Five Roses

by Alice Zorn

  Home from work, Fara stood under a cool shower and let the water sluice her. She patted herself dry, leaving wet tendrils of hair to drip down her back, and didn’t bother to dress again except for a camisole and panties. Even that skimpy layer felt like too much. Groaning, she collapsed on the sofa. Their fan had broken last summer and they hadn’t bought a new one yet. Who expected a heat wave in June? The balcony door was open, but the air didn’t stir. She could hear the next-door neighbours having supper on their balcony. The chink and scrape of cutlery. Her breathless snicker, his monotone.

  She sank into a doze, blinking awake to the click of the key in the door. Frédéric stepped around the corner, white shirt wilted, holding a baguette.

  “Hi,” she said, too depleted by the heat to sound anything but cranky.

  “The balcony door’s open. You’re practically naked.”

  She rolled her head against the cushions. They’d had this discussion before. The windows of the building across the street didn’t face their balcony door. Living in a box, above a box, between boxes taught you to calculate your angles of privacy.

  “We need a fan,” she mumbled.

  “Us and everyone else in the city.” He scuffed down the hallway to change out of his trousers and white shirt. She heaved herself off the sofa. Despite the heat, she was hungry. She would slice some tomatoes, add feta, olives, oregano, oil and vinegar. Lots of black pepper.

  She slipped on a short, spaghetti-strap dress and they carried their plates to the balcony where they had folding chairs, though no pretty wrought-iron table like the neighbours’. Their door was closed now, their apartment quiet. They must have gone out.

  “Supposed to rain tomorrow,” Frédéric said. “The heat will break.”

  “I hope.” Fara bit into a cube of feta. “How was work?”

  “Marie-Ange twisted her ankle on the stairs today. She’ll be off work for however long she can drag that out.”

  “She doesn’t need her ankle to do data entry.”

  “She needs her ankle to get to work.” Frédéric supervised the payroll technicians for a grocery chain with seven thousand employees. Most of the staff in his department used to be clerks who’d worked in the stores. They were his parents’ age with parent-type tics and foibles. If they asked a question once, they asked five times. They granted that he was smart enough to have gone to university, which they hadn’t, but still believed that they knew best. After lunch their eyes looked bleary like they needed a nap. Any change in routine met with astounded blankness — and resistance.

  Frédéric wiped a chunk of baguette through herb-flecked juices and oil. “What can I do? Challenge her medical certificate? It’s signed by a doctor.”

  Across the street a skinny man in low-slung jeans peered over the railing of his balcony at the apartment below. He’d moved in a month ago, strung a rope between the balconies and attached little bells. At first Fara had complained about the jingling jangling. Hadn’t these buddies ever heard of telephones? Lately she’d noticed that, when the man upstairs tinkled the bells, the downstairs couple ignored him.

  Just now Fara could see them inside, slouched on the sofa. “Must be a sauna in their apartment. They can’t even open their door or he’ll know they’re home. What’s that line — good fences make good neighbours? You’ll have to remember that if you buy a house.”

  “Not if. When. I’m going to find one, you’ll see.”

  High-rises blocked their view of the mountain, but their building was close enough that Fara felt the slightly cooler air that had begun to seep down its stone and earth bulk, through the trees, into the city. “Do you want to go for a walk? I want an ice cream.”

  They strolled in a lazy zigzag down one street, then another. Fara tutted when she saw a new block of condos on a lot that had been empty a month ago. Last winter, when Frédéric began talking about buying a place, they’d visited a few condos. The sales reps handed out pamphlets with statistics and cross-section diagrams demonstrating the superior quality of the windows and the insulation. Indeed, some of the details were pretty. A slim rail of crown moulding. Water-bright varnished floors. But the kitchens were derisory for anyone who meant to do more than microwave. Fara dared Frédéric to sit on a toilet snug up against a vanity. With his long legs, he had to twist sideways. She stood at one end of a unit while he jumped at the other. She felt the floor vibrate. How solid was that?

