Sic Transit Wagon

by Barbara Jenkins

“Which direction he went?”

  “He went down into the river,” indicating somewhere behind her stall.

  The river was a paved dry riverbed, through which ran a slimy trickle between rain showers. At the first drops of rain, however, water ran off the denuded hills, sending a brown torrent raging up and up the paved banks, sweeping under the bridge and sometimes over it. Today at least it was dry. She looked up and down from the bank. There was no sign of Harold. He could have turned left beyond the first curve, and gone home, scrambling up to the back gate behind the house. Maybe that’s what he’d done. She threw her handbag down first to free her hands for the descent. It landed on a narrow shoal of coarse beige sand and fell open, scattering its contents. She let herself down, backwards, like on a ladder, pushing the toes of her shoes with the sensible heels into weep holes and worn places on the side walls, scrambling and grabbing handfuls of the tough razor grass that grew in the cracks.

  “This is sheer lunacy,” she thought, “if I was to fall, no one would know.” She shivered at the image and took her next step with uncharacteristic caution. “I can’t imagine what possessed that damn man to come down here.” She examined her scuffed shoes, the streaks of mud on her dress, her chipped nail polish. “When I get my hands on him, there’ll be hell to pay.” She picked up her handbag, hastily stuffed in the items that had fallen out and snapped it shut. Looking around, she was all at once aware of how deep the channel was, how cut-off from the world above – she could see or hear nothing of the heavily trafficked road several feet above her head, could not even hear the purr of her own car, its engine still running. She headed upriver towards the back wall of her house, the toc-toc-toc of her footsteps bouncing off the walls, a signal, she felt certain, to any crouching bandit or vagrant, that here was a likely target.

  When she got to a position under her back gate, she slung her handbag around her neck and with both hands pulled herself up, grabbing fistfuls of the abundant scraggy vegetation that had secured a foothold in the worn mortar between the crazy-paving of the channel walls. She came up level with the gate, only to find it locked on the inside. Her calling, banging and rattling drove Sandy and Theo into a frenzy of barking and jumping on the other side. She could hear their claws scraping on the metal gate as they tried to jump over, but there was no human response. She retraced her steps down, sliding now, too filthy and angry to care, ran back along the river bed, her breath coming in gasps from the unaccustomed exertion and from a sudden clenching feeling in her throat that she was being risky and foolish to no good end. When she got to where she had first entered, she climbed back up to street level and sat at the edge of the river channel to make an assessment of her situation. That useless search had taken ten to fifteen minutes, and with her having left Harold maybe five to ten minutes before that, she worked out he had been gone around half an hour. He could walk quite far in that time in whatever direction he had chosen. He had lost nothing of his old stamina.

  The fruit vendor looked her up and down.

  “You didn’t find him?”

  “No, he must’ve gone the other way. I’ll have to drive around and look.”

  Dee marched to the car and opened her handbag to get the spare set of keys. She plunged her right hand in, feeling each item in turn, expecting to make contact with the rounded triangle alarm thingy on the key ring. But she didn’t. She tipped out the contents of the bag onto the lid of the car trunk and searched through: house keys, pack of tissues, pencil case, wallet, long tangled scrolls of grocery bills, hairpins, Fisherman’s Friend original, tube of hand cream, small hairbrush, black embroidered cellphone case, mucky ball of used tissues, everything damp and sandy, but no car keys. She chucked everything back in the handbag and scrambled her fingers through the pockets of her dress, though too shallow to hold anything. She upended the bag once more, separated the contents again, but the car keys hadn’t materialised so she flung it all back in.

  “Oh dammit,” she thought, “the keys must be still on the riverbed where the handbag fell open.” She went back to the edge of the river and looked down. She saw no keys on the little sandbank. She had to go down for a closer look. She exhaled to a count of ten, retraced her descent, and got down on her hands and knees to scrape away the top layers of sand. She uncovered bits of broken glass, a grey rag, an empty motor oil bottle, but no car keys. Another ten or so minutes wasted.

  Back at the top, she avoided the fruit lady, stormed past her droning car and followed the little street to her home. She showered, changed, poured a neat Talisker, and lay in the hammock to have a drink and a think about what to do.

