I place the barrette in my pocket and pass my palms over the dewy metallic surface. Here, among the cylinders I make believe are as high as the sky, time seems to stop. I can pretend to be somewhere else, be someone else. Solutions come to me in this world of my imagining. In this world where the sky is the limit.
If I were Anna, which path would I take? Suddenly, I am faced with choices as rigid as the steel of the pipes surrounding me. Whichever route I consider leads to a dead-end.
The medical terminology I try to expel from my thoughts whizzes through my head and fills every crevice. It leaves no room for imagining. Anna found out that her cancer is more advanced than first thought. Full mastectomy offers a glimmer of hope — this would be part of a local treatment. Anna also needs a systemic treatment. What type would it be, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, immunotherapy? Is there any new research I don’t know about, Anna doesn’t know about? Which treatment would get to the cancer cells that may have spread beyond the breast? Is there any hope?
Would Anna undergo the systemic treatment before surgery to shrink the tumour? Is this called neoadjuvant therapy? With all the research, not much has changed. Liza was weaving through this maze not long ago. It has been close to two decades, yet it feels like yesterday. I can hear Liza’s voice resonating in my thoughts:
“Blossom dear, you need to go home. Get some rest. You can’t spend all you time here with me, in the hospital room.
“Blossom dear, go get some dinner. The cafeteria isn’t too bad, I hear. Not too bad for hospital food.
“Blossom dear. There’s life outside of this hospital. You need to go out with your friends. It’s Saturday night . . . it’s Sunday night . . .”
But this is now Anna speaking, I say to myself. Yet the words are Liza’s. Even Anna’s voice is beginning to sound like Liza’s. I can no longer tell them apart. Do lifelong friendships do that to people, make them sound alike?
I slip out of the “Temple,” out of my make-believe labyrinth, retie my shoe laces, gather my hair back into a ponytail, and resume my morning jog. I survey my surroundings through Chester’s eyes. The sun is clambering over the tree crowns, he would’ve said.
Last Christmas he gave me the Amazing Book of Mazes. It seemed odd, as I often think of Chester as a puzzle. For instance, I never told him about my interest in mazes. Yet he gave me a book on the subject. It was signed by the author: “To Blossom by Adrian Fisher.” Chester did not include his name anywhere. It seemed impersonal. I wish he had signed his name somewhere in the book. That would’ve told me he wanted me to think of him each time I open it. But he didn’t. So I decided he didn’t want me to think about him. Yet I did, still do. For the past six months, we saw each other a few times a week — went for late night walks, early morning walks, had dinners, lunches, saw movies. He has not called since I missed our dinner. It has been two weeks and a day now.
I continue jogging toward the arbour past Grenadier Restaurant. I hear the peacocks’ call and walk down the hill to the park zoo. I recall its symbolism in religion, folk tales, and myth. Buddhists ascribe profound meaning to the bird’s ability to feed on poisonous plants with no ill effects — the ability to thrive in the face of peril — and the bird stands for rejuvenation and eternal life. A peacock is fanning its train and strutting around a peahen, and I think it a good omen. They mate for life, and are seen as symbol of eternal love. Feng Shui suggested the peacock’s one hundred eyes can protect people from disaster. Could they also protect Anna? Or help with her recovery?
Ever since I found out about Anna’s illness, I have been holding a grudge against her as if she wants to die the same death as Liza just so she can feel what Liza had felt and in some absurd way get close to her again. As if they could have been any closer than they already were. As if she is eager to join Liza in eternity. I have been feeling let down by Anna. This sense of betrayal has been creeping into my bones as if Anna has made a secret pact with the angel of death and has already said her last confession.
CHAPTER 35
“OVER HERE, BLOSS!” Jane calls out as she continues to jog in place next to the bench by the water fountain, just down the hill from the administration building in High Park.
