by Lisa Moore
Thanks, she said. She had dipped her chin in so she could watch him turn over the letter, and she’d sighed and he felt her breath on the back of his hand. Then he stood up and brushed the back pockets of her jeans and went inside the house.
I’m just visiting my Aunt, she said. She waved good-bye with a little wave and then just stood there for a moment with her hand on her necklace. He had touched her almost by accident and then became aware of what he’d done and he saw she was aware of it too, and they were both pleasantly flustered. Everything about turning over that letter had been gentle and unpremeditated and ridiculous. It was a ridiculous thing to do and she had allowed it.
See you later, she said. And then she had closed the door. He could hear her walking to the back of the house.
He was getting ready for work and thinking about the girl and it made him self-conscious. He found himself making up a conversation with her, something else he might have said rather than talking about the weather. They could have said something about the bridal party over in Bannerman Park getting their pictures taken under the trees, or that there had been a funeral that morning at the Gower Street United Church blocking the traffic, and all the dark suits in the heat. The organ music coming out onto the sidewalk.
The pigeons had cooed throatily, sounding intimate and provocative and flapping all around them when the door slammed down the street and the knees had been out of her jeans. A few strands of white thread, still intact, pressing against her bare knees, and she had a canvas bag covered with buttons about peace, and a pewter pin of a whale. He might have asked her about the pins. She’d sucked on the top of the Popsicle and drew the pink colour out of the tip so it went whitish like snow, and he had been adamant about the weather changing.
He carries on a conversation with her while he gets ready for work, only half-aware he’s doing it. Part of him thinks there’s a chance he’ll run into her downtown. Then he sees himself as though from the outside, alone in his apartment, thinking about a girl he doesn’t know at all, that he’s barely met. He feels his thumb brush against the dip in her throat just as it did when he turned over the bead on her necklace and he burns a hot red, so hot the tips of his ears tingle. He cannot believe he touched her necklace; his fingers had brushed against her neck. Because her hair was down and it was long and thick and curly and dark, it had trapped the heat of the sun and her neck had felt moist and warm. It had happened without any thought. He’s glad he’s alone so nobody can see him blush. At the same time he knows, unequivocally, that he has been alone too long.
Frank has been selling hot dogs on George Street since April, but he knows this will be his best month. He has four weeks of steady sales until September, even longer, if the weather holds. He’ll work every night until the cruise ships have left for the season and the university crowd heads back to school.
He hears a band warming up on George Street. He lives a few streets up from downtown in a bed-sit, the cheapest housing he could find. There’s a retired Avon Lady on the floor beneath Frank and two Russian drug dealers on the floor above. Carol, the ex–Avon Lady, says they’re drug dealers.
There used to be an Inuit guy on the third floor, but he hanged himself on Boxing Day. They’d never got his name and it was something Carol felt bad about. She had been the one to call the police, when she noticed the Inuit guy wasn’t coming and going.
Frank dropped a bag of laundry on his bed and, opening the zipper, took out his pressed, folded shirts in a neat stack. There were eight. The woman at the laundromat on Gower Street put sheets of crisp white tissue paper inside Frank’s shirts when he had them pressed and he liked the soft crumpling sound when he was getting ready for the evening. He paid extra to get his shirts done and it was his only extravagance. He liked to wear a white shirt when he was selling hot dogs. He liked to look clean, and whatever kind of detergent the lady used — she had spiky black hair, wore tank tops and leopard-print leggings — his shirts always smelled as if they’d been hanging on a line. He wore a baseball cap to keep his hair out of the way of the hot dogs. He’d never had a complaint about hygiene.