  Harold had disappeared. The first sip of the warm malt was soaked up by her tongue. He had climbed down to the river. The second sip was absorbed into her palate. He hadn’t gone up, so he must’ve gone down. The third got as far as her tonsils. She had no car, at least none she could use; one set of keys was in the ignition of the locked car, the spare set she had herself lost. Tipping back her head, she sent the last mouthful down; it vaporised up the back of her throat, into her sinuses and then to her cerebral cortex where a thought lit up.

  She called her bridge partner, Hazel. “We have to go to look for Harold… Yes, he wandered off… yes, again, Yes, yes, I know you warned me about that… No, I can’t tell you now… No, I can’t go myself… Come now… when you come you’ll hear the whole story.”

  By the time Hazel arrived, thunderclouds had built and the first fat drops hit the windshield of Hazel’s Corolla as they passed the humming Focus with its festive fruit bonnet, the Carmen Miranda of the car world.

  “How much gas does that car have?” Hazel asked conversationally.

  It hadn’t occurred to Dee that she should be concerned about gas while Harold was missing, but now that Hazel had brought it up, she had to think about it.

  “Too much… Pity I filled up yesterday… It could go for days in park I expect… but the car, the keys, the gas are the least of my concerns right now… Right now, all I want is to find Harold.”

  She strained forward, peering at the now warped, now blurring images, her eyes darting from one side of the road to the other while Hazel quizzed her about the morning’s misadventures.

  “I can’t picture you climbing down into the river, running up and down looking for Harold. You really went down in the river by yourself?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do. When the fruit lady said he went down there, it was my first instinct to follow him. To see whether he had headed for home, through the back gate.”

  “You’re something else, girl. It’s a good thing she didn’t say he climbed up the samaan. You would have had to go up and rescue him, like a stranded cat.”

  As this mental image formed, Hazel laughed. Dee pursed her lips and cut her eyes at her companion.

  “I’m glad somebody thinks it’s funny.”

  “Well, if you don’t laugh, you’ll have to cry.”

  “I’m not ready to cry yet.”

  They followed the road that ran alongside the now roiling river, but saw only a few sodden souls trudging under umbrellas. They swung up past the Hilton and Dee thought of the days when she and Harold used to dance to the tinkle of Ralph Davis on piano, there on the terrace overlooking the savannah, not a care in the world, when the hotel first opened at the dawn of the Independence era. Then, they didn’t, couldn’t foresee that it would not always be thus, that the future held this – he wandering off and she, her heart squeezing at what could be, searching for him in the rain. After it had washed the streets and flushed the drains, the shower pulled back up into the sky, stopping as quickly as it had started. The sun came out, the black tar road dazzled and the river went down. They drove further, into districts they wouldn’t dare venture into on foot, but there was no sign of Harold.

  “You want to go to the police station?”

  “You know they’re not interested unless the person has been missing for twenty-four hours.”

  “It’s now what?”
/>
  “Three, four hours. If we go to the police station, we would have to wait until somebody bothers to take a statement in longhand and I really don’t feel up to spelling every word and then have them say they have no vehicle to go to look for him and did I check with his friends and furthermore he hasn’t been gone twenty-four hours yet.”

  “Let’s get you home, anyway.”

  “I must carry on looking for him but I can’t do that while I have no keys to open the car.”

  “There’s never a car thief around when you need one. Maybe we can try to open it with a wire coat-hanger and if that doesn’t work, we can call a locksmith.”

  “I will work something out when I get home. I can’t think straight right now.”

  Back in her neighbourhood, Dee saw the fruit lady packing up to go.

  “Look, your daughter left a note on your windscreen.”

  It wasn’t a note; it was a notice. A strip of cardboard was spread over the windscreen, clamped in place by the wipers. The thick red-marker letters had run, but still legible for the entire world to read was the proclamation, ‘DADDY IS BACK HOME’.

  Indeed, Harold was at home, warm and dry and safe, lying on the sofa, watching cricket on the TV. He paid no attention to her bustling arrival. Dee took the remote and turned off the set.

  “Where were you? I have been out of my mind looking everywhere for you.”

