by Carol Mason
‘Fancy a treat with your coffee?’ she asks me now, carefully placing the sheet of paper to the side and indicating the familiar tray of baked offerings that always look either sweaty or stale.
‘It’s ridiculously tempting but I’m good.’ I feel her scrutinise me for some kind of sign that I’ve undergone a seismic personality shift, but the best I can manage is a twitch of my lips that I hope conveys sincerity rather than sarcasm.
On my first visit, I bought one of her sugar-free spelt vegan muffins but could barely get through half of it, despite the college try. So the next time I sneaked in a couple of McVitie’s dark chocolate digestives. When she spotted me nibbling away in the corner like a nervous rabbit she gave me quite the public telling off about how she doesn’t allow customers to bring in their own food. I tried to explain that it wasn’t because I’m cheap; I’d just rather consume something simple that I enjoy. Besides, my body actually needs proper sugar, because of a strange disorder she really didn’t need to know about (probably because I didn’t know about it either; I was making it up as I went along). But it came out more insulting than I intended. I wasn’t in a great place that day. I suppose since then we’ve each been doomed to think the other is on the spectrum.
I generally come here in the mornings before ten and lay claim to the sofa nearest the window. It’s saggy and you can barely clamber out of it without showing your knickers, but it’s more comfy than the almost classroom-sized tables and chairs that form a sterile row along the window. Just looking at them I am swept back to the little red-brick Victorian infant school of my childhood. I half expect to see lifting lids, inkwells and pencil grooves, and my mother at the door, smiling and waving when the bell rang, waiting to escort me home for lunch. The view out of the window is something else, though. Part of me could sit here all day watching the sea in shifting shades of light, and some days I almost have. On Sundays I will pick out a couple of books then on Wednesday exchange them for two others – they have an honour system that could only work in towns like this. I always make sure Beth sees me returning them, so she can’t get me for stealing. And every time I do, you can somehow bet she has her eye on me.
‘Thanks,’ I say, when she puts my mug down, ‘that looks wonderful.’ She always pours my coffee how I like it: a double shot latte, with only half the amount of milk – ‘You know, the kind that comes from a cow?’ I once deadpanned as I wagged a container of soy at her. So I assume this is a sort of detente. I pull out my three dollars thirty. The day after the inane biscuit exchange I gave her a ten-dollar bill and told her to keep the change. Just to make the point that it wasn’t about the money.
‘I’m so understaffed,’ she says, as I’m about to walk away. ‘I was being serious about the job. Courtney has run out on me now she’s got a boyfriend. And Thom’s moved to Tofino for the surfing. Finding somebody trustworthy at short notice isn’t as easy as you’d think.’
‘Who says I’m trustworthy?’
There is a beat of hesitation where I think, Here comes the sparkiness again, then she says, ‘Your face says.’
I’m about to thank her for the compliment when she adds, ‘Then again I’m probably just desperate. But I figure you’re fairly new round here, and you don’t work for anyone I know of, because we’ve all talked about you. And I assume everybody has to work at some point, even though some of us don’t necessarily look like we have to . . . ’ She gives my dove-grey cashmere cardigan, paired with skinny jeans, the once over. I would never step out of the house without having made a token nod to fashion. Maybe it’s the stiff-upper-lipped Brit in me, but no matter what kind of private hell I’m going through it’s not going to be evident by my appearance.
I come late to something she’s just said. ‘Can I ask – why are you all talking about me?’ I am genuinely curious.
At first she looks like she’s wondering whether I’m being uppity, then she says, ‘Well . . . it’s just that Burt at the Night Watchman’s Lookout said he thought you might have been a journalist type. He thought when you checked out so abruptly that a sudden assignment might have taken you elsewhere.’
If I were in the mood to find anything funny I’d probably laugh. ‘Good heavens! Sounds very James Bond, doesn’t it?’
