Five Roses

by Alice Zorn

  The stairwell door swung wide and one of the surgery residents strode out. The nurses would tackle him with questions, but Fara wanted him first. “Oscar!” She grabbed a patient’s chart from farther along the counter. “Dupont’s got a bed at Rehab tomorrow. We need an exit script.”

  “Sure thing. Any food here?” He’d been in the OR all day. He took the chart from Fara as José nabbed him to co-sign an order and Guang twisted around in her chair to get him next.

  Tiffany scuttled past, hips wagging, sandals swishing. “I’m here, I’m here. Let me dump my stuff.”

  Fara snapped a rubber band around the stack of filing she’d sorted, pushed off her chair, and went to the med room to wash her hands.

  “Beds are full,” she told Tiffany, who was fanning an infection control booklet at her neck and down between her breasts. “You should have a quiet evening. Don’t let Oscar leave till he writes exit meds on Dupont.”

  Tiffany groaned. “Why didn’t you ask him?”

  “I did. You’re going to have to remind him every five minutes till he does it.” Fara grabbed her knapsack and escaped the nursing station. She ran down the stairs to the parking lot exit, saw a bus coming, and jogged to the stop.

  Getting home now took longer. It was her night to cook, too. Shopping was more complicated now that they lived in the Pointe. She and Frédéric had been spoiled by having two greengrocers, a small supermarket, a bakery, and a fish store around the corner from their apartment. In the Pointe they had a twenty-minute walk to the nearest grocery store, where, even in the middle of the summer, peppers and tomatoes were shipped from Mexico, apples and pears from South Africa. If she stopped at the Atwater Market — also a hike — she could buy apples and pears from Quebec, but they cost even more. And this was during the summer. Money aside, shopping for supper every evening on the way home took up too much time.

  She and Frédéric had to have a talk about groceries. And getting patio furniture, even if that was yet another expense. They obviously weren’t going on vacation this year. Couldn’t they at least sit outside while the weather was nice? Enjoy having a backyard.

  The bedroom, too, needed to be moved. They’d painted, bought curtains, and put their king-size bed in the spacious upstairs room that seemed so perfect for a master bedroom. They hadn’t realized it was impossible to sleep facing the street. Every night she was woken by revved-up cars blasting music, or some lone drunk having a garrulous monologue under their window. Last night she’d snatched her pillow and stomped downstairs to the sofa. That wasn’t why they’d bought a house, was it? To end up sleeping in separate rooms on separate floors?

  In the subway Fara stood with her hand clamped on a pole. Bodies and shoulder bags brushed her hips and back. She kept her chin high, glad that her head cleared the crowd. Especially now, during armpit season. She smiled, remembering who’d first called it that. Claire.

  Fara had made a tortellini salad. She and Frédéric sat at the table that they’d placed before the window so they could see the deck and the backyard. On his way home from work, Frédéric had stopped at the Éco-quartier and picked up a composter. He wanted to put it in the far corner of the yard.

  “Won’t it smell?”

  “It’s not supposed to.”

  Fara leaned at an angle to check that they wouldn’t see it from the window and noticed the outline of a man through the slats of their fence. “He’s out there again.”

  “Who?”

  “I told you. One of the guys from the rooming house. Maddy said they’re harmless, but I don’t like how he stands there. He’s not watching anyone else’s house, just ours.”

  Frédéric leaned forward to look. “He’s not doing anything.”

  “He’s watching us.”

  “Don’t get paranoid.”

  “I don’t like it.” She slammed down her fork and shoved back her chair.

  “Fara, I don’t want you fighting with the neighbours!”

  “Standing there like that isn’t neighbourly.” She yanked open the back door. By the time she’d loped across the yard to the gate, he’d sprinted down the alley and was turning the corner. A thin man with dark hair. What was his problem? Did she have to hang a sign? This is not a bus stop. NO panoramic view. Keep moving. Get lost.