  No condo, she’d said. She didn’t want to live in a place that was smaller and more flimsy than their apartment, simply to have bragging rights that they owned it. She wanted real brick, not brick-look siding. She believed in walls constructed with hammer and nails, not prefab sections that came from a factory.

  Fine, Frédéric said. Let’s look at old houses.

  Sunday morning, almost nine. Frédéric was still sound asleep. Fara eased out from the sheets and reached for her robe.

  The coffeemaker growled and spit as she hulled strawberries into a bowl. Red juice on her fingers and the blade of the paring knife. Soft, wet fruit flesh against the porcelain. She heard flip-flops in the hallway, then Frédéric was beside her, scratching his chest through his T-shirt. She held a strawberry to his mouth. “Taste this. It’s the best part of summer — fruit that doesn’t have to cross two continents to get here.”

  He slid a hand into the opening of her robe and palmed her breast. “This is the best part of summer — no pajamas.” His thumb stroked her nipple as he raised a questioning eyebrow.

  She tilted her head. Maybe.

  The phone began ringing and he dropped her breast to walk back down the hallway to answer. She retied her robe with a smirk. When they were first together, he would have ignored the phone. She could hear him from the front room, sounding brisk. At least it wasn’t family. His mother or his sister would have kept him talking until the strawberries turned to jam.

  Back again, he said, “That was Yolette.”

  “Who?”

  “The real estate agent.” Instead of pouring himself coffee in the mug she’d set next to the machine for him, he took a sip from hers. “She’s got a house in Pointe St-Charles. It’s empty — no tenants. I said I’d meet her at noon. Do you want to come?”

  “To look at a house?” She scrunched her nose.

  “That, too, if you want.” He looped the ends of her belt around his knuckles and gently pulled her to the bedroom.

  Yolette had given Frédéric the address. He and Fara walked from the subway, crossing a long, narrow park. From a distance, she heard a metal clunk that made her think of old movies with country fairs, pony carts, and candy apples. “Is that …?” She heard it again. “Horseshoes?”

  Past the trees they saw a man swing his arm. Thud! Even the sound was a miss. The man standing with him kissed his horseshoe before he tossed it. Clang! He hooted.

  On the sidewalk sat a toilet planted with blowsy pink petunias. The row houses along the street still looked old and pockmarked, but this time Fara granted that they’d withstood the years. They were solid.

  At the end of the street, against the sky, jutted the enormous metal letters of the FARINE FIVE ROSES sign. It was in the news just now, because the new owners of the building didn’t want to keep it lit. Montrealers protested. The historic sign marked their horizon — which wasn’t the horizon, Fara realized. Pointe St-Charles lay behind it.

  The trees in the alleys were enormous branching patriarchs overlooking the houses. “Because there’s been no development,” Frédéric said. “No one’s cut them down.”

  “No development means no cafés, either,” Fara said. “No boulangerie with fresh baguettes. We’ll have to eat sliced white bread from a bag.”

  “The Pointe’s only a fifteen-minute walk from the Atwater Market.”

  “Where we live now, I can get a baguette in one minute.”

  “You’re going to arrange your whole life arou
nd the availability of baguettes?”

  They waited for Yolette on the sidewalk in front of a brick row house with a recessed entrance panelled in wood that had been painted beige. The paint was caked with grime, as were the windows, which were strung across with faded cloth. Frédéric crouched to examine the hewn blocks of stone that formed the foundation. Fara wandered over to look at the house next door. It had the same style of panelled entrance, but the wood had been stripped and varnished. “Come see this,” she called.

  He walked over but looked more skeptical than impressed. “That’s a lot of work.”

  “You can’t buy an old place and not expect a lot of work.”

  “You would still set priorities. I don’t think stripping the entrance —”

  The door swung wide. The woman who slammed it and bounded down the steps nearly collided with Fara. “Oops, sorry, I didn’t see you.”