Her spine straightens the way people rear up when they sense you’re putting down their townspeople, and therefore them too. ‘I believe he just thought you looked like you were here for a reason but you might have left for an even bigger one.’ Her tone is clipped but she blushes.
I hadn’t pegged Burt for being the town crier but clearly I should have. I am sure she knows he and I didn’t exactly part bosom buddies. Though I’d booked five nights at the Night Watchman’s Lookout, I only lasted two. I’d only checked in there because it was that or sleep in the car. I’d arrived on a long weekend without really having given much mind to it, and the few hotels in town were full. Burt had said he’d had a last-minute cancellation. He’d helped me bring my suitcase in to a tiny room that looked like it might have just been dusted off for my arrival, then he stood there, wedged in between the foot of the bed and the door, rattling on about the history of the house and how he was a direct descendent of the Prince of Wales. When I looked at him like he might possibly be off his head, he explained that white settlers in the 1800s had a hard time pronouncing the names of the native Indians who occupied the land, so they named them after British aristocrats and royalty. A couple of hours later, when I came out of the adjacent bathroom in my nightgown, he was hovering in the near dark and nearly gave me a heart attack. Apparently he needed to break the urgent news that if I required an extra blanket then I was out of luck; his wife had washed it and they were convinced one of the occupants of the neighbouring trailer park had nicked it from the line. When I did finally lay down my head once I was convinced Prince Burt wasn’t drumming up any more bogus excuses to come pester me again, the gale force draught from the dreadfully old windows nearly blew me out of bed. And let’s not talk about the ancient pillows that might as well have been filled with bricks. As soon as the only four-star hotel in town got a free room, I jumped ship. I was just so relieved to get away from overly gregarious fellow houseguests at the breakfast table asking what my plans were for my day, and Burt glancing down my shirt every time he topped up my coffee. But he wasn’t exactly gracious about my leaving, insisting I pay for all five nights. I told him even the best hotels give you twenty-four hours’ cancellation, so by all rights I should only be paying for two. But he was sticking to his guns, so I ended up just giving him his damned money to be done with it.
‘We all just thought you’d be passing through, because we don’t get too many people like you through these parts, certainly not on their own. But we’re surprised to see you don’t seem to be going anywhere in a hurry,’ Beth says, as though this non-explanation accounts for why my existence begets all this curiosity.
‘God,’ is all I say, because there really are no words.
‘Job’s yours if you want it,’ she adds as I’m walking over to the creamer stand.
I turn. ‘Thanks. I’m really not looking for a job, but I appreciate you thinking of me.’ Then I can’t resist adding, ‘But be sure to pass that on to Burt. So he can get on with his day.’
As I shake a packet of sugar into my drink I realise I’m trembling. It’s as though by just talking about everyone’s curiosity I’m somehow on the receiving end of it all over again.
‘Just remember, if you ever change your mind it might be too late!’ she hollers.
Beth is a last word sort of person. Whatever floats your boat, I think.
I take my coffee over to the bookshelves, relieved to disappear between them. I am sure my love for books and literature must stem from all those hours I spent with too much time on my hands, being an only child growing up with parents who were always too tied up with the farm to indulge me with much attention. It’s still my favourite way of escaping the world. These days I’m not fussy what I read – my
mind is only fifty per cent on it anyway – except I can’t do sad stories. You’ll find all kinds here – cookbooks, special interest books, how-tos, business books, and all manner of paperbacks recent and old. You’d think in the time I’ve been coming in I’d know them all off by heart, but the stock keeps miraculously changing. Today, though, something entirely out of the ordinary catches my eye. I home in on it hiding between Sidney Sheldon and Barbara Taylor Bradford. It’s wedged in there quite tight; I have to do a lot of wiggling to get it out. I’m surprised to see it’s a pocket-sized book of poems by Longfellow, bound in chocolate calf-skin leather; exquisite but made to last, the way things were back then, the way things rarely are any more. One of those treasures you’d find in a bookstore in an old university town back in England, the kind that makes you stop what you’re doing and sit cross-legged on the floor in homage to a bygone era, a lost art. When I hold it to my nose I detect cloves and leather gloves, maybe a hint of cigar. Fanning through the gilt-edged parchment pages, a loose one drops out. It’s looks like it was torn from the front of the book then put back – why do people have to deface things of beauty? I can never understand. On it someone has written:
The tender word forgotten,
The letter you did not write.
