All Saints (21 page)

Still, it's never occurred to her to show up on a Sunday morning. Or go to any other church. People assume she must be religious because she works at All Saints. If they ask, she tells them she's United. Which is true enough. Bob was, and they used to go together, at Christmas and Easter. But after he died, the thought of singing
All Things Bright and Beautiful
made her want to throw up.

Kraft Dinner. Two packages. Why not?

That's right, Gail. Go wild.

When the food-bank bag is full, she settles it near the back end of her grocery cart and heads to the produce section. She doesn't actually need any fresh fruit or vegetables, but you can never have too much of that stuff. She can always blanch and freeze whatever she doesn't—

Dwayne?

It is Dwayne. Over there by the banks of lettuce with a shopping cart. Holding a list and frowning at it.

She stands very still, watching him the way she would some wild animal she had come across in a park. She's only ever seen him before at the Saturday lunch. According to the Lunch Ladies, he always looks in on the kitchen to make sure they're all wearing their aprons. Once one of them wasn't, and it set him off on a rant about how she was going to
spill soup all down her clean clothes!
He reminds the other guests to take their plates back to the counter, and barks “Quiet!” at anybody who's getting agitated.

Now he's picking up a head of iceberg lettuce. Turning it in one hand. Examining it critically.

Alas, poor Yorick.

Gail hisses, “Quiet, Bob!”

Dwayne knocked on her office door one Saturday morning. “You want to tell me what your procedure is?” he said when she opened it and saw him standing there. He spoke with such authority that for a moment she mistook him for one of the old guard. “I've been watching this waste receptacle for ten minutes now, and I'm starting to wonder just exactly what your procedure is.” One of the Lunch Ladies crossed the hall from the kitchen and took him by the elbow. “Dwayne, this lady is busy. And we need you right now in the dining room.”

There's a bag of carrots in his shopping cart, and three apples. While she watches, he puts the lettuce he was looking at back, then picks up another. Does he have a furnished room somewhere? Maybe he's gotten a book about basic nutrition out of the library. The few fresh things would make for some variety in a food bank diet. The Lunch Lady who rescued her that time told her that Dwayne drops into the local library every morning to check that the desk calendar on the front counter is turned to the right day. Then he inspects all the paper recycling bins to make sure nobody's put pop cans into them, or anything else they shouldn't. When he's done he goes and sits in the same chair in the corner, thumbing through cat and dog magazines. Glaring at anyone who talks too loud.

Shit. He's looking at her. He must have felt her staring. It's a piercing look, overhung by thick, gathering eyebrows. Gail turns away and pretends to be picking over the vegetables.

The banks of green, red, yellow and orange peppers look odd. Not like things to eat. They're too shiny and bright and colourful. She starts to reach for a red pepper. The automatic sprinklers come on and she snatches her hand back.

Is Dwayne still looking at her? She doesn't want to turn around to check, so she sidles over toward the fruit. Apples. There's something strange about them, too. Gail has never thought about how many different kinds there are. Macintosh. Granny Smith. Royal Gala. Delicious, red and golden. Spartan. Who names them, she wonders suddenly. Who decides these things? And oranges. Look at them all. Naval. Valencia. Mineola. Clementine. Blood. Somebody actually developed a blood orange. Why? For what? Does she need a blood orange? Does anybody? Grapes. Green. Red. Purple. All claiming to be seedless. But where do seedless grapes come from? Where could they possibly come from?

There's no way she can leave the store without turning in Dwayne's direction. She keeps going straight ahead to the deli section, her cart still empty except for the food-bank bag. Behind the deli counter, an employee is cutting slabs from a huge block of Monterey Jack. Cheese. Sure. She can always use cheese. Usually she chooses from a short list of favourites—Havarti with caraway, old Cheddar, Colby, Brie. But suddenly she's confused by all the cream cheeses and blue cheeses and cheeses with green veins running through them and cheeses with almonds embedded in their tops and cheeses with cherries lurking in their depths. The employee slicing the Monterey Jack turns suddenly and asks if he can help her. Gail mumbles, “Sorry,” and wheels her cart away.

As she passes the produce section, she sneaks a glance. No. He's gone. All at once she wishes he was still there. So she could nod and smile at him and say, “Hello, Dwayne.” She wheels her cart up and down the aisles, looking for him. No. No Dwayne. In the end she buys a second round of dried pasta, canned vegetables, canned fruit, peanut butter, Kraft dinner, