Pallbearing

  “Of course.”

  Anne said, “I know I’m pushy, but this is for the best. You can’t live your life with Mom’s stuff all around you.”

  Margaret said, “I know, I know. Thank you.”

  The sisters hugged across the table and then Anne took a look around the room. She said they’d made a pretty good start, but it was getting late and she should be heading home. At the door, Anne said she’d send her son by to pick up the boxes for Goodwill and the dump. They hugged again and then Margaret was alone in her bare condo.

  She went back into the kitchen and looked at the photo of her parents. They looked so young, so happy. She smiled and put the photo in the middle of the china cabinet, and then went into her mom’s room to start unpacking her own things.

  Stewart and Rose

  It was touch and go for a bit, but Stewart got through the worst of the pneumonia and the doctors were confident he’d make a full recovery. His sons took turns driving down from the city to visit him in the hospital. He told them he could never understand why they bothered to keep old guys like him dying for so long — it was a drain on the system. They tried to cheer him up, but on every visit he was the same. He only wanted to talk about how to divide his money, and how, if he went under again, he didn’t want to be revived. After about thirty minutes of this talk, the son would say he had to be getting back to the city, give his dad a pat on the shoulder, and head out.

  Outside the room, Rose would be waiting, working on her crossword. They’d ask her how their dad was really doing, and she’d say, “He’s fine. Just likes to put on a show,” and they’d both chuckle. Then she’d add something like, “You know I’m very fond of your father, but he can be a bit of a baby when it comes to getting old.”

  Then Rose would go back in and pull her chair up beside Stewart. She’d flip through the channels until she found the news, and then ask him if he wanted anything. “Just to get out of this place. But the way things are going, the only way that’ll happen is in a casket.”

  And Rose would always say, “If you talk like that, I’m going to leave.”

  Then she’d read him crossword clues and he’d doze off. At seven she’d flip over to Wheel of Fortune. She’d always get the answers before him, but he was better at Jeopardy. At eight, the nurse would come in and apologize for visiting hours being over. Rose would say she had to go and Stewart would say, “I’ll be lucky to make it through the night.”

  “And you’ll be lucky if I bother coming in again with you talking like that.” Then she’d kiss Stewart goodnight and head home.

  * * *

  Rose and Stewart had known each other most of their lives. Stewart and his wife Margaret had children the same age as Rose and Jim’s. The couples had met each other at a parent-teacher night when their first kids were in kindergarten, and would always say hello and catch up on gossip at school events after that. Twice a year Margaret would bring her kids into the shoe store Rose managed and Rose would marvel at their growth and fit them with new shoes. Any time one of Rose and Jim’s kids got hurt, they’d end up being treated by Margaret, a nurse at the local hospital. They were friends in the sense that they knew and liked each other, but their lives were busy enough that things never went much further than that.

  After the last of their children were out of school, the two couples saw less of each other. Just chance encounters at the grocery store or around town. One night, they were all at the same restaurant and Stewart insisted that Rose and Jim join him and Margaret. They had a wonderful night and all agreed they should certainly do it again. Anytime they ran into each other after that, they’d remind each other of what a good time they’d had and make plans that never came to anything.

  Stewart was the first to retire. Rose read about it in a joke announcement some guys at the mill put in the paper. She said to Jim, “Now isn’t that cute, ‘After years of being retired on the job, Stewart Berger has made it official.’ We should send them something.” Jim didn’t want to; he said if they wanted a present, they should have sent an invitation. Rose sent a card with both their names at the bottom anyways.

  Jim retired a couple of years later and talked Rose into doing the same. “Life is too short,” he said. “We should try to have some fun while we still have our health.” They booked a cruise to celebrate and the first night on the boat, they bumped into Stewart and Margaret in line for the buffet. They marvelled over the size of the world and joined each other for dinner. They made plans to meet at the pool the next day. That turned into lunch and then an excursion into port and by the end of the cruise neither couple could believe they’d waited so long to be the friends they’d always thought they were.

  Back in town, they started meeting at the Denny’s every week, and the ladies took to running errands together and talking on the phone every few days. Once a month they’d go to the city for dinner at a nice restaurant. They had a lifetime of stories to share with each other, swapping different perspectives on decades-old gossip. The friendship was mostly driven by the two women — the men couldn’t agree on much other than how lazy the new generation was — but they had a good time together regardless. They booked a cruise together again, a year after the first, and then it became an annual tradition.

  * * *

  Margaret got cancer for the first time at age seventy. Rose helped out by driving her to appointments and, when Margaret was at her worst, brought over meals frozen in Tupperware. A small woman to start, Margaret shrunk to almost nothing during her treatment. They tried to keep her spirits up, even taking her to the Denny’s one night, but she was miserable there and couldn’t eat, and when it was time to leave, she was too weak to move. Jim and Stewart had to carry her between them to the car. After that she refused to leave the house for anything but medical appointments.