The flowers you might have sent, dear,
Are your haunting ghosts tonight.
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
It’s as though someone is talking to me. I am the you.
A tingle travels the length of my spine, the top of my head prickling with dread. The beginnings of a fine sweat on the back of my neck make me stand bone still to see if it’s going to travel to other parts.
The words have been written with a fountain pen, in a fine cursive hand – a woman’s I’d guess. The skin of the page has absorbed the fat swells of ink, and, as I stare at the intricate lettering, I can almost hear the tiny scraping flourish of the nib in the expert hand of the writer. I read it again, unable to shake my conviction that this is some kind of sign, though I’m generally not a believer in these things – I can’t speak for anyone else’s mind but mine is messed up enough without that.
Haunting ghosts.
The coffee has suddenly turned me nauseous. There’s a gumminess in the back of my throat, the kind that comes before you puke your insides up. I put the paper back where it dropped out from and close the book. But I can’t unsee the words.
My instinct is to put it back on the shelf but instead, on a whim, I think, No, I’d like to borrow it. I place it in my bag, along with an Anita Shreve – The Pilot’s Wife – that I read many moons ago and is now ripe for a re-visit. I put my empty mug in the used dishes bin and walk to the door, deliberately avoiding Beth’s eyes, which I sense are back on me like lasers. But as I go to leave I am powerfully aware of those astute little words throwing me slightly off balance.
On my way out there is a man coming in the door. It’s that awkward moment where one of us has to give way and I’m curious to see if he’s going to be a gentleman. Just as I’m thinking how life is a series of tests – some of them the ones that make you a better version of yourself, others immaterial like this – he holds the door open for me with an outstretched arm, and presses himself back to allow me to squeeze by him. He is tall, and of average build. I’m conscious of the pleasing smell of a well-worn leather jacket, mingled perhaps with faded aftershave or fabric softener, and of how he’s blocking some of the light. As I try to slide past him our chests graze. I glance up to somehow apologise for the awkward bodily contact, but I can’t see his eyes. He’s wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses, the reflector kind; all I see is a slightly distorted image of my own head. I mutter ‘thanks’ and for some odd reason practically fizzle with relief when I get outside.
It’s only when I’ve gone a few steps down the street that it hits me what it was about his face and I shudder.
FOUR
‘I got your email,’ he says.
I had almost forgotten I’d sent it.
‘My God, Olivia . . . Are you ever going to move on?’
I open my mouth but a response just evaporates. I search for words but it’s like I’ve had a crash course in a foreign language and forgotten what I learned.
‘You’re not, are you? You’re never going to let this go.’
I’m not sure what’s worse: his pity for me, or his complete inability to understand. I give up my task of trying to force a small plastic bag on to a large kitchen bin, pinch the bridge of my nose to stem that sense of going insane. ‘He almost killed somebody,’ I say. ‘Somebody almost died because he wasn’t fit to do his job.’
He sighs. ‘It says he read the CT scan the wrong way round, performed the surgery on the wrong lung. When they opened the guy up he just assumed the clot had disappeared. They said it was an easy mistake.’
‘They sent the guy home. He started spitting blood and his wife thought he was dying.’
‘He ended up being fine! Why are you obsessing about this?’
‘How can you be so casual about it?’ I don’t know whether he’s trivialising it for my sake, or because he genuinely is this indifferent.
‘He’s fine, Olivia. End of.’