He and Carol had known the Inuit guy was in trouble, but they’d tried to mind their own business. They’d listened to him shouting and crying in the middle of the night; they’d seen him with his cases of beer. Then there had been no sign of him. The cops had arrived seven minutes after Carol called them, ducking under the icicles that had hung from the door frame. They’d brushed against each other trying to wipe their feet on the welcome mat Carol had bought at her own expense and put out to cover the hole in the linoleum. They’d shut the door and the draft made the light bulb swing and their shadows dipped and stretched. The cops looked windburnt and content, as if they had worked most of the day outdoors and were ready to get home.
Have you got any reason to worry? one officer had asked, directing his questions to Carol, who seemed self-important and frail in their company.
Frank turns on the shower and takes the can of shaving cream out of the cabinet over the sink. He pulls the chain overhead and the light from the bare hanging bulb swings a soft gold arc on the beige wall. Steam roils above the shower curtain, which is transparent except for a print of big red roses. Frank takes off his T-shirt and leans over the sink to look at the stubble on his chin. He stretches his neck, checking both sides of his jaw. The mirror clouds with steam and he wipes a streak with a face cloth and begins to shave.
There was nothing in the bed-sit when he moved in except a hotplate and fridge and the bathroom with a toilet and shower stall. There was a mantelpiece above a bricked-in fire-place and he’d taken the urn with his mother’s ashes out of his suitcase first thing and put it in the centre of the mantelpiece.
A rectangle of autumn light had come through the window and he set the brass urn down so the light struck it and the urn looked like it might become warm to the touch if it sat in the sun long enough. He didn’t know if it was right to display the urn but he decided he felt more comfortable with it in view.
He’d sold all of his mother’s furniture in an open house he’d advertised in the Telegram. He stood in the centre of the bed-sit, on that first day, and he could see his breath. He stood there thinking about his mother. There were two windows and they gave an unobstructed view of the harbour. Frank had sat on the floor with his back against the opposite wall and looked at the harbour for a long time. He’d had a pencil and a notepad and he was jotting down the items he wanted to list in the Buy & Sell under Freebies. There were things belonging to his mother he couldn’t bring himself to sell or keep: a vinyl recording of the Pope’s address to the people of Newfoundland when he visited in 1984, still in its Cellophane cover, a set of rosary beads carved from narwhal tusk, and a hooked mat his mother had done herself, a portrait of the Pope, his hand raised in benediction.
While he sat there he decided he would buy a waterbed. He had always imagined owning a waterbed when he was successful, but now it struck him that getting the bed might invoke the man he wanted to become. You bought a waterbed and so became the sort of man who owned a waterbed.
Frank had waited until his mother was dead to give her landlord notice. He kept up the belief that she might get well as long as she was alive out of a sort of respect and faithfulness, though he had given up hope of getting the money together to send her to the Mayo Clinic. He talked every day, during his hospital visits, about the airfares he was checking into and the medical advancements the clinic offered that were superior to anything she could hope for in Newfoundland. But his mother’s cancer had progressed so far by the time it was diagnosed that there had been no hope, even if he’d had the money for the Mayo Clinic.
The police knocked on the Inuit guy’s door several times. Then one of them came back down to Carol’s to borrow a butter knife and they used it to jimmy the door. Frank stepped out onto the landing and listened with Carol. They both stood, Frank staring at Carol’s fluffy pink slippers and her peach toe-nail polish, and they heard an utt
erance. It was not a shout but not muffled either, it was a human noise that expressed surprise and awfulness at the same time and it came from the cop’s gut. Frank heard him say, He’s after hanging himself in here, Greg.
Frank dragged his eyes up from the floor and Carol had covered her mouth with her hand, and her eyes looked watery behind her glasses and her fingernails were painted the same colour as her toes. They hadn’t decided to stand on the landing but they found themselves there. The Inuit boy was twentyone, two years older than Frank, and he had arrived three months before Frank and drank continuously and kept to himself, except one morning when he and Frank had shovelled the walk together.
Frank heard a thump and this must have been the body being lowered from whatever kind of noose. The police were speaking quietly to each other. They sounded respectful and upset. Frank and Carol stood, almost unable to move, because they’d both felt a dread building in them all through the week before Christmas without ever talking about it.