  “Nowhere. I was here, watching the cricket.”

  “The last time I saw you, you were waiting under the samaan. That was since midday. I went home for the spare set of car keys. When I came back you were gone. The fruit lady said you went in the river.”

  “I wasn’t in the river. A nice girl took me for a drive in a car.”

  “What girl? You mean Natalie? It was Natalie who brought you home. Natalie is your daughter.”

  “My daughter? I have a daughter? Imagine that, I have a daughter. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  Dee turned the cricket back on. She went to the Talisker. She needed a drink and a think – a big one of the former, maybe just a little of the latter. Fortified, she picked the phone and called Natalie’s cellphone. Natalie spluttered like a pressure cooker with a dhal-clogged vent.

  “Why on earth did you let him out of your sight? You know he can’t manage on his own.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “A complete stranger called my cell. I was in the gym, doing abs reps with my trainer. I have to get back in shape after Joshua. You realise Carnival is just two months away.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. How did this complete stranger get your number?”

  “He found Daddy climbing out of the river, soaking wet, looking confused. He asked him his name and he couldn’t answer. He asked him for a phone number and he mumbled mine.”

  “He remembered yours. He didn’t remember mine?”

  “Speaking of which, Mummy, why didn’t you answer your phone? I called, must be a hundred times, and all I got was voicemail. On my way to take Daddy home, the fruit lady called out that you had gone with a friend to look for him, so I borrowed cardboard and a marker from her to leave that note for you to see when you passed back.”

  “I wonder why you couldn’t get me on my cellphone… Let me check.”

  Dee pulled out the phone from its little embroidered case and looked at its blank face.

  “Oh my gosh, Natalie. I am so sorry. I turned it off at church yesterday morning. It must have been off since then. Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. I’m really forgetful. Daddy and I are both getting forgetful these days.”

  “Mummy, you are forgetful… Daddy has already forgotten. When I took him home, he didn’t know where his clean clothes were. I had to look through the chests of drawers to find something. At least he is still able to shower and dry himself.”

  “Sometimes I wonder whether he’s deliberately acting up just to annoy me, then sometimes I think he’s losing it.”

  “Daddy isn’t acting up. He isn’t losing it. He’s already lost it. And then, to make matters worse, you go losing him too. Don’t let him out of your sight again. Next time he leaves the house, make sure your phone number is on a piece of paper in his pocket. Better yet, print a T-shirt, no, print a few T-shirts with – My name is Harold. Call my wife if you find me – and put your cell number below. He should be wearing one every time he leaves the house. In fact, put one on the minute he wakes up in case he wanders off when you’re busy. And, keep your phone charged and switched on, even in church.”

  “Natalie, you have no idea how hard it is to manage Daddy now that he’s getting in this state. Some days he’s OK, other days, you have to do everything for him. It’s hard.”

  “Mummy, don’t you think it’s about time you took him to one of those geriatric specialists? His condition can only get worse. The least you can do is get some professional help. Maybe they can slow it down. There are always new drugs and therapies.”

  It was not the answer Dee was hoping for. She didn’t need telling about doctors and drugs. She needed someone to offer to come by and help, to chat with Harold, to take him out. As she hung up, a line from The Mighty Shadow’s calypso came to mind, “Old age has no remedy”. Yes, doctor or no doctor, there was no cure for getting old. Young people never thought they too would one day be old. If they were lucky. So many friends had been unlucky, losing husbands, cut off in their prime. But then, who were the lucky ones, eh? She picked herself up and went to the kitchen to make an early supper.

  What to cook? Food had become both medicine and cult. To the old timeworn simplicities – carrots good for eyes, oranges to ward off colds, fish for brain activity – had been added a raft of foodisms: cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage as cancer fighters; oats and oat bran to lower cholesterol; raw vegetable juices for the enzymes. It seemed like only yesterday that they were hosting wonderful Sunday brunches – saltfish buljol with coconut bake, Spanish omelettes as big as pizzas, pigs’ feet soused in a lippuckering broth of cucumbers, garlic, onions, herbs, pepper and vinegar, washed down with Harold’s wicked rum punch. These days they hardly ate meat, cheese or eggs. Her kitchen was purged of all the baddies – no pastries in which artery-clogging trans-fats lurked, no diabetes-causing sugar and no carcinogenic artificial sweeteners. Gone was almost every joy, she reflected. She kept her whisky hidden – no need to invite censure from her children who, suddenly smarter than their parents, would lecture on what was good, what was bad, for their health. So they were taking ginko, saw palmetto and red rice yeast, had gone as organic as availability and budget allowed. And to what end, eh? She was on statins; he was on Planet Harold.

