Drizzle turns to rain and he goes away for a while.
Around Echo Lake in the fall to see the leaves turning. Today the weather is colder; ready to rain or even snow. The crispness of the air at this time of year. Iliana sings “Echo Beach” while he manages only the small echo — echo beach — in the chorus. Iliana laughs and claps when he gets the pitch and tone almost right. They stand on the shore, arm in arm, watch the water and listen to the lapping of waves. Leaning together for warmth, they protect each other from the cool wet mist off the water.
He snaps back.
Wasn’t I just watching the damn news?
He looks out the window again. Rain has changed back to drizzle.
What day is it? Don’t I have to go somewhere?
He checks the calendar. It’s Wednesday. Doctor and pill day. The doctor’s appointment is at 2:30 in the afternoon. It’s 9:15. May as well go to the mall for a while.
He ambles to the front closet, takes his raincoat from its hanger and gives it two shakes. He examines the grey fraying material. The shiny spots on the elbows. He slips one arm in a sleeve. Then the other. He does up the buttons, slowly.
The big red SHOES! sign on the door reminds him to take off his slippers and put something suitable on his feet. The home-care lady made the sign for him.
Now why in the hell couldn’t I have thought of this sign?
He wishes she would come for a visit again. He doesn’t even remember what she looked like. She had the same stature and graceful demeanour as Iliana. Doesn’t matter anyway. She’s not Iliana. He used to have such a good memory.
He steps into the hallway, closes the door, and makes sure it’s locked by trying the doorknob once, twice, three times.
The hallway’s matted beige carpet and fading off-white walls look as decrepit as he feels. The elevator door scrapes when it slides open. Bare metal shines in a narrow strip where the white paint has long since worn away.
The ride down is quick. He exits the elevator, passes through the brown mottled marble of the lobby into the vestibule. He braces himself, holds the raincoat’s collar tight to his throat, steps into the street and is pelted by a stinging drizzle.
Grey sky broils overhead, that constant prairie wind driving the clouds. Head down now, he shuffles past the parkade exit ramp, the glass storefront of the next building, and the stained white marble of an old bank building, now turned skater shop. There are no punk kids loitering outside in this weather.
He follows the black globs and scaling in the cement sidewalk. The long haul to the mall in the dampness intensifies the throbbing in his knees. Why is there no enclosed walkway? How many times has he walked alone this way since Iliana died?
At the mall’s main entrance the walkway stonework has cracked and heaved and a lone thistle has taken root in one of the cracks, its scrawny stock desperately reaching skyward.
Inside, he buys a scratch bingo card from the lottery kiosk on the main floor. Then he rides the escalator up to the second-level food court. He buys a hot chocolate from the old A&W.
Other old people sit in groups. They chat and sip from disposable cups. They don’t notice him and he ignores them. They are all strangers. He sits by himself at a table for two at the far end of the court.
Almost everyone he knew is dead. He and Iliana had a wide circle of friends. Iliana is gone too. This leaves only Jimmy, who lingers in the palliative care ward dying of lung cancer. Jimmy was his executive assistant and sometime drinking buddy when they were both employed at the Liverwood Potash Corporation’s Head Office. Jimmy can only moan now. That’s all he did during the last visit. Too much of a reminder. It led him to take the bottle of pills. He puked for two days afterward and has never felt so sick. He flushes with shame.
He just can’t visit Jimmy anymore.
The food court fills with suits and skirts from office buildings attached to the mall. He scratches the bingo ticket and doesn’t win. He listens to the din for a while. He finishes his hot chocolate, then stares at the silty dregs at the bottom of his cup.
The office workers looking for a place to sit are all so young. He surrenders his seat and rides the escalator back down to the main floor. Steps outside, once again gripping his collar against a now pelting rain.
Iliana hugs his arm with both of hers and presses her cheek against his shoulder. He wraps his arm around her waist and holds her against him as they stroll for miles in silence around Echo Lake. Her rain hat is pulled low and the collar of her blue plastic coat is turned up high. They pause on the shore and he gazes down into her eyes. Her round face peeks out and she smiles up at him, so bright. So alive.