On Christmas Eve, Frank had knocked on Carol’s door and given her a box of chocolates and she said she had something for him. He told her not to bother but she said, Come in, come in. He saw her place was bigger but he stayed just inside the door while she opened and slammed drawers in her bedroom and took a long time, and he heard tape.
He stood waiting and finally she came out and handed him the present, blowing the hair out of her eyes as if she were winded. He opened the present and it was a bottle of Avon cologne for men. The bottle was in the shape of a stallion, one hoof pawing the air. Half the cologne had already been used.
Carol asked him did he want to come in and have a glass of Scotch with her if he were old enough to drink and then the bagpipes started from the Kirk across the street and Frank had said that maybe they should call the police about the guy on the third floor. He was holding the glass horse in his hand and the balled-up wrapping paper.
Carol was shorter than Frank and she wore bifocals. The lower half of her lenses magnified the soft pouches under her eyes, which were pale white and delicately veined; her eyelashes were almost transparent. She gripped the edge of the door frame and looked up at him and her eyes snapped several times while she decided what they should do.
Neither of them wanted to go up and knock.
They’d seen him stumbling out of taxis and they’d heard him singing to himself at all hours. Then there had been nothing for two days, not a sound.
The very afternoon Frank had moved into the bed-sit he’d gone outside to the bus stop and caught the number two to the Village Mall and went to Sears and lay down on five or six beds. He lay there and spread his arms and was careful to keep his boots off the mattresses. A man came by and asked if he needed help and he said he wanted a waterbed and he’d want it delivered.
The man said that a waterbed was the most expensive bed you could buy. Frank was still lying on his back. The ceiling was a long way up.
I have lots of money, Frank said.
The police came out of the apartment and passed Frank and Carol on the landing and Frank became aware of himself, just standing in the way, and went back into his room and shut the door. Then he opened the door and stood watching in case someone needed help moving the body.
An ambulance arrived and two attendants got the body on a stretcher and with the help of one of the cops carried it down the stairs. They were giving instructions to each other, wincing under the weight. One of the attendants caught his knuckles on the banister on the second-floor landing. He had to stop and rest the stretcher on his hip and shake his hand because of the pain. He’d grazed the skin on each of his knuckles on the left hand and blood got all over the front of his white shirt. Frank got him some paper towel and he wound it around his hand and dropped the roll and it went bouncing down the stairs and rolled all the way to the front door.
Frank and the Inuit guy had shovelled the walk together one morning after a snowstorm when the sun had come out and the street was an achy ultra-white and the ploughed banks were way above their heads. All down the street cars were buried.
Children had come out in their snowsuits and their voices rang out in the clear air and the chink of shovels. People were shovelling and veils of snow trailed after each shovelful and hung in the air sparkling. The pavement, where it showed through, was as shiny and black as patent leather. The traffic could hardly move.
Frank and the Inuit guy nodded to each other and they shovelled for more than an hour. They didn’t introduce themselves. The moment for doing that came and lasted and passed without either of them speaking up.
The Inuit guy had sunglasses on and a yellow anorak and his hair was blue black and he shovelled effortlessly and took regular breaks to lean on his shovel for a moment and still made more progress than Frank.
The young nurse who lives across the street, a new single mother, was backing out of her driveway over a ploughed hill and she made the engine rev until it was squealing. They went over to push and Frank gave her directions on which way to turn her wheels and saw her eyes in the rear-view and they were brown and he would give anything to kiss her and make love to her because he had been watching her since she moved in, and she’d call out hi and wave and sometimes that was all anybody said to him in the run of a day.