I had already jogged through the park all the way down to Queensway, turned north to follow the path along Grenadier Pond, and veered up the hill toward our bench. Up the slope, Jane’s grey leggings, her purple shirt with white sleeves, and black hair cropped short, remind me of some rare gigantic orchid that has escaped an eccentric botanist and is running away to freedom, the way Jane has escaped her controlling husbands and boyfriends and has maintained the independence I so much admire.
This is our usual meeting place. The view looking west into the valley encompasses trees and shrubs and rockery gardens, and the maple leaf centrepiece by Grenadier Pond. Across the pond, the steep embankment is capped by a ridge with a row of houses sprouting on it as if they were some exotic mushrooms.
Jane waves and I quicken my pace.
“Bloss, you’re late,” Jane calls out smiling, and I wonder if Anna is also late, too late for any treatments to be effective.
We hug and head toward Grenadier Restaurant. Jane takes me under the arm and tells me how glad she is we finally managed to get together. Her musical voice blends with the faint ringing of the bells at Saint Joan of Arc on Bloor Street just east of Keele, and we both pause and listen. Jane and I had been attending mass and fundraisers there with Liza and Anna since we could remember, although none of us is Catholic.
We find a table bordering the patio. Jane sits on the wooden bench facing the restaurant and I look over the entrance to the sunken gardens.
A few tables from us in the corner of the patio, some mothers with their babies in strollers are having a cheerful discussion. An assortment of stuffed toys and rattles and baby bottles and blankets in various crayon-colours makes me smile. Jane spots a friend among them and waves to her excitedly. I am drawn in by the view looking south beyond the gardens.
The scene freezes in my mind and I see it as a painting by a child. The motion of Jane’s hand leaves a trail I conjure into a rainbow arched above the Gardiner Expressway that streaks just below the horizon and binds Lake Ontario to the sky. Jane’s hand waves again and the painting in my mind’s eye is smeared, as if it were a splash of raindrops swept aside by a windshield wiper.
Jane’s voice brings me back to reality. “I haven’t seen you since the semester ended. It’s been three weeks. Where have you been?”
She goes on about the end-of-semester rush. Words flow from her as if they were dandelion seeds scattered by the wind. Her cheerfulness fills the space around us and I nudge my worry away from the present, as if it belongs somewhere outside of this terrace with tables shaded by umbrellas and smiling faces milling about.
I soon realize her exuberance is a put-on. Avoiding the subject we’ve both thinking about cannot go on forever. Suddenly she is pensive. Her eyebrows gather and her question surprises me, and I think it even surprises her. “Are you gonna teach a summer course?” she asks, and I know she is still trying to avoid talking about Anna.
“No,” I sigh. “I need to spend some time . . .”
“Yes, I know,” she cuts in. “You’ve always taught summer courses. I just thought it’d be good for you. Unless you’re planning a trip.”
“No trips. Not this summer.”
Her words are rattling in my head. Jane, who usually tries to convince me to take the summer off, is now trying to get me to teach summer courses? Although I wish I had committed to at least one class. As much as I wanted the marking finished, the moment the grades were in, I felt a void.
“Old habits die hard,” she says good-humouredly as if she’s clairvoyant. “I just thought, to keep your mind off things.”
A few moments later two tall glasses of ice tea are set on our table. Jane slurps through the straw loudly just to be fu
nny.
“All day breakfast?” the waitress asks.
We always have breakfast for lunch.
I wrap my fingers around the glass and relish the coolness. Jane finally broaches the subject. “I know you’re spending every moment with Anna. But you’ve got to put things in perspective.”
I nod and say nothing. The silence is more telling than all the words, and we both know it.
“Remember Bloss, this is out of your hands.”
“I know.”
“Anna’s had a heart condition all her life. All her life, Bloss. It’s not anything new.”
“She’s in a no-win situation, Jane. She needs a full mastectomy. She needs treatments. Her heart will not withstand surgery.” Then I catch myself. Why am I telling Jane what she already knows?