  She trudged back inside. “Don’t you mind that people watch you?”

  “What can he see through the cracks in the fence? Not much.”

  “Not much is still way too much. I don’t like people gawking at me.”

  Frédéric spit an olive pit into his hand and dropped it on his plate. “If he comes back, I’ll talk to him.”

  “I wish you would.” She stabbed her fork into tortellini. “Listen, you’re not going to like this, but I want to move the bedroom.”

  Frédéric widened his already wide eyes. The bed would have to be taken apart again. The brown-and-cream curtains had been bought specifically to fit the large double window.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know the street would be so noisy.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  “The noise? You should know me better than that by now.” When they’d lived in an apartment, she’d rung doorbells the instant it was 11:00 p.m. and music disturbed her. She’d waged war with the neighbour who did bel canto exercises on the other side of an adjoining wall, telling him he sounded like a bullfrog having an amplified orgasm. She’d called the police to complain about the restaurant that shared their back alley, where the staff slung bags of garbage, including wine bottles, past midnight.

  “So, you want to move the bedroom where?” Frédéric didn’t bother to hide his exasperation. “The room next to the bathroom is too small and the room at the back isn’t painted yet.”

  “The room at the back. I’ll paint it.”

  “Are you sure that’s where you want the bedroom?”

  “It’s not as big, but it’ll be quieter. And we’ll be in the same bed.”

  He’d saved a piece of artichoke for his last bite. He always kept a morsel of what he liked best for the end of the meal. “What will we do with the front room?”

  Now they half-smiled, both hearing the absurdity of having so many rooms that they didn’t know what to do with them.

  When the doorbell rang, she got up. So far this week they’d had Jehovah’s Witnesses; a boy collecting cans and bottles to go to summer camp, though he couldn’t tell Fara where the camp was; a man who offered to paint their cornice for a hundred dollars; another selling posters of the Sacré-Coeur de Jésus. Did people actually buy glossy illustrations of a melancholy man pointing at his glistening heart wrapped with thorns? No thank you, Fara said over and over again.

  This time there was no one. “Another prank,” she said as she returned to the table.

  “Why do you do that? Every time you walk to the hallway you move to the side.”

  She knew she did it sometimes, but not every time.

  “It’s the suicide, isn’t it?”

  “Not the suicide.” She gave a small shake of the head. Filling the hole hadn’t helped. “The body. It’s still …” She waved toward where it had hung.

  He looked but saw nothing. Still, he considered the air as if he could. “So … what do we do?”

  She appreciated that he said we. Some men would have dismissed it as craziness. Her problem and hers alone. Let her figure it out. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ll eventually get over it — I have to.”

  “How about you walk through that space over and over again? I could do it with you.”

  She saw he wasn’t joking and touched his hand. “Thanks, but it doesn’t work like that.”

  The doorbell rang again. “I’ll go.” He strode to the door — right through the body.

  She heard a man’s voice. Then Frédéric was saying, “That’s okay, we’ve finished s
upper.”

  Eric. She gave him a push-button smile he returned with barely a glance. He wasn’t visiting them. He’d come to see the house.

  He kicked the toe of his shoe against the floor. “Have you decided yet what you’re doing here?”

  “We did it,” Frédéric said. “Sanded and varnished.”

  Eric’s head bobbed back with surprise. The floor obviously wasn’t what he would call sanded and varnished. “A floor buckled like this? You should rip it up and put down a new floor.”

  “We like this one,” Fara said. “You know, there are people who drive up from New England to buy these old pine boards.”

  “Americans.” Eric seemed to feel that single word sufficed. He stood with his hands on his hips, still peering down at the floor. “What are you doing about the draft?”

  “What draft?” Frédéric asked.

  “You don’t feel it? Don’t worry, you will in the winter. Did you insulate the ceiling in the cellar like I told you?”

  “We just moved in,” Fara said. “Give us a chance. Fred’s still hauling out junk from the cellar.”

