And sure enough, the St. B. was also where her second opportunity presented itself. It was early on a July morning. As she prepared to leave the house that day Morven heard on the radio that Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones had been found dead in his own swimming pool. That’s what she was thinking about as she sat in the front lobby. She wished that she could take a picture of him; he was so beautiful. She imagined him to be even more so in death.
“Could you…?” It was a girl who spoke. She was young, younger than Morven, who rose immediately to her feet and followed along with the family. The mother looked less sure of the idea, but didn’t protest.
“He died just a few minutes ago,” said the girl. “He almost isn’t even dead yet.”
This time the eyes were open and Morven felt a fluttering in her chest, as though a tiny bird were passing through. She moved softly and quietly around the hospital bed, touching nothing but her camera, getting in no one’s way. It was as though her dream of becoming invisible had almost come true.
13
Morven, in the widest imaginings of her future, hadn’t pictured that there would be a call for such a thing. Her imaginings hadn’t reached very far, but even so.
It was hard work. There was usually somebody weeping: a wife, an aunt, a son, a father. There was every combination of grievers imaginable, hovering. Morven would have liked to ask them to leave while she did her job, but she sensed early on that it would be perceived as unacceptable. She could tell that even the people who sought her out thought her to be strange somehow on the inside and they wouldn’t have trusted her alone with their dead ones.
She didn’t blame them. Also, she wasn’t sure if it was true. Intuition was something that George had spoken about. She was interested in it as an idea, but she didn’t trust it if it belonged to her. Sometimes her inner voice was wrong. Often it was wrong. Her brother had helped her with it over the years and her big mistakes were getting fewer and farther between. But even so. If she understood it correctly, it shouldn’t have to be a learned thing like the date that Christopher Columbus sailed over the ocean blue or what crops grew in Argentina and Brazil. You were supposed to be born with it; it was supposed to be effortless.
Her powers of concentration became finely honed as time went by. To do her job properly she needed to ignore the hoverers as best she could, to feel that she was alone with the deceased, one on one.
It was near the beginning of this new life that Morven changed her name to Mrs. Mortimer. She hated her first name, her so-called Christian name. It seemed to her that most Christians she had met were mean: like her Sunday school teacher who kicked her out of class for staring; and the minister, Mr. Rutnick, who clenched his teeth when he smiled and scared the wits out of her with talk of going to hell for the slightest indiscretion; and the hordes of nasty kids who walked home from Sunday school behind her and told Little Moron jokes really loud. She knew the jokes were about her. Why did the Little Moron walk home from Sunday school all by herself? Because no one liked her. Why did the Little Moron stare at people? Because she was a little moron.
The church secretary, Miss Morton, was an adult whom Morven had never forgotten. She had been so kind to her during the days when she liked to sit by herself in the pews. Plus she had worn high heels in different colours and her summer shoes often had open toes. So Morven took Mrs. Morton’s name and changed it a little; she didn’t want to be a copycat or worse, a thief.
Her new name, Mrs. Mortimer, freed her somehow from the old jokes and the kids who told them and from a whole lot of other bad memories as well. It turned her into more than just a peculiar person with a camera slung around her neck. And the Mrs. part of it gave her a legitimate air. She felt it immediately, the change. It didn’t give her a new personality, but it buffed up the one she had, lent it a finer edge.
Mrs. Mortimer didn’t want to get into trouble. She’d had too many years of getting into trouble, never having much of an idea why till George would explain it to her every time. There was little doubt in her mind that this new thing she was doing wouldn’t be acceptable to people at large: teachers and neighbours and church ladies and doctors. She didn’t even tell George, at first, the extent of her new activities.
She wasn’t much for hurrying — didn’t do a lot of it — so she was in no rush to build her business. It grew on its own at an agreeable rate. There was no need to advertise; word of mouth was enough. All she asked for in the way of payment was enough to cover her costs. Usually people added a bonus, an honorarium, as she liked to think of it, as a thank you to her for performing this unusual service. She accepted as graciously as she could.
What she was doing wasn’t against the law. It just wasn’t done, was all, and she found she could manage that. Some of the people out there needed what she had to offer. All she had to do was concentrate on the job at hand and ignore the judgments and criticisms that were bound to come her way. She could handle it. She was Mrs. Mortimer.
14
One wintry day in early November of 1969 she had her first experience with being called in before life had entirely left a body. The wife feared that her husband would be whisked away before Mrs. Mortimer had time to get there and render her services so she called her at five o’clock in the morning and asked her to please come. Mrs. Mortimer dabbed on a little of her mother’s lavender perfume before she left the house.
Again, it was St. Boniface Hospital. She trudged through the slushy streets, careful to keep her camera safe and dry as the wet snow fell around her.
She met the wife in the husband’s room. It was silent there, except for the laboured breaths of the man. A nurse had said that he was breathing like someone at the end of his life.