  The cancer stabilized for a few months, but then came back stronger than ever. Her hair was gone by then, and she was frail and skeletal; she didn’t want anyone to see her like that and asked Rose to stop coming by. They still spoke on the phone every day. Margaret told her she was taking more treatment, even though the doctor said it might not do much good. “I’m not just going to lie back and die,” she told Rose. “If there’s any sort of chance, I’ll take it.” She never did give up, and dying took her a long time.

  At the funeral, Rose and Jim waited in the line of well-wishers. By the time they got to Stewart, he was slumped down, his normally tall frame lost in a suit that looked three sizes too big. Jim shook his hand and told him what a strong woman Margaret had been. Stewart nodded and stared at the floor for a long time and then said, “That’s what they all say” — he gestured at the crowd of neighbours and family — “that she was strong.” He looked like he was done and Jim moved to shake his hand again, but Stewart said, “She wasn’t, you know. Not really. She wasn’t fighting to stay alive; she was fighting to not die. It terrified her. Dying.”

  Rose broke the awkward silence that followed by giving Stewart a hug goodbye and saying she’d be in touch. On the drive home, she said it felt like there were only bones inside his suit. She wondered if it was the stress, or if he had something too. They both doubted he would last long without Margaret.

  Rose called Stewart every week to check in. She carried the conversation, and when Stewart did get going, he only talked about loneliness and death. She was sympathetic for a few months, but then she told him he had to snap out of it; Margaret wouldn’t have wanted him just sitting around the house feeling sorry for himself. She tried to get him to come out for dinner with her and Jim. Stewart always said he appreciated the thought but that he just wasn’t ready. There would be a long silence where Rose felt like she should try harder before Stewart would say he had to be going. Then she would tell Jim about the talk and try to convince him to give Stewart a call, but he always said that a man has to find his own way out of sorrow, that there was nothing he could do about it. Rose would say something about me
n and feelings and that would be the end of it.

  But still, Rose felt she owed it to the memory of her friendship with Margaret to keep up the calls, even as they became a chore. When she finally did forget one day, she decided to put it off for a full week. After that, her calls became infrequent, eventually settling into a nagging feeling in the back of her head that she really should check in with Stewart.

  * * *

  Jim’s cancer was quicker than Margaret’s. He went in to see the doctor after a few days of stomach pain, had some imaging done, and was in surgery within two weeks. After he came out of the anaesthetic, the doctors told him and Rose that the cancer was more widespread than they had thought. He had three months; treatment might help, but would likely only buy him a month or two. Jim got the family together and explained that if it was a matter of three months of dying versus four of pain, weakness, and dying, he’d rather get it out of the way. He didn’t want to linger like Margaret. He died three months to the day after the surgery.

  The funeral was small and mostly family. At the reception Rose met with the few well-wishers and thanked them all very much for coming, and then Stewart was standing there in front of her in the same too-large suit he’d worn to Margaret’s funeral, looking just as frail. He shrugged nervously and Rose said she was sorry that she hadn’t called in so long, and he said no, he understood, and was sorry for what happened. He shook her hand and said he’d like to stop by once things calmed down, if he could. She said, of course.

  Stewart showed up with flowers a few weeks later. They talked about their old dinners, their outings together, the cruises. They played three hands of crib and then she offered him dinner, which she reheated from the meals she froze at the start of the week. They ate on trays while watching the news. Neither talked about their spouses.

  They saw each other a couple of times a week after that. Always at Rose’s, and Jim always brought flowers or chocolates. He seemed to recover some of his vitality; his stoop disappeared, he put on some weight. She enjoyed the visits — they kept her from dwelling too much on the empty house — but she was worried Stewart might be getting the wrong idea. She told him after dinner one night that it was far too soon after Jim’s death for anything more than friendship. He cut her off and said he understood, and for now he was just happy to have someone to spend time with. A friend. He told her that he’d let himself get too depressed after Margaret died. Seeing Jim’s obituary had snapped him out of that and given him something to do — to make sure an old friend didn’t fall into the same funk.

  They grew closer, despite her misgivings. They spent all their days together and, eventually, started to kiss each other hello and goodnight. Even as they grew closer, she never let him spend the night, always insisting he head out at nine. He’d get in his old Cadillac and drive across town to his home, only to come back the next morning with something sweet to go with their morning coffee. A few months passed like that and then Rose brought him to a family dinner and introduced him as her “gentleman caller,” a term her children found adorable enough to lessen their surprise over the fact that she seemed to have moved on from their dad.

  A year after Jim died, Stewart asked Rose to marry him. She said no; she liked him but she had always thought she’d be married just the one time. He was a bit indignant and didn’t come around for a few days, but eventually he got over it. He tried again a month later, this time with an argument ready: “For a year I didn’t see a point in living. Now I have a reason to get up in the morning; without you, I’d die.” She said that was very sweet, but maybe a little dramatic. She assured him he had her, but suggested he stop it with the death talk.