  “We were admiring your entrance.”

  The woman stared at the panelling as if she’d never seen it before. She raked her hand through her thick curls. She was Fara’s age, maybe older.

  “You didn’t strip the wood?” Fara asked.

  “Ages ago. Maybe ten years? I forgot all about it by now.” She laughed. “Guess I could have left it the way it was. Listen, sorry, I’ve got to run.” She fanned her fingers at them and hurried off down the sidewalk, the soft pummel of her broad buttocks ruffling the cloth of her skirt.

  A car was pulling up. Yolette stepped out in a tailored white dress. To Fara, who hadn’t seen her for a few weeks, the fixed arch of her eyebrows looked more incredulous than ever. “Wait until you see!” she trilled. “You’ll love this place.”

  “We just met the neighbour,” Frédéric said.

  “Her?” Yolette nodded at the house next door. “I wish she’d sell. She’s got a gorgeous stairway with the original banister and a tiger-oak newel. That’s one good thing the hippies did. They stripped all the wood. Back in the seventies this was a commune.”

  “How do you know?” Fara asked.

  “My aunt used to live a couple of streets over. Everyone around here knew about this house. Some old Woodstock hippie set himself up as a free-love guru. Kids from Westmount used to hide out and smoke pot — and who knows what else — until their parents hauled them home again. Sometimes the parents called the police. The bikers didn’t like that. The guru got pushed out. Or maybe one of the parents laid charges. Some of the kids were minors.”

  “Bikers?” Fara asked.

  “They’re all gone now, don’t worry.”

  Fara wasn’t sure she believed Yolette. But the neighbour hadn’t looked worried and she’d lived here for years.

  Yolette dangled a house key as if it to hypnotize them with it. Just open the door, Fara thought. We’re here. Why turn this into a game on the sidewalk?

  Yolette still hesitated, seemed about to say something, then didn’t. The door opened onto a hallway carpeted with filthy broadloom. Except for a mattress leaning against the wall, there was no furniture. Yolette strode across the large central room and tugged the chain for the vertical blinds. They stuttered open, flooding the room with light. The window was large, with a handsomely moulded frame in stained and varnished wood. Outside was a deck and a tiny backyard of weeds grown high as hay.

  Weeds and dingy broadloom could be ripped up. The white-and-gold ceiling fan chucked. What mattered was the size of the room, the high ceiling, the large window, the stained and varnished wood. Fara dragged the toe of her sandal across the carpet. “What’s under here? Wood?”

  “Should be,” Yolette said.

  The room next to the main room was painted brown, walls and ceiling. The roll-down blind had been tacked to the window frame. The room was a cave. Fara felt a strangeness — that was somehow familiar? — but ignored it. She opened the closet, which was empty except for a pole and two hangers. She imagined the walls painted white. Or a pale wash of rose. A dining room or maybe a study.

  Through the wall she heard Frédéric running water and flushing the toilet. Behind her Yolette was quiet. None of her usual chatter and pizzazz — for which Fara was grateful. She didn’t like being told where and how to look.

  The kitchen counters were buckled and would have to be replaced. There were square-edged gaps for a refrigerator and a stove. Dribbles of what looked like hardened molasses on the wall. But also two large windows, lots of cupboards, and a walk-in pantry lined with shelves.

  Fara brushed her fingers down the deep moulding of the door frame and walked back to the main room. She could picture their sofa against the far wall.

  Yolette said, “Do you …”

  Fara had turned to gaze out the window. The tiny backyard was large enough for a garden.

  “Do you have a problem with suicide?”

  The word was a blade that touched her, sharp and cold, but she wouldn’t let it pierce her. She faced a window but felt herself standing in a dimly lit room. A bed with the duvet thrown back. Green plastic. Striped pajamas. A thin body. Socks balled on the floor. Clothes dragged off a chair.

  Yolette cleared her throat. How much time had passed? Fara made herself look at her. The manic arch of her eyebrows. Her white dress smudged across the hip. What an idiot to wear white to walk through an old house.