  “Better do it before the winter. I’m telling you.” He rotated on his feet. “What are you doing about that?” He jabbed a finger at where the boy had hanged himself.

  Fara stiffened. Frédéric glanced at her. “About what?” he asked.

  “That great big space where all the cold air is going to suck up and down the stairs. What you need here is a set of French doors. You won’t lose any light and you’ll block the draft.” Eric outlined the entrance to the room with a knowing finger.

  Fara began to stack the plates and cutlery with as much noise as possible. Was he determined to drain their bank account? “You just said to insulate the cellar. We can’t start buying French doors, too.”

  “It’ll save on heating. The doors will pay for themselves.”

  “Fred.” Fara gave him a look that meant get your cousin out before I push him out.

  Frédéric was ignoring her, gazing where Eric had pointed. “He’s right, Fara. Doors will change the way everything looks.”

  “That’s not what I said,” Eric interrupted. “It will still look open. French doors are glass, right? Even when you keep them shut, you can see through them.”

  Fara sighed. Did he think they didn’t know what French doors were?

  “Look, Fara,” Frédéric said. He held his hand flat in the air and glided it across the entrance. “Doors. All along here.” He drew his hand back and forth.

  Oh. Now she understood. Doors to block the body.

  “That’s right,” Eric said, mocking their slowness. “What you need here is doors.”

  Fara stood at the fax machine waiting for the confirmation that her pages had been sent. The counters in the nursing station were messy with charts, stray medication records, an armload of towels that had been forgotten, an empty box of chocolates with its paper cups tossed willy-nilly. Why didn’t someone throw away the empty box? Here and there a nurse sat writing. An orderly pushed a bin of isolation gowns down the hallway.

  “Fara!”

  She heard but didn’t answer. Even leaning against the wall, she was taller than anyone else in the nursing station. All Brie had to do was lift her head and look around. But no, she preferred to bellow.

  “Fara!”

  The fax machine groaned and thrummed as it disgorged its wobbly page. Poor thing, it sounded constipated. Fara skirted the chairs wheeled against each other, spied her three-hole punch farther along the counter — where it didn’t belong — and grabbed it.

  “There you are.” Brie tossed a quadruplicate form on her desk. “Evenings wants to make an incident report against the kitchen. They were missing a tube feeding yesterday. Tiffany said you signed for them.”

  “I signed for them because they came.”

  “There wasn’t any Vivonex for Labranche.”

  Fara remembered Labranche’s name on the list. Still standing, she reached for the phone that was ringing and listened for a few seconds. “Your husband is gone for a test. Yes. Probably another hour. Yes. Yes. No, the doctor will have to give you the results, not me.” She hung up, and though the intercom was buzzing, walked down the hall to the kitchen.

  “What about that incident report?” Brie called after her.

  Fara flapped a hand in the air. It wouldn’t be the first time she was told something was missing when it was only misplaced. The tube feeding had probably been shoved behind a carton of chicken soup. How often had she said that the tube feeding shouldn’t be kept where family members stored food?

  Ricardo, the housekeeper, cautioned her. “Watch out, I just washed the floor.”

  Fara stooped before the refrigerator. The light had burned out years ago and never been replaced. One day she would buy a bulb at the dollar store and screw it in herself. She shoved aside juice and plastic bags. There were a couple of containers of tube feeding but none for Labranche.

  She stood again and scanned the kitchen. Stainless steel cupboards. A box of plastic spoons. The ice machine. A large garbage bin. The garbage hadn’t been emptied yet, and she saw noodles slithered across a white Styrofoam container.

  She leaned out the door to snatch a pair of gloves from the box on the railing. Grimacing, she dislodged the container from the noodles. LABRANCHE. VIVONEX.

  She set the container in the sink and asked Royal, who was carrying a clutch of urine bottles down the hallway, to tell Brie to come to the kitchen. Ricardo still leaned against the wall next to his housekeeping cart. “That stuff’s sticky, man. I had to wash the floor two times.”