“Your order’s not ready yet.” The girl behind the counter is in her twenties, slender and small breasted. She says, “We’ll call your number.” Her black hair is shaved on one side and hangs to her shoulder on the other. Iliana’s light brown hair is so full, and consistently shoulder length. Her body is full too. She would never starve herself to such a gaunt state.
“You’re not fat, you’re pleasingly plump,” he says.
“We’ll call your number,” the skinny girl repeats, not acknowledging his comment. She abruptly turns away.
He blinks back to reality. He wonders where the hell he is, then realizes he’s ordering lunch at the KFC about two kilometers from downtown. Did I really walk this far? No wonder the knees ache.
He sits on one of the sterile plastic benches and feels a touch of pride for not panicking. His pants are damp against his legs. Both his knees ache. This helps him ignore the ever-present dull pain near his heart.
The skinny girl calls his number. A two-piece lunch special with fries and no gravy. Nothing to drink. Soft drinks play hell on the stomach. He takes the skin off the chicken to help mitigate more intense gut pains. But it is something different to eat.
After the meal, he takes the bus back downtown instead of walking, even though the rain has stopped. He steps out the bus’s back door near the mall entrance.
I have to go somewhere today, don’t I? I better get back to the apartment and find out where.
Back inside the apartment, he checks the calendar. It’s Wednesday. Doctor’s appointment and pill day. At 2:30. It’s almost 2:00. Too late to take the bus. The doctor has moved his office to a strip mall on the outskirts of the city.
Good God, I’ll have to drive. I really shouldn’t anymore.
He tries to think what happened to make him late.
I was just at the mall. Where did the time go? What’s going to happen when my whole day is gone? Someone will have to look after me then. That’s the last thing in hell anybody needs or wants.
After making his way to the parkade via elevator, he carefully maneuvers the car out of its parking spot, down the ramps, and out of downtown. Driving eastward, he instinctively knows the way, and he’s at the doctor’s office just on time, but has to wait half an hour anyway. Flu season. The room is filled with sniffling, wailing kids, and complaining adults.
“Mr. Ross?”
He blinks and turns his head.
The receptionist is talking to him. She is a middle-aged woman with dark hair, obviously dyed by the way white roots shine beneath the overhead lights. She wears a pink cardigan and is pleasantly plump like Iliana. But she is not Iliana.
“The doctor will see you now,” she says.
Another twenty-minute wait in the examination room. Sitting in his underwear, he shivers against the chill, which aggravates the pain in his abdomen. He stares down at his ribs poking through his skin, which is spotted with brown blotches and grey hairy patches. His breasts are sagging more and more.
Rocks-in-socks, rocks-in-socks, he sings.
The doctor bustles in. He is a balding, beanpole of a man. His white smock hanging down to his thighs elongates his body even more. His face is pale and the bags under his eyes are darker than they were last visit. “You got the flu, too, Bert?” the doctor asks.
“No, I don’t have the flu. This is my monthly
visit. Those new orange pills upset my stomach worse. And I’m still depressed. I’m still having bad dreams. I keep seeing the wife. My knees still hurt.”
“We just changed the prescription for the setraline hcl. That’s the orange pill. Let’s try it for another month. We’ll change your antiemetics to something a little stronger. They’ll still be yellow. And we’ll just renew your others.” The doctor barks these instructions while he presses the cold stethoscope on Bertram’s chest. He quickly checks his blood pressure and then scribbles on the chart and the prescription sheets.
Why does the doctor still use a paper chart? Why isn’t he using a portable electronic device connected to the provincial health system like the hospitals and medical clinics do these days? He doesn’t get a chance to ask.
“See you again in a month, Bert,” the doctor says. “We don’t need a blood test until two visits from now. The receptionist will telephone you a reminder when the time comes around. Don’t forget to keep visiting the psychiatrist.”