He and the Inuit guy leaned into the fender of her car with all their might. The Inuit guy had pushed his sunglasses up into his hair and he was grinning at Frank and he knew, had seen Frank looking at the girl in the rear-view, and they were laughing and rocking this big mother of a car and finally it gave and the girl covered them from the waist down with slush, and she then pulled over a little farther down the road and ran back to them and brushed at both of them with the end of her scarf, almost down on her knees flicking the slush off, saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and he and the Inuit guy grinned at each other.
Frank got out of the shower wrapped in the only towel he had. He lifted a shirt off the pile of shirts and, holding it by the shoulders, gave it a little shake and the tissue paper wafted to the floor. He had dried his back but he was damp with a fine perspiration because of the heat and he put the shirt on and rolled his shoulders to get it to hang nicely. He took a float from the envelope of money he kept under his bedside table and buttoned it into his shirt pocket. He turned off the lights and gave the door a good slam behind him.
Out on the sidewalk a flock of pigeons lifted as he came down the stairs. They cooed and settled again to peck at the bread crumbs left for them. Inside Frank’s empty bed-sit, water drops travelled in hesitant, zigzagging paths down the plastic shower curtain, and in the window several air bubbles on the stems of the flowers in the Mason jar floated to the surface and broke soundlessly. The breeze nudged the flowers into one another and the stems tippytoed across the bottom of the jar.
COLLEEN
THE ELEVATOR DOORS fling themselves open and Colleen sees a judge heading toward her from the end of a long hallway. He’s in full stride, forehead first, the arms of his black robes billowing. The reflection from a tube of fluorescent ceiling light runs over his oily bald head like a charging train.
She assumes he’s a judge; he towers above her. Colleen is seventeen and slight, with pale white skin, a light spray of freckles over the bridge of her nose. Her hair is kinky, almost black, like bitter chocolate, and gathered loosely with a rainbow-coloured shoelace at the nape of her neck. Her expression is forthright and blatantly innocent. But she has recently been caught trying to destroy several thousand dollars’ worth of privately owned forestry equipment. Colleen Clark had poured sugar into the fuel tanks of some bulldozers belonging to Mr. Gerry Duffy; the youth diversion meeting had been set for early August and she had waited, feeling sure of herself and unsure by turns, all through July. She had wanted more than anything for the day to be over. She had fervently imagined the rest of her summer with the youth diversion meeting behind her. But she had not imagined being in an elevator about to come face to face with Mr. Duffy. She had not imagined this judge or the lig
ht sweat she could feel at her hairline on her forehead. She had not imagined the pitch and tone of her fright.
Mr. Duffy is waiting in an office several floors above to talk about the damage and how she might pay for her vandalism with community service.
Colleen looks at the judge’s reflection in the brass panels of the elevator. His eyebrows hang down into his watery eyes. His face is warped in the polished metal.
A haze of smarting cologne hits her; she can taste it at the back of her throat. When she was six years old she gave a gift package of four bottles of Aqua Velva to her father for Christmas. David was her stepfather, really, though she has never thought of him that way. She thought of him only as her father and she was obsessed that Christmas with buying him a present. She had received an allowance that year and saved most of it in a pink plastic bank shaped like a pig with a rubber stopper in its belly. She’d had to fish the bills out with a fork.
Two days before Christmas, at the door of Wal-Mart in the Avalon Mall, with a flurry of snow and wind at their backs, Colleen and her mother, Beverly, were greeted by a woman in a white plastic apron with eggplant-dark lipstick and big teeth who brought a hand-held whirring set of blades in close proximity to a carrot and sent film-thin coins flying into the air.
Imagine all the time you’d save, Beverly had said, giving her hands a quick clap. Beverly had short, curly hair that she dyed a dramatic, solid black as soon as streaks of silver appeared at her temples. Her eyes were large, strikingly luminous — the white visible below the pupil. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes gave her an etched intensity. She could look rapt and full of judgement, but when she smiled her face was entirely altered. When Beverly smiled she looked girlish and wantonly generous. Her expressions were too honest and full of bare emotion for anyone to think her pretty. But she was strongly attractive.