“You can’t say that. She’s a tough cookie. She’ll make it.”
“Miracles happen. Right?” I take a deep breath. I cannot keep this in any more: “She still carries the flask with her,” I say.
Jane shrugs. “Ah! Is it the spirit of the Bahamas? Or the spirit of Mexico? Or is it just plain, old gin?” She looks at me for a long moment. “Have to hand it to her. I’ve never seen her even tipsy. She’s got her own spirit, Bloss. She does what she wants. Always has. Who’s to say how life turns out, no matter how carefully you live it?”
Our plates arrive. I lift the three strips of bacon off my plate and place them on hers.
“Bacon doesn’t count as meat,” she says, chuckling “You should just have it.”
After a while Jane balances the last piece of bacon on the tip of her fork. “Sure you don’t want it?”
We both laugh, and I am reminded how much I missed her the last few weeks. She is one of the few people with whom I can laugh like that, wholeheartedly.
“Okay,” Jane says, “it’s early afternoon. I’ll come with you to Anna’s house for a bit. Check if there are any chores to get done. And after, we’ll do a bit of shopping, get some dinner, then catch a movie.”
* * *
We find Anna in her garden, in the midst of purple summer phlox and white alyssum and bees and butterflies. She tells us that her surgery has already been scheduled — it took only a month after her diagnosis.
The gate squeaks and a tall elderly man pokes his head over the black wrought iron scrolls, his bushy white hair billowing in the breeze. “Is this a good time?” he says.
After a long moment, Anna says: “Well, I’ll be. If it isn’t James.”
“Am I interrupting?” he says.
Anna gets up and walks halfway toward the gate, and Jane and I follow. He looks familiar. I recall that name. Then it all comes back to me in a flash — he is the cop who used to investigate the missing marble. I recall him dropping in on Liza a few times. Anna did not like him much.
“You come as a friend or a foe?” Anna says. “As a friend, you’re welcome.”
“Always a friend,” he says with a crooked smile.
“In that case, what are you waiting for? Come on in!”
He pushes the gate and clambers along the path, supporting himself with a cane and limping on one leg, as if he were pulling great weight behind him. He shakes Anna’s hand.
“You haven’t aged a day,” he says.
“Neither have you,” she says and they break out in laughter.
Anna arches her eyebrows. “It’s been, what, twenty years? Since Liza’s funeral. What happened to your leg?”
“Got shot in the hip. Long time ago. I’m retired now.”
“That’s good news. Now we can all breathe easier,” she says with a smirk. “Take the load off. Have a seat.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he says, looking at Jane and me. “Blossom and Jane. Right? You were in your teens when I used to visit Liza. You’ve grown up.”
“We saw you at Liza’s funeral,” Jane and I say in unison. “We were in our twenties, then.”
He nods and stares into the distance. “I meant, I remember you . . . when you were still very young.”
He looks up into the towering crowns of the white pines in Anna’s yard. “I always remembered this part of Toronto. This urban forest. When my wife passed away, I sold the house and decided to move to a condo. This is the first place I came to look. And here I am.”
“So, you’re a neighbour, now?” Anna says.
He nods. “Just around the corner. That new building on Quebec.”
Jane asks Anna to join us for a dinner and a movie, but she declines and insists that Jane and I go on with our plans.
“Would you like to watch the sunset with me?” Anna says to James. “It drops magically into the valley below.”
CHAPTER 36
OVER THE NEXT few weeks, Anna has her house cleaned from top to bottom and her garden weeded, and her windows washed, and each time Jane and I offer to help, she has already arranged a maintenance crew to ensure that every corner of her home is as tidy as it could be.
A few days before her surgery, as we sit in her living room and sip tea, I ask her about James. Why did he come to see her?
She ho-hums and says: “He was fond of Liza. But he’s a cop. Retired or not. It’s in his blood. Sniffing for clues. He was suspecting David, then.”