  “That’s why the owner is selling. His son killed himself here.”

  “His son,” Fara repeated.

  Yolette skimmed a glance at the white-and-gold ceiling fan, and as quickly away again.

  That wobbly fixture of gold paint and plastic? Fara nearly scoffed. It wouldn’t hold the weight of a purse, much less a person.

  “It happened more than a year ago but he still won’t step in the house.” Yolette tried to sound concerned, but Fara could tell she had no idea how suicide rent your life — how you were forever marked by the guilt that you weren’t there when someone close to you chose death over life.

  “He’s selling as is,” Yolette said. And more carefully, “His son’s clothes and belongings are still upstairs.”

  Fara felt the cool edge of the blade again and willed herself not to. The clothes and belongings of a person who’d chosen to die were the detritus of a life that had been rejected. Winter boots and summer sandals jumbled at the bottom of a closet. A coffee mug that had been a gift. Fridge magnets. Photos. Mementos kept for years — but not worth staying alive for. Why should they mean anything to Fara if they’d meant nothing to Claire? No, not Claire. This boy.

  “He’s asking hardly anything,” Yolette said softly. “Only a hundred and fifty.”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand for the house?” The condos they’d looked at last winter were a hundred and sixty. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing. He and his son started renovating, so the plumbing is all new and the wiring on the first floor has been redone.” Yolette knocked on the wall. “This is drywall. Insulated. Upstairs you’ve still got the original plaster.” She opened both hands like an emcee. “You won’t find a house this size for this price anywhere else in the city.”

  “Why is it so cheap then?”

  “People won’t buy where there was a suicide. But you two are looking for an empty house.”

  Frédéric walked into the room and winked so Yolette didn’t see. Fara could tell he liked the house. He crossed to the kitchen, where he gushed water into the sink.

  “The counters need to be replaced,” he said, leaning against the door frame.

  “I was just telling your wife,” Yolette began, then waited, as if Fara might want to tell him herself. Fara didn’t. “The owner’s son killed himself here.”

  Frédéric gave Fara a sharp look. Yolette glanced between them.

  Still watching Fara, Frédéric said, “We don’t want a house —”

  “Can we see upstairs?” Fara cut him off. Daring herself. Not sure if she could.
<
br />   Frédéric gave a small shake of his head.

  “I want to see upstairs,” she repeated.

  He looked at her an instant longer, then motioned for Yolette to precede them. He cupped Fara’s elbow and leaned close to whisper, “We can leave.”

  “I like the house. And he’s only asking a hundred and fifty thousand.”

  “But won’t it make you think about your sister?”

  Fara didn’t answer. No one thought about suicide until it happened. Then, once it had and your ears were attuned, you discovered that people were killing themselves all the time — among your friends, their families, at work, down the street. There was always someone who couldn’t endure the despair of yet another day.

  Yolette dropped them off at a diner to talk. She would return in an hour. Fara and Frédéric slid into a booth by the window. Orange vinyl seats and a chrome-edged table. “Holy 1950s,” Frédéric said.

  The waitress looked as if she’d worked there since the 1950s. Her posture was stooped, her neck wattled, but her hips were girdled tight and the remains of her bleached hair had been teased and pinned into a wispy beehive. Frédéric asked if she had espresso.

  “Coffee.” Her voice grated from the catacomb of a three-pack-a-day habit.

  He ordered Pepsi. Fara asked for tea.

  The paper placemat advertised hot hamburger with fries, club sandwich with fries, fish sticks with fries. “Do you think the spaghetti comes with fries?” Fara asked.

  “The Plateau isn’t far away. If we want to eat out.”

  In the upstairs of the house Frédéric had tested the taps and flushed the toilet. Fara had never before realized how obsessed he was with water pressure. The door frames canted, but the doors closed, and they were solid. All the condos they’d visited had hollow-core doors.