‘End of?’ My heart skips a beat then hammers out the next few. ‘Glen Sullivan might never practice medicine again. The patient is claiming all kinds of—’ The legal jargon escapes me. I’d had it all straight before.
‘Yeah, that’s what people do when they want to sue doctors for wads of money. They exaggerate.’ The way he draws out his words makes him sound like he’s trying to reason with an imbecile. ‘Anyway, seriously, why are we talking about this?’ He sounds genuinely bewildered. ‘Why are you still trawling the Internet looking for stuff that’s only going to torment you? You need to get help for this.’ He sighs long and heavy through his nose.
My heartbeat is like a puff of breath in my ears. I ignore this annoying issue of my needing help. ‘It’s completely unfathomable to me that you seriously don’t give a shit,’ I say. You can’t make a cold person care. I get up from the table and fling open the back door. We are here again, straddling the line between acquiescence and argument, reluctant to have a foothold in either, because we’ve been down both these paths many times before and it accomplishes nothing. I stand there looking out on to the rain, listening to the rhythmic rush and recede, filling my lungs with air and trying to steady my peripatetic thoughts.
‘Of course I give a shit,’ he says. ‘But I give one about my wife. As for Dr Glen Sullivan, well, it’s sad and I’m sorry, but it’s not my problem and it’s not yours.’
I disagree strenuously, but I don’t have it in me to fight. My knee-jerk reaction is to wage war on everything Mark says because he is such an easy target and somewhere in me, where I still have the capacity, I know that’s terribly wrong of me and extremely unfair. ‘As usual, thanks for your understanding and your concern,’ I say, a touch less strident. ‘You’re a real piece of work, you know that?’
‘So you keep telling me.’ There is a sad note of fondness and resignation in his tone that momentarily breaks my stride, and possibly my heart. After a protracted pause where neither of us seems to want to add anything, but neither are we rushing to hang up, he says, ‘Anyway, can we stop talking about this for a minute and talk about something else? I want to know when you’re coming home. It’s crazy you not being here, where you belong . . . I miss you. The house isn’t the same without you. Nothing is. I’m not. Not having you to come home to at the end of the day on top of everything, it’s . . . well, it’s a horrible existence, frankly.’
His candour makes my heart beat with a ravaged sadness, and yet I can’t resist saying, ‘You have someone else. Remember? How would that work, exactly?’
There’s a small sigh, then silence, then, ‘Seriously? This again?’
I think of myself saying to him that day – I was very calm, almost out-of-body – ‘I’m leaving you. I can’t forgive you.’
I was aware
that once you’ve claimed this you can’t really go back on your words without negating the damage somehow. Yet – it was so strange – I didn’t feel fully committed to it. My words and my actions didn’t line up. Leaving didn’t equate to being unable to forgive; one didn’t necessitate the other. It was a bit like being an actor speaking your lines: it’s intense and you believe it wholeheartedly, but in the back of your mind you also know it isn’t real. I remember him saying, in what seemed like genuine amazement, as he watched me pile my stuff into the car, ‘Why are you doing this? I haven’t done anything wrong!’ As I slammed the door, a voice was saying, Part of you believes him. Mark’s not a liar. So why exactly are you doing this?
‘I thought you were going to call the realtor,’ I say now. I have zero sentimental attachment to the place we bought almost four years ago. It’s so barren of memories, except for one bad one – so lacking in everything that makes a house a home. It was Mark who pushed for it, as a measure of how far we’d come – or he had. If we’d never bought it none of this would have happened. Mark wouldn’t have met her. I wouldn’t have done what I did. I miss our old place, the one we scraped to afford, the one where I see memories of us as a family everywhere I turn. I miss it as though it were a human thing with a central nervous system and a steady strum of breath. Sometimes I can’t get my head around the fact that we will never live in 4528 Cedars Avenue as a family again. The truest thing I have learnt is that you can’t rewrite what’s been written.