  “Someone spilled it.”

  “And didn’t clean up right.” He mimed lazy back and forth wiping. “Big puddle under the fridge.”

  Brie walked toward them briskly. “What’s the fuss?”

  Fara showed her the food-smeared container. “Ricardo had to wash Vivonex off the floor. I’ve told you the tube feeding shouldn’t go here.”

  “There’s nowhere else.”

  “Well, don’t be surprised if someone knocks it over.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Probably not him.” Fara dropped the container in the garbage again. She remembered the young woman who’d delivered the tube feeding. Her solemn expression. Her low, grave voice. She didn’t look like someone who only half-did her job.

  Ben slouched on the sofa in his boxers. The TV was on loud, but he wasn’t watching it. Some police drama. On the coffee table, next to a few empty drink cans and flyers, sat his mom’s teacup with the gilt handle.

  He couldn’t believe the new people had already moved in. He’d thought they would keep renovating the house the way his dad and Xavier had planned. Knock out the wall of that small room. Rewire and insulate upstairs. He’d expected to have months to sneak into the house, walk around, and remember. Even if the house didn’t belong to him on paper, the space was still his — the shape of the rooms, the doors, the corners, the closets. He could walk to the fridge in the dark with his eyes closed. That was knowing a house.

  Damn his dad for selling it. For not even asking if Ben wanted the house. Or was Ben the stupid one, thinking anything had changed? Ben was never the son who mattered to his dad. Only Xavier, who was always doing crazy things and taking risks, no matter how reckless or dumb. There was no telling if the rope around his neck was just another stunt. Maybe he was counting on their dad to come home in time, find him hanging, and freak out. Or maybe he thought a bruise around his neck would look cool — like the time he stabbed his ear with safety pins and had to take antibiotics for a month.

  Ben hadn’t been watching the show on TV, but when a commercial came on he lurched from the sofa to get a can of Pepsi from the fridge. He scratched his back because the nubbly upholstery made him itch. When Anouk lived there, she’d thrown a bedspread across it.

  He still
missed Anouk. Almost two years and no steady girlfriend since. They’d had an argument — he couldn’t even remember about what — and she’d walked out. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d crashed at her sister’s for a few nights. He was still expecting her to come back when one of the guys at work said he’d seen her in Verdun with her arm around someone new.

  She’d always warned Ben that she liked to move along. He was the sucker who’d thought she would stay — not just because of the sex or because she made pâté chinois with creamed corn the way he liked it, but other crazy things he bet no other guy let her do. Like the manicures.

  He stretched his fingers and frowned at the oily black rims of his nails. Except to cut them, he’d never paid attention to his nails before Anouk. First she scoured his hands with a scrubber until she almost tore his skin off. Then she soaked his nails in a jellied liquid. He had to sit still, but he could watch TV. Or the neat side part in her hair and her small, sleek head bent over his hand as she poked and snipped.

  Through the shock and unreality of Xavier’s death, Ben had clasped the smallest hope that Anouk would come to the funeral, if only to say how sorry she was. He’d scanned the crowd at the church, and later at the graveside. His dad had been drunk since before the funeral started. And his mom … he hadn’t thought about his mom in years, but when Xavier died, he wondered if someone might have told her. He hadn’t been looking just for Anouk at the funeral.

  Ben clanked his empty can on the coffee table, picked up his mom’s teacup, and walked to the bedroom. When Anouk used to live here, she’d kept a china shepherd girl her grandma had given her on the window ledge. In the morning the sun gleamed on its shiny arms and curly head. There, exactly there, he set the teacup.

  Fara, nestled against Frédéric’s chest, could smell soap and the soft musk of his skin. He’d showered when he’d come upstairs after working in the cellar.

  “You’ve got to admit …” he began.

  “Yeah?”

  “Eric knows his stuff. He figured out those orange wires.”