Windfall

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Windfall Page 6

by Byron TD Smith


  “Fred, since you’re in charge of the sauce, tell me what you think. Is it missing anything?”

  Frieda tried it. “No more wine, but it needs basil.” She returned to the drawer of spices.

  “Sounds good,” Henry said. “Don’t turn your back on it for too long. It’s a gas stove, so it cooks differently than the one you’ve got at home.”

  Henry looked back to see Tess reaching into her glass with her middle finger, just touching the wine.

  “Something in there?” Henry asked, leaning to rise.

  “No,” Tess said, rubbing her middle finger off against her thumb. “Just playing.”

  “So, do a lot of people call you Fred?” Tess asked.

  “Just Hen,” Frieda said over her shoulder.

  “Because it’s short for Frieda.”

  “No, that’s silly.”

  Henry watched the domestic scene: the attractive woman watching the young girl sort through spices, having a quiet conversation, as a nice meal is prepared. Shima stood on his back paws to see inside the drawer as well.

  “When I was a kid,” Frieda explained, “I had a book of explorers that I used to make Hen read to me. Frederick Cook was my favorite, even though people say he didn’t really make it to the North Pole or climb Mount McKinley. I thought it would be cool to go to the North Pole.”

  “So, he calls you Fred.”

  “Yeah, but I changed my mind when I got older. Now I want to climb Kilimanjaro. Some people think it’s in Kenya, but it’s really in Tanzania. From the top you can see the curve of the earth. Hen said he’d take me.”

  “That sounds amazing,” Tess said, clearly entertained.

  Henry looked at Frieda, stirring the sauce. Traveling together was something they had talked about doing with Sarah, as a trio. Kilimanjaro was not something that had been discussed in earnest, let alone mentioned, in a couple of years.

  “You still want to go to Kilimanjaro?”

  “More than ever.”

  “With me?”

  “Well, we talked about it,” Frieda said, with an uncharacteristically shy tone. “It would be neat to have an old promise like that come true. You’d need to get in better shape, though. The altitude is supposed to be really tough.”

  Henry wanted to give her a hug but hesitated to do anything that might embarrass her.

  “I think thirteen may be a bit young for Africa, but maybe sixteen or seventeen would work. We should start planning and talking to your folks.” He patted his stomach loudly. “That’ll give me plenty of time to get into shape.”

  Frieda gave a whoop and splashed the wooden spoon into the sauce. She wrapped her arms around Henry’s chest and tried to lift him from his seat.

  He tussled her hair in return and said, “I think we’re almost ready. Can you run up and see if Bernadette needs a hand?”

  “Yessir, Mr. Lysyk,” Frieda said, coming to attention and giving a sharp salute. She marched out the door, taking care not to let out the old cat who had become her shadow.

  Henry offered Tess more wine. She slid her glass forward on the table.

  “Is everything alright with Bernadette?” he asked as he poured. “She looked like she was in pain earlier. I even noticed you helping her from the couch.”

  “I know. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve seen it, too, but she’s never told me what’s going on. Bernadette’s always had tons of energy; she runs circles around me in the garden. It seems to have gotten worse in the last couple of months, though. I’m afraid to say anything because I figure if she wanted me to know, she’d tell me. You surprised me by coming right out and asking.”

  Frieda came back in.

  “That was quick,” Tess said.

  “I found her in the hallway.”

  “Enough,” Bernadette said, laughing. “Found me in the hallway, my butt. I’m still a ways off from getting lost in my own home. I was already coming down.”

  It was only when Frieda directed everyone to their seats that Henry noticed she had made little name placards for each of the place settings. She seated herself next to Bernadette and placed him and Tess together.

  After Bernadette had left, they taught Tess how to play crib. To her credit, Tess was only skunked once. At ten-thirty, Frieda moved her belongings to Henry’s bedroom. He would sleep on the couch tonight so that he and Tess could continue talking, while Frieda went to bed.

