether rain was part of their orchestrations.
She had to get up to pee, anyway.
She massaged her left shoulder, without effect, and threw back the covers. She padded to the back door, which was smaller than the front door but equally thick and strong, undid its several locks, and pulled it partway open, blinking at the sudden onslaught of sunshine. She closed it immediately. That was that, then.
No rest for the wicked.
But after she had peed she climbed back into bed, just for a while, just until the seven o’clock news was over.
She took some aspirin before settling herself in bed, half-sitting against her pillows, and lay quietly, listening to the radio, soothed in the embrace of her small cabin.
It had wooden floors, waxed and polished, and wood-paneled walls—except for the bathroom and the small kitchen area, which were tiled in a shade of peach that was Mrs. O’Hara’s favorite color. The kitchen contained a small electric range and refrigerator, a double sink and several countertop appliances: toaster, blender, toaster oven, microwave oven. The bathroom had several cupboards and a tub, but no shower.
A selection of Robert Bateman prints hung on the walls, realistic representations of Canadian wildlife, landscape, and seascape.
Mrs. O’Hara had a massive leather recliner, a large television set and a whole wall of books. She had no tapes, no CDs—music unsettled her. In one corner was her bed, with a lamp next to it, and there was a closet and a chest of drawers for her clothes.
And, almost in the center of the cabin, there was a black, full-bellied, wood-burning stove to keep her warm in winter.
After the news report, Mrs. O’Hara got up. She made her bed, wincing at the pain—her arthritis was getting steadily worse; she had to swallow a lot of aspirin every day.
Then she dressed in clean overalls, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, heavy socks, and work boots.
No rest for the wicked...
But she had brought it on herself. The first had been accomplished so smoothly, so efficiently, that she knew she’d uncovered a hidden talent.
And then she had felt fate enfolding her, coldly, relentlessly, and had imagined it as the twin black wings of an enormous bat.
She had resisted fate, strenuously, at first. It was as if all the juices had been sucked from her bones. She had trembled, continually, like a willow leaf in the wind. Her misery was a fever; her body hurt when she touched it; when she dressed it, cleansed it, when her fingers accidentally brushed against it. Her skin even anticipated the pain of being touched—it hurt, it ached, it burned like a sunburn in the mere expectation of being touched.
She had awakened one morning—or maybe it had happened in midafternoon, or during an evening—anyway, at some moment or other she had looked at herself. Studied her face and body in the bathroom mirror, intensely and without fear. Acknowledged and accepted her gift.
She saw that it had been contemptible to try to resist. Not many people were called upon to fulfill a destiny. She was among the privileged.
And so she had capitulated, with grace.
The enterprise had proven more physically and emotionally exhausting than she had anticipated, however. She had wondered, often, how long she could continue. But she was pretty sure, now, that she was going to make it.
It was seven-thirty when Mrs. O’Hara opened her back door again, wide this time, and peered out at her territory. She had a need of blooming, growing things but kept no plants inside her cabin because of the plentitude in her woods—there were wildflowers, such as roses, columbine, orchids, and bleeding hearts; cedar and arbutus trees, as well as alder, maple, birch, mountain ash, and wild cherry; and several kinds of berry bushes, too—gooseberry, currant, blueberry and blackberry—that bloomed in the spring and provided her with fruit in the summer and fall.
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Mrs. O’Hara looked around, warily, before stepping outside. She didn’t mind surprising deer or raccoons or even skunks, but once she had burst outdoors and found herself face to face with a cougar.
She called out a couple of times—“Hey! You there! Scram!”—to make sure no animals were near, and imagined a cougar, or maybe a black bear, fleeing her land, careering through the woods and down the steep bank that led to the lake.
She pushed through the greenery at the side of the house and made her way down the path to the van, which started right away, as always.
An hour later she was entering Earl’s Cafe in Sechelt.
“Miz O’Hara!” Earl called out to her, his eyes crinkling, almost disappearing into his grin.
“Hi, Earl.”
“Good to see you,” said Earl, looking around for a copy of The Province. “Here. Take this.”
“Thanks.”
“What can I get you?”
“Just coffee, I think.”
But Earl clasped his hands in front of him and gave her a look both worried and reproachful. “You’re gonna turn into skin and bones.”
“I don’t think that’s likely, Earl.”
“You need to eat, Mrs. O’Hara.”
“Yeah? Well, nothing appeals to me.”
“How about I make you a nice soft-boiled egg and a piece of sourdough toast with real butter? And maybe a glass of orange juice.”
She could pick Earl up and hurl him through his plate glass window, if she had a mind. Which of course she didn’t. This small, tidy man, with the shiny black shoes and the big white apron, he was no sinner.
Mrs. O’Hara nodded approvingly. “You know, that sounds good.”
“Good,” said Earl, grinning at her. “Right,” he said, nodding vigorously, and he went off to fix her breakfast.
Mrs. O’Hara sat back in her chair, holding the newspaper but not reading it. The table at which she sat had a glass top and round metal legs, painted red. This was a recent change. Mrs. O’Hara knew that Earl’s Cafe & Catering was up for sale, and that Earl had probably replaced the old, sometimes-tottery tables in an attempt to spruce things up. But she also knew that whoever bought the cafe would be paying for the goodwill that came with the place, not for the tables and chairs.