“I haven’t seen him in six months. He said I don’t have to. He said you’ll refer me again, if necessary.”
“Oh, that’s right. Good progress, then.” The doctor slaps the chart shut. “Keep looking after yourself. ’Til next time, Bert.”
He slowly gets dressed and stares at the human muscle chart hanging on the examination room door.
Why do these rooms never change?
He is in another examination room. They just lost their second child. A second spontaneous abortion. It is unlikely Iliana can ever bring a child to term. The medical consensus is they should stop trying.
Iliana weeps. Her body heaves. Bertram, so struck by her grief, can’t find any words of comfort.
He clings to her while she sobs. You can’t control biology. You are no less a woman for this. It’s not your fault.
He holds her a long time. He has to stay strong for her. She turns her pale chubby face and presses her cheek against his chest. Her tears soak through his shirt.
Bertram speaks out loud to his steering wheel. He doesn’t recall what the doctor just said. He doesn’t remember leaving the examination room or doctor’s office or even getting into his car. In the parking lot, the engine idles. The grey drizzle persists and blurs the windshield with droplets. The wipers clear the window.
He puts the car into gear and, for something to do, he navigates onto the Ring Road instead of going back home. He traverses the length of the expressway, reversing his course at the last interchange and returns to the doctor’s office parking lot.
He has to retrace his route home from here so he doesn’t get lost again.
The drive fills the rest of afternoon.
He carefully parks his car in its spot and descends the parkade stairwell. His knee-joints burn on each step down. The stairwell leads to the street beside the exit ramp. He follows the same path he took in the morning to the mall’s main entrance, the black globs and scaling his guide markers. He shuffles to the main floor drug store and finds his way to the pharmacy.
Another wait. The bill is over $500.00 for this new batch of pills. The pharmacist blathers on about what to take and when. It seems there’s a new person behind the counter each month. This one is a middle-aged bone-rack. She is also not Iliana.
How wet his pants are below the bottom of his raincoat.
No damn wonder the knees pain me so much all the time.
The pharmacist just smiles and nods.
Back at the apartment he heats a Salisbury Steak TV dinner in the oven. He sits at the kitchen table and watches Jeopardy, the local news, and the world news while slowly eating his meal.
At 7:00 he switches to CNN and turns the volume down low. He gets out the new pill bottles. The old pill bottles. Iliana’s coloured pill reminder. The chart. With pen and pad of paper at hand, he’s ready for the pill ritual. He goes over the instruction sheets, consults his chart, and then writes down each name, colour and the daily dosages. He cross-references notes, bottles, chart, pill reminder once, twice, three times to be sure. He can’t pronounce the names of the pills. He doesn’t know what they do. As long as he can fathom what colour at what time of the day. This is the key to being comfortable.
Except these damn pills are no comfort. Iliana is comfort.
It is 1998.
He and Jimmy are in his twelfth floor office at the round dark-oak guest table. A bottle of Chivas Regal sits on the leather tabletop. Two four-ounce glasses, each with a shot, sit untouched in front of them. They stare at their drinks. There’s a view of nighttime downtown, city lights reflecting off the lake.
Jimmy suggests maybe they should head over to The Coffee Cavern across the street. Their co-workers are mourning over there.
Bertram shakes his head. He just wants to go home.
They toast the man who died at the mine site. It is the first ever death of a miner at the Liverwood Potash Corporation.
At home, Iliana cradles his head against her chest. He is soothed by her rhythmic breathing. He does not cry. But this is the first time he feels this ripping pain across his chest. This pain of loss.
Iliana reminds him that, yes, it is his role to maintain production, but only as ordered by those sitting on high. The miners do the best they can, but too much overtime leads to worker fatigue. And fatigue hunts for any opportunity to inflict pain and suffering on its prey.
“That miner’s death is not your fault,” she tells him. Then she says, “Listen.”