  “She’s an awesome kid,” Tess said.

  Henry reached across the table and finished the bottle of wine into their glasses.

  “She is. I’m pretty lucky. I have more nieces and nephews, too, but they live on the island.”

  “Do you see them often?”

  “I don’t. It’s far. I’m busy, etcetera, etcetera. To tell the truth, I don’t even see that much of Frieda these days.”

  “Because you’re busy.”

  “Because it’s awkward. I always wanted kids, but at some point Sarah, my ex, decided she didn’t. Eventually, I rationalized that it would be enough to be an uncle.” Henry took a deep breath. “Can I share something with you?”

  “Please.”

  “I’ve had this recurring dream. I’m in a park with tall, dry grass, maybe Stanley Park. I can see something moving the blades in front of me and it’s Shima. I’m following him because I’m worried that he’s going to go on the road. I try to corral him. And I realize, when I see him sniffing around, that this is it for him. This is all he has. I have to keep him safe, but I also have to let him take everything in. It’s like I’m the custodian of his experience in this lifetime.”

  Henry took a long, slow sip. “I feel like I’m meant to care for someone. I want to be a part of Frieda’s life, but Frieda is Sarah’s side of the family, and I have no idea how this works after a divorce.”

  “My bet is that kids don’t care about that sort of stuff. Fred adores you.”

  Henry ran his hand through his hair, his palm conveniently wiping the corner of his eye.

  “How about you? Children? Boyfriend? Cat? Are you from Vancouver?”

  “No, just the opposite. I grew up in the Yukon. Never wanted kids or cats. I treasure my independence too much.”

  “You sound like a friend of mine.” It was only yesterday that he and Alex met for lunch. Only a day ago he had no idea that he would have so many people in his personal space.

  Tess swirled the wine in the glass so that it rose high on the sides, almost to the lip. She got up from her seat and walked over to the living room as she spoke.

  “Maybe that’s selfish, but the way I see it is I’m the only person who needs to be responsible for me. I don’t depend on anyone else to take care of anything or expect anyone to make me happy.”

  “So, the opposite of selfish. You’ve never had a relationship?”

  “Not never. I wanted to get into comics, and it meant traveling, going to conventions and showing my art to people in the business. It was too hard on my relationship then, and I made a choice. I chose me. I can follow any path, talk to whomever I want, succeed or fail without being accountable to anyone.” Although they rang true, her words had the same, rehearsed cadence as Henry’s when he spoke about children, nieces, and nephews.

  “I wish you had spoken to me fifteen years ago,” Henry said. “If I’d known that was an option, things might have been different.”

  “But then you wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “Unemployed, unemployable, and divorced,” Henry said, grinning into his glass.

  “I think there’s more to you than that.” Tess stopped in front of the pale wooden bookshelf. It was such in name only, being conspicuously absent of books. Only a stack of a dozen LPs adorned one of the four shelves.

  “A lot of space here.” She flipped through the records. “Nothing but Bowie, and an expectation that you’ll gather some reading material?”

  “I took only what I needed, I left everything else.”

  “Which included Bowie?” She held up the black-and-white cover of t
he Heroes album. David Bowie’s unfocused eyes stared away from the both of them, into space.

  “In university, I started trying to get all of his stuff on vinyl. After… Well, Sarah hated him.”

  It sounded small when the words were given voice; so much smaller than the act of removing them had been. “She’d only chuck them anyhow.”

  Tess studied him from across the room, squinting, and pursing lips.

  “What?” Henry asked.

  “What makes you special?”

  Not a question Henry was expecting. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, this apartment was vacant for months before you moved in, even though the city’s in a housing crunch. You couldn’t have been the first person to apply for it, but here you are.”

  “Here I am.” Henry’s words were less of an answer than a question of his own.

  “Unemployed, unemployable, and divorced. Bernadette saw something in you, I guess, if she put in a good word.”