  He tried again a few months later, after a cold had kept him in bed a few days. He told her he was sure he was going to die soon — it was just a matter of time — and it would mean a lot to him if she would marry him. She said it was ridiculous to think a cold was a reason for them to get married, and that she was frankly getting tired of him talking about death all the time. She wanted to enjoy the time they had left, not spend it with a man who was going to spend his last days talking about it being his last days. She left in a huff and he called her to apologize and they spent a long time making up. It ended with her accepting a ring, but she refused to say they were engaged. It was, she said, just to show that she was spoken for.

  * * *

  “What will you do without me?” Stewart asked.

  “Don’t be silly. The doctors said you’ll be home by the end of the week.”

  “But it will only get worse.”

  “Stewart, really. You’ve been saying that as long as we’ve been together. What’s a four-letter word for ‘God of War’?”

  “Those damn kids of mine have abandoned me here.”

  “They visit every day.”

  “Out of obligation. Their wives never come, I never see the grandkids.”

  “Because they’ll see you this weekend, when you’re home.”

  “I could be gone by then.”

  Rose rolled her eyes and wrote in Hera. Then she said, “Starts with A, four letters, fast planes.” A little later, she muttered, “Well, that can’t be right.” Stewart had closed his eyes and dozed off. A few minutes later Rose stood up. Her leg got tangled in the lines of the IV, and when she turned to get free, she lost her balance and fell over the chair. She screamed and Stewart sat up and tried to stand. She said, “No, don’t. Just call the nurse.”

  Rose had broken her leg and wrist in the fall. “Frail old bones,” she told Stewart over the phone. “My own damn fault for being so clumsy.” She was laid up in bed at home and would be for weeks. Her daughter Linda had moved in to help out, and had set up a baby monitor so she could call if she needed anything. “Can you believe that? A baby monitor. There’s no dignity in getting old.”

  Stewart couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital and take care of Rose. He thought maybe he could move in while she recovered so Linda could get back to her family. Rose didn’t promise anything, but did agree that would be convenient and, she added after Stewart huffed, pleasant.

  * * *

  Rose died a few nights before Stewart was due to check out. A blood clot had formed in her broken leg and moved to her heart. Stewart got the news from Linda the next morning. She sat with him until his son showed up, then excused herself to get back to her family. His son asked if he was okay, if he needed anything; an hour later he said he had to be getting back, but would check in soon. The nurse put a meal down on the table, beside Rose’s book of crossword puzzles. Stewart ignored it. She asked if he wanted the TV on; he shook his head.

  Stewart refused to eat after that; he told his son he wanted to die. By the time the funeral came around he was too weak to get up. Linda visited a few days later. It started out pleasant. She told him about the turnout and the love in the room, but when he didn’t say anything, she started to get worked up. She tried to tell him her mother wouldn’t have wanted him moping around like this, and when he still didn’t speak she blurted out, “My mom loved life so much and died; it’s not fair that you have your life and don’t want it.” He didn’t say anything.

  A nurse tried to bully him into eating. She said there was nothing wrong with him and this wasn’t a hotel and he had to start eating and get home so that people who were actually sick could get a bed. Stewart just stared at the ceiling. They forced a feeding tube down his nose. He fought, but by then he was too weak to do much.

  He caught a flu and found awareness leaving him. He slept for long stretches, and when he was awake, nothing seemed quite real. At one point, he heard a nurse tell his son that they could keep him alive, but they couldn’t make him want to live.

  He was aware that he had an infection of some sort and then he was confused to find himself in a different room, not the hospital anymore but not his home. His son was there saying it was okay. Another time consciousness came around and both his boys were there. He
heard one of them saying pneumonia, and something about it being for the best; he tried to sit up, panicked, knowing what that meant. But then other memories came back and he relaxed; it was what he wanted.

  Acknowledgements

  House of Anansi has been my intended publisher since I began writing, and it’s an honour to join their list. Thanks to my agent Marilyn Biderman for her support and for arranging the deal; to editor Douglas Richmond for seeing the potential in the collection; to designer Alysia Shewchuk for the striking cover; to publicists Holley Corfield and Rachel Pisani; to managing editor Maria Golikova; and to House of Anansi’s publisher Sarah MacLachlan and owner Scott Griffin for putting together an amazing publishing team and list.

  Literary magazines and websites are crucial to authors in the early stages of their career; they provide a platform to authors and give them room to develop confidence in their work. My thanks to all the magazines that have published me, especially to Amy Jones for selecting “Low Risk” in the Puritan; to Kathryn Mockler at Joyland for publishing “Harold”; to the Maple Tree Literary Supplement for publishing “Little to Lose”; to Grain for publishing “Stewart and Rose”; to the Lampeter Review for publishing “What She’d Remember”; to Cleaver for publishing “When Things Wear Away Other Things”; and to Potluck for publishing “Fun Centre.” And a special thanks to Canisia Lubrin, Meaghan Strimas, and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer for selecting “A Pregnancy” for an honourable mention in the Humber Literary Review’s Emerging Writers Fiction Contest — the recognition was a shot in the arm when it was needed.

  The Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils provided funding for the writing of this book, without which it would not exist. I thank both organizations dearly.