His eyes were closed and his mouth turned slightly downward as though with just a whit of disapproval. His nose was aquiline on a face smooth now that death was near.
Mrs. Mortimer wanted very badly to kiss the pale, pale forehead of the husband. She stepped aside and the wife did just that.
As they both looked on he opened his eyes wide, as wide as eyes go and the woman said, “Dan?”
And then she said, “Danny?”
Mrs. Mortimer recognized an excitement in the woman. Perhaps he hadn’t opened his eyes in some time.
But then there was a gurgling sound in his throat, the sound that everyone has heard about and the wife squeaked like a newborn pig.
She choked out, “Nurse,” and ran from the room.
Mrs. Mortimer was left alone with the man.
She stared into his eyes. They were the same blue as his hospital gown, the same blue as the eyes of Pookie, her white-furred cat. Leaning over with her arms across her stomach, she didn’t look away, not for an instant. She stared into his eyes until she was almost sure there was nothing there. A curious warmth filled her torso. The eyelids closed and began to open again. Mrs. Mortimer stood up and after a quick glance over her shoulder she gently kissed them shut, first one, then the other. Then she stepped back. They stayed closed this time. He was gone.
The nurse came and did what she had to do, with her pulse searching and chart keeping. No one asked if he had closed his eyes on his own. The wife tried to use the phone. It wasn’t working for her — her fingers couldn’t manage the numbers — so finally she just sat and watched while Mrs. Mortimer took pictures. The nurse left them to it.
“I thought for a second there that he’d come back to me.”
It took her a moment to realize that the wife was talking to her.
“When he opened his eyes so wide, I mean. They were so clear and normal looking. Why did I run away?” she asked. “Why didn’t I stay?”
“I don’t know.”
“I should have stayed.”
Mrs. Mortimer clicked and clicked.
“Oh God, if only I could turn back the clock and do it over again.”
“No. No,” said Mrs. Mortimer. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
She was done with her pictures but she could
n’t take her eyes off the husband yet.
“What did I miss?” said the wife. “I would give both my legs to go back ten minutes in time. I’d give my face away.”
“No, no. Please.”
“Did you see him die?”
“I think so.”
“What…what…?”
“I think, that is, I don’t think…”
She pulled her gaze away from the husband and looked at the wife.
“I don’t think he was seeing his actual surroundings when he opened his eyes for that last time.”
The wife hung on her words.
“I think he was already far, far away,” said Mrs. Mortimer.
“So he didn’t miss me.”
“Not then, no. I’m quite sure of that.”
“And he didn’t know that I ran.”
“No. I’m quite sure he didn’t know that you ran.”
“Quite sure?”
The woman wanted too much from her and she felt the strain.
This time she didn’t answer; she didn’t know what more to say.
The wife fussed a bit: kissed the husband’s temple, smoothed his forehead, lifted the covers to look at his feet.
“Bye, feet,” she said.
Mrs. Mortimer put the lens cap on her camera and fit it into its leather case.
“Will he forgive me for running away?” asked the wife.
“Of course he will.”
She reached out and touched the woman’s hand.
“I’m sure he didn’t know and even if he did, he has already forgiven you. He is goodness itself now.”
She didn’t know where those words had come from but they sounded apt to her. She felt right inside, not wrong as she so often did. It was time to leave this woman alone with her man so she could kiss his face and speak to his feet without an audience.
The sun was up when Mrs. Mortimer walked through the soaked streets. The winter squall had moved off and she faced a warm wind as she walked down Taché toward home.
She felt like a brand new train car firmly fastened to a shiny set of rails, heading out on a clear fresh morning. Heading out to find…
What she was searching for she didn’t know. She hadn’t even known that she was searching for something, but she was aware that today was the nearest she had come to finding it. Would she ever get any closer? She had no way of knowing, and at the moment she didn’t care.
A memory came to her as she turned into the crooked lane that led to Monck Avenue. It was of something that had happened on the first day of her second year in grade one. A boy called Philip was sitting at the desk next to hers; she’d heard the teacher say his name. She stared at him. Philip was shivering. For a few more moments she continued to stare. Then she leaned over close to him so that no one else would hear her words.
“Don’t be scared,” she said. “I was here last year. It’s easy.”
The boy had managed a small smile for her and it was that smile she remembered now. It fit in with this new experience somehow.
She wondered what Philip was doing today. She didn’t even remember if he had survived grade one. Most people did, she supposed.
15
By the time she opened the heavy wooden door leading to the front hall the warm feeling inside her had faded but was not forgotten. Maybe it lives there now, she thought, and smiled, imagining it safe inside the many layers that made up her small body. Then she felt confused. There was her idea of getting smaller to ease her movements around the families of the dead — what she recognized as her desire to be invisible — but now that the warm feeling had come, she had an enormous longing to protect it with extra layers of her self. She didn’t want it seeping out, going anywhere.
Maybe she would mention it to George. He had thought she was totally out to lunch with her getting-smaller idea.