  “I can’t imagine.” Henry offered a weak shrug.

  “What say you put on some music?” Tess said, gesturing at the handful of records leaning on Henry’s one bookshelf.

  Henry laughed. “I didn’t get the record player.”

  She nodded appreciatively and straightened out the albums on the shelf. “You’ve got a nice laugh when you get out of your head. What do you do for fun?”

  Henry regretted saying the first thing that came to mind, even as it left his mouth. “Crosswords?”

  “Old school.” It was her turn to laugh. “I haven’t done one for years and years. I guess they’re meditative?”

  “They are,” he said, hopping up from his chair to retrieve today’s paper from the living room. “A puzzle’s a pretty great way to sort of shake off the day.”

  Henry unfolded the paper as he spoke. Business, Style, Travel, Focus. “Are you kidding me?” He flipped through the sections again. “There’s no Arts section. There’s no crossword.”

  “It’s in a different section?” Tess said.

  “It’s not,” Henry said, too quickly.

  He went through the paper one page at a time. “This is the second day in a row that someone has taken my crossword.”

  “Taken?” Tess asked, her voice not quite hiding a snicker. “As in someone deliberately stole it? Maybe the paper skipped a day. Maybe Mr. Crossword is sick, and he can’t make his deadlines.”

  Henry gave a weak smile of agreement. Was it Fred? That seems like an unfunny thing to do. Not like her.

  “Maybe it was Bernadette,” Henry said.

  “Busted. She’s definitely your thief. She tried to steal your cat earlier. Is anything else missing?” Tess made a show of looking around the room with wild, wide eyes.

  “I’m not crazy,” he said.

  “You know a crazy person would say that, right?”

  “It’s a long story. There were some . . . issues when I divorced. My ex and her boyfriend aren’t supposed to know where I live. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the bank that I worked for was watching me.”

  “That’s a pretty dramatic story. Do you hear yourself? One hundred percent crazy.”

  Henry could see the levity in the young woman’s face as she wound him up. Surrendering to the logic before him, Henry clinked the bowl of his wineglass against hers in a toast.

  “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “There’s some reasonable explanation, I’m sure.”

  They sat at the table and talked a while longer, while the wine ran down. Tess spoke about traveling, about the business of comic books, and what it was like to be a woman in her industry. Henry also spoke of past travels, avoiding the topic of work, past or present. Were it not for the missing puzzle, Henry would have been hanging on her every word.

  As they said goodnight at the door, Henry peered out and scanned back and forth in the hallway.

  “One more thing,” Tess said, placing her hand flat on Henry’s chest. “Your dream about walking through the park. You know you’re the cat, right?”

  And, with that, she disappeared up the stairs.

  Chapter Ten

  Bernadette threw one of her pillows from the bed. The clock reminded her in glowing red numbers that sunrise was only a few hours away.

  She was growing used to sleeping with the physical pain in her abdomen. It was her mind, tonight, that fought sleep. She lay in the dark with her eyes wide open, playing over Frieda’s story about the man downstairs.

  Was it a mistake? What did he want? Who was he?

  No one had ever come looking to speak with somebody from the company, so far as she knew. She always took care of finding new tenants for Richardson Street, fielding questions about repairs and maintenance, and even collecting and returning deposits. Even though she’d had help from time to time, now it was just her.

  Before dinner, she had gone down to visit Ron in Unit 5, which was partly below ground, adding still more stairs to the trip.

  It started as it always did. The old voice inside the apartment shouted, “Come in!” and she obeyed.

  Is this never locked?

  “In here, Bernie,” came a voice from deeper in the apartment.

  A small, old man sat in a reclining chair, in the living room. Ronald Benham’s hair was nearly gone, except for wisps over his ears. His eyebrows were forests of white, gray, and black that had grown out of control, hairs curling back on themselves. The old man’s face sported a day’s growth of coarse white hair. He wore a button-down shirt that was clean, but no longer perfectly white, and brown pants. A small tube ran across his upper lip and over his ears, providing him with oxygen from a small cylinder next to the chair.