  She steamed ochroes from the backyard, chopped raw poi spinach, grated raw pumpkin and toasted two slices of preservative-free spelt bread. They would have a light balsamic and olive oil vinaigrette emulsified with whole grain Dijon for the bread and vegetables to mop up. And, why the hell not push the boat out to celebrate their having narrowly averted disaster? They’d have a hefty chunk of organic feta, the best in the world, from that Tobago goat farm. The thought of Tobago brought a memory of long weekends spent on the little yacht they had splurged on, trips over to the sister island, on-board parties with other sailing friends, little Natalie and Drew safely asleep in the bunks below. Drew had taken over the yacht now, up and down the islands, the same Drew, she recollected ruefully, who was afraid of the water as a child. Harold had been the good father, so patient with their phobias. Drew had grown to embrace the sea and Natalie had been rescued from the wave of adolescent anorexia that had put two of her friends into intensive care. Did they not remember those days too? Do memories of what parents do for their children reside only in the dimming landscape of the parents’ minds? What little treat could she find for his dessert? Ah, he would love some of that fresh pineapple she had got that morning. Oh, dammit, he couldn’t after all; the pineapple was still sitting with the bananas on the car roof. And, oh yes, she must put on the kettle for camomile tea.

  They watched the c
ricket, eating their supper under its blue flicker and the drone of the commentator’s voice. When the game was over, Harold found her in the kitchen washing up. He put an arm around her waist.

  “Sweetheart, let’s go out somewhere. It isn’t good to be cooped up indoors day after day like this. We could do with some fresh air.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder.

  “OK. We will walk down to the car and pick up the fruit. You can tell me how the match ended on the way there.”

  “What match?”

  “The cricket match. The one you were watching.”

  He looked at her, frowning with puzzlement.

  “What’s got into you? I’ve been reading all afternoon.”

  She held his hand as they walked down the long-shadowed street. He carried a basket for the fruit. The warmth of the engine had dried the car and wrinkled the windscreen billboard. Dee remembered she hadn’t contacted the locksmith yet; he might not come out so late. She stretched over the car roof and picked up the pineapple. As she did so, something slid off the roof and clinked on the tarmac. Harold bent down, retrieved the object and straightened. For just a moment, Dee caught a flicker of an old, familiar Harold in the delight and recognition in his face and voice.

  “Look, I’ve found the keys.”

  Dee rested the pineapple back on the roof, took the keys from his grasp and unlocked the door on the driver’s side. All the door buttons sprang up. Dee put the spare keys in her pants pocket, piled the pineapple and bananas in the basket, put the basket on the back seat, folded the message board and chucked it in the back too. She opened the passenger door for Harold, saw him belted in, shut the door, walked back round to the driver’s side and got in.

  She wanted to drive and drive and drive. Back into time, back to when Harold could talk to her, read her mind even. It was so lonely, being with him, yet alone. There was so little held in common to draw on, to reminisce on, together. She felt unmoored, adrift. So, is this how it goes, while you’re coasting along, not paying any attention, you’re slowly sliding into irrelevance and pretty soon you become an irritant, a nuisance, then a burden? She saw herself and Harold heading there, along that road, at different speeds, yes, but towards the same chequered flag. She glanced over at him. His looks hadn’t changed much, still handsome with his curly greying… Oh, damn, she hadn’t called the barber to explain why they hadn’t kept Harold’s haircut appointment that morning. She exhaled deeply, suddenly too weary. Harold looked across and touched her knee. With that gesture, his eyes for a moment lost the vacancy that had become resident there, and he gave her a smile in which she read things about the two of them that words couldn’t say.