“You’re little enough as you are,” he had said one afternoon when she broached it with him. “You don’t want to get any smaller; you’d be invisible.”
“That’s the idea, Georgie.”
“You’re nuts,” he said and flushed a splotchy red.
She went on as if he hadn’t said it.
“It would make my work much simpler.”
“You’ve got your health to think about, Mrs. Mortimer.”
She had insisted by now that George call her by her chosen name.
“My health is just fine, thank you very much.”
“But it won’t be if you steadfastly try to grow smaller. There is even a name for behaviour like that. It’s an illness, Mrs. Mortimer. You don’t want to make yourself ill.”
How the heck do you know what I want to make myself? she thought. But she didn’t want George to be mad at her or to worry about her, so she let it go.
No, George probably wouldn’t think getting bigger made any more sense than getting smaller. But she liked to talk her ideas over with him anyway. She wondered if he would understand about the warm feeling and her need to protect it.
She knew she could try out either idea, getting smaller or getting bigger, without George’s blessing, but she did like to have him on her side.
Mrs. Mortimer was just five feet, one inch tall. She had a matronly appearance at a very young age — no waist, a kind of straight-up-and-down look. People often took her to be older than she was, even with her childlike ways. She stooped slightly and had worn glasses since the age of eight. On this day, the day of her curious warm feeling, she was a fairly elderly-looking twenty. Her age didn’t often come up. There was no reason it would. She was just an odd little woman who took photographs.
“Let’s take our hot chocolate outside,” she said.
It was after supper on that same November day. All the new snow had melted and there was no wind to speak of.
She and George set themselves up on the dusty porch furniture in their winter coats and gloves.
“I heard geese today,” said Mrs. Mortimer. “And last night I dreamed a robin.”
“It’s a long time till spring,” said George.
It was nearly pitch dark already with only the dim glow from the street lights casting shadows.
She told him about the warm feeling and her hope to keep it safe.
“I get it about the warm feeling,” George said, “and I’m happy you’ve had it, but I know, I don’t just think, I know, that you can’t protect it by embiggening your body, as you say. It’s something you can protect in other ways.”
“How, Georgie?”
She blew on her hot chocolate and took a tentative sip.
“Well, with your mind, for instance.”
“How?”
She was beginning to wish she hadn’t mentioned it. George was about to explain something to her that she wasn’t going to get.
“Well, let’s see,” he said. “It may even be that the mind is called what it is because it minds things, like the feelings inside you. It looks after them if you let it, kind of like a babysitter minds kids, looks after them.”
“How do I let it?” she asked.
The sound of bicycle tires through a puddle broke the silence around them. A young man loomed out of the dark, leaving a small wake behind him as he passed. He waved and George waved back.
“That’s Frank Foote,” he said. “Why didn’t you wave?”
“I was thinking about what you said.”
Mrs. Mortimer waved now, but it was too late. The young man had already turned a corner.
“If someone is nice to you, you should be sure to be nice back,” George said.
“I know that by now, I think.”
“You should have waved at Frank. He’s a good guy.”
“I was busy thinking about what you said. And I’m drinking hot chocolate. How many things do you expect me to do at once? Sheesh!”
George sighed and went inside. Mrs. Mortimer followed him.
“How do I let it?” she asked again.
“Let what?”
She couldn’t remember what she was askin
g about. The conversation disappeared into the nowhere land that she imagined she would go to one day to find out all the things she couldn’t understand or whose meanings she couldn’t hang on to.
“Nothing,” she said.
She felt terrible about not waving to Frank in time. She should have known to do so. George said.
When she went to bed that night she relived the hospital scene as best she could in an effort to bring back the warm feeling.
It worked.
16
Mrs. Mortimer began to feel that her lucky days were those when she was summoned before life was entirely gone from a body. Families worried that their dead would get rolled away before they had their chance to get their pictures. They felt helpless up against hospital efficiencies. This happy situation didn’t occur very often and it was under these circumstances that there were usually the most people hovering. They were desperate to be there in the last moments. If they stepped out briefly and missed that last good-for-nothing breath, they never forgave themselves. Mrs. Mortimer worked around them, inside them, through them.
She always felt a little disappointed when she heard, “She died just a few minutes ago.” Like her customers, she wanted to “be there for it.”
Families called her to wards at the hospitals: the St. Boniface, the Grace, the Victoria, the Misericordia, the General, the Children’s, the Women’s Pavilion. They called her to emergency rooms and intensive care units and to the Princess Elizabeth long-term care facility. They called her to their own homes and to funeral parlours, to lakeside cottages, farmers’ fields, city parks and community centres — wherever the dead landed. And they landed everywhere.
Mrs. Mortimer didn’t own a car, so someone would usually come and pick her up. She would be at the curb, at a moment’s notice, with her camera in hand. She didn’t pay a lot of attention to getting ready like some women do, just a dab of lavender behind each ear.
The Girl in the Wall Page 6