He tilts his head and hears rain falling on the roof.
He sits up from where he has set his head down on the table.
Now why was I thinking about that dead miner?
He feels a pang of regret for the dead man he never even met. Life insurance provided for the man’s wife and daughter. The Workers’ Compensation investigation determined that worker fatigue was indeed the cause of the accident, just as Iliana had predicted. The company had taken steps to correct the excessive overtime situation long before the investigation was completed.
He moves to his chair in front of the TV after putting away Iliana’s daily reminders. CNN plays ongoing coverage of the West Virginia coal mine accident and fire and this must have triggered his own memories, even though there are no injuries or deaths in Virginia.
Nodding off and on while the TV babbles, he realizes that he will need some extra pain relief tonight. Maybe two of the light-blue pills and some extra strength ASA. One shot of scotch, neat, with the late news will also help. He watched his intake today, so the scotch shouldn’t cause too much more stomach discomfort.
But definitely not half the bottle and all the pills like his second attempt to end it all. After three hours of puking and dry heaves, he’d had to call 9-1-1.
Damn the cops to hell. They poured the rest of the scotch down the drain. Premium Blue Label, no less. What a waste.
About midnight, he rubs some arthritis cream on his legs and goes to bed.
He drifts off to sleep.
Sunshine brightens the whole room. He sits up in bed. There is no pain in his knees. No pain in his abdomen. No pain in his heart. Above the office building across the street there is not a single cloud in the azure sky. He swears he can see infinity.
Movement at the door. Iliana is there. She is pleasingly plump. Her body is intact and healthy. Her light brown hair is full, the greying streaks at the temples barely noticeable. Her blue eyes sparkle, their irises match the sky outside, brighter than the light in the room. His heart pounds but there is no pain.
She holds her rain hat and has her blue plastic coat draped over one arm.
The light in the room fades but a bright circle surrounds her.
No pain. It is finally over.
Iliana holds her palms toward him. “Not yet.”
The Catherine Sessions
You once were my grey stone home
Timeless ageless oasis
in dusty prairie gloam
forgotten not, forgotten not . . .
— T
he Gryphonic Techno-Bastards
WHEN WALKER SAW CATHERINE’S PICTURE on the cover of Modern Office Design, he marvelled. She looked matured but not aged. The intervening decade-and-a-half had not changed her. The Go Kart Mozart CD — Older, Balder, Fatter — came to mind when he thought of himself. The cover photo did justice to her cool sky-blue eyes. The article said her career had progressed from interior office design to architecture and engineering. She specialized in oceanside building, preventing structures from sliding into the Pacific. He searched for her contact information on the internet, did a reverse number lookup on her telephone number, and found a man’s name associated with that same number. So, she didn’t live alone.
Alone like him. He wondered if she’d kept her own name so maybe he could find her one day. No, he thought, that was simply a delusion from a prairie-baked brain. Platonic. That’s what their relationship had been. Yes, they had both worked for Liverwood Potash Corporation, right here at the company’s downtown head office, and yes they’d liked to torque the rumour mill by hugging in the foyer of the building at quitting time.
“You’re scaring me,” she had said, fifteen years ago when they last spoke. She’d uttered those final, parting words, moved her drink to his side of the table, and then left. He’d stared at her empty chair until closing time. The server had been annoyed with him because he hadn’t ordered anything else. He had dropped a twenty-dollar tip before he finally wandered home.
Now, he’s at that same table in the restaurant side of The Coffee Cavern just across the street from the corporation building where he still works. He slouches, elbow on table, chin on palm, near the back beside the old fish tank. It was their usual spot. The place hasn’t changed for the better in the intervening years. The dark hardwood floor has dulled and the subdued lighting disguises the scaling of the brownish brickwork and dry rot of the support beams and pillars. The fish tank, converted to a terrarium with a desert motif, has only a thin layer of sand at the bottom, a couple of rocks, and a bleached branch. The only life inside is two hermit crabs that have yet to move.
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