  “Do you need more T3s?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. I’m not here for painkillers. Although, I’m finding they aren’t doing the trick like they used to. What’s the next level up from there? I’m scared to ask.”

  “I don’t know. I think there are T4s, but I’ll have to get a different prescription for that. None of this stuff is over the counter. If you just went to the doctor yourself, you’d be able to get it, right? We wouldn’t have to mess around with all this online prescription nonsense. What about the old good stuff? It’s made a comeback.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Grass. Mary Jane. My doctor said that it comes in forms that you don’t have to smoke now. You can get it in oils and even candies. It’s Hallowe’en for geezers.”

  Bernadette laughed and shook her head. She took a seat on the couch next to Ron’s big chair.

  He continued. “Seriously, it was just fun when we smoked it in the garden, but now they’re calling it some kind of miracle drug for all kinds of things. Arthritis, headaches, pain. I was thinking of getting a prescription.”

  “For fun.”

  “Of course,” he said, looking at her from the corner of his eye.

  “You do love your candies,” Bernadette said. “And, those were good days, sure. I’m just looking to take the edge off the pain. I’ll think about it, though. It could be fun.”

  “Do you even know what’s wrong?”

  Bernadette leaned back into the cushions of the couch. As she stretched, a small fire awoke in her side.

  “I do.” She struggled to find words that wouldn’t make it all sound so dramatic. “I just found out. A woman from church has a daughter who’s an intern at Vancouver General. I was able to get some blood tests, privately.” She turned herself to face Ron. “It’s the c-word.”

  “Aw, sweet Joseph and Mary, Bernie. Why don’t you bite the bullet and go to the doctor? You live a handful of blocks from Vancouver General, and they’re one of the best research and treatment centers in the world.”

  Bernadette smiled and shook her head. “Ron, we’ve been friends long enough that you know what my answer to that is going to be. As the great Robert Frost once said, ‘The best way out is always through.’”

  “He wasn’t referring to refusing medical treatment.” Ron leaned forward to get up
. “Can I make you a coffee?”

  “No, it’s alright, I can’t stay long. I’m having dinner with Tess and the new young man, Henry, upstairs. But I can put water on for you.”

  “Would you, please?” Ron sunk back into his deep chair. “How is it that you come to have dinner with the new guy?”

  “His cat got into the walls and showed up in my apartment. He has his niece staying with him and, oh Ron, this little girl, Frieda, she is just the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. She’s so articulate and well-mannered, with an imagination like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Is that the plan, then? This is going to be a house full of artists when we die?” Ron began to cough, gently at first, and then with increasing violence.

  Bernadette walked back into the living room and sat on the couch next to Ron’s chair. She reached across the side table and rubbed his back until his coughing fit was done. His body shook as he struggled for a deep inhale.

  Bernadette looked away. “There’s something different about Henry, though.” She pursed her lips. “He checks a lot of the right boxes, but he’s not exactly what I expected. He comes across a bit high strung. Nosy, even.”

  In between short, scratchy breaths Ron said, “Don’t go crazy second-guessing, Bernie. You’ve always made the right choices.”

  Bernadette put her hand on his and they sat just like that, in silence, until they were interrupted by the kettle. Bernadette returned to the kitchen. She had made coffee and dinner in Ron’s apartment countless times over the years; she couldn’t recall, but it must have been her that had organized his kitchen in the first place. He had just become a bachelor when they moved in decades ago. He was in his forties and she in her twenties. Fast friends, they looked out for each other, and looked after each other, when needed.

  She handed him the coffee. “Milk, no sugar.”

  “Thank you. Now, will you tell me why you’re here? It wasn’t for drugs, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t for another of my lectures on doctors and hospitals.”

 

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