“I know that much,” I say. “But why now? Why did he come to see you?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out. He’s been going for walks around here, enjoying the best tree canopy in Toronto, he says. That’s why he moved to the area. And when he saw us in the garden, he thought he’d drop by. He and I didn’t see eye to eye back then. I didn’t like him dropping in on Liza for any excuse he could find. Looking for leads. Now, I see no harm. It’s kinda nice to chat about the old times.”
“Did anyone find out what happened to that marble?”
She shoots me a pensive look. “Blossom, my girl. Leave the past in the past.”
“Anna, the way you say that makes me think you know something.”
“It wasn’t David.”
* * *
The evening before surgery, when Jane and I walk into Anna’s room, she sits up in bed, wraps the housecoat around her shoulders and says: “Everything will be as it should.”
She goes over a list of things for us — and tells us that she also left all these instructions written down. She has the maintenance company taking care of the house, and all we need to do is pick up the mail and keep an eye out that everything is in order.
Jane and I exchange looks but say nothing. How long is she planning on staying here?
“Don’t forget to take the rose, Bloss, when you leave tonight,” Anna reminds me, although we just arrived.
I have been keeping up Liza and Anna’s tradition of planting spent miniature roses in a corner of my garden and have been rewarded by a profusion of colour year after year.
Anna takes Jane’s hand and holds it in hers. “You should get back so the sitter can go home. Kiss the children for me, will you, dear?”
Jane kisses Anna on both cheeks and they hug for a long while. “I’ll see you in the morning. You’re the greatest. And those kids of mine adore you.”
Jane’s voice sounds as if she is speaking under water and her eyes are misty but she keeps her emotions in. With her palm, Anna caresses Jane’s cheek. Her lips begin to move as if she is about to say something she has held in for a very long time. Then she starts taking short breaths. Jane and I reach for the call button but Anna stops us. “No nurse, my dears. I’m perfectly fine.” Anna reminds Jane again about the three children waiting at home and urges her to leave.
“Give the kids a hug for me,” I say to Jane. “I’ll stay for a while.”
Anna’s eyes remain glued to the open door as Jane’s footsteps fade down the hall. Her lips are moving but the words are silent. I think she is saying, “My sweet, sweet darling girl,” but I am not sur
e. I take her hand in mine, and we sit in silence.
The nurse comes in to take Anna’s blood pressure and temperature. She is chatting incessantly as if being chirpy is a prescription she dispenses liberally to her patients. She has light brown eyes, an upturned nose, and her short blond hair is flipped up in back. Her smile creases etched into the thickly powdered face cause to her to appear ageless — she could be Anna’s age or mine or somewhere in between — and I wonder what she would look like if she stopped smiling. She hands Anna a small paper cup with pills, and she pops them in her mouth, all at once. Then she takes a few sips of water. The nurse coaxes her to down the rest of the water. She fusses over Anna, plumps the pillow around her, and pats her on the shoulder. “I won’t be here in the morning. Another nurse will check in on you. Remember, nothing to eat or drink after ten tonight.”
I prop my hand against my head like a visor to block out the smiling. When I look up, the nurse has left. Anna removes her housecoat. Her pink hospital gown makes her cheeks glow and sets off her dark hair pulled in a low bun. Her eyes are deep and she reminds me of a religious icon.
“I’ve never seen you wearing pink,” I say. “That shade looks amazing on you.”
She laughs. “Hospitals do that to you. Make you fashionable.”
She gets out of bed, tiptoes to the open door, looks down the hallway to one side and the other, then comes back in. She opens the drawer of her night table and grabs her purse, then tiptoes toward the bathroom, all-the-while glancing at me conspiratorially, as if I am part of her secret plot.
“No, Anna . . .,” I start to say, but she disappears into the bathroom.
Before closing the door, she says: “If anybody comes, just tell them I’ll be out in a minute.”
I wring my hands, then drop them in my lap and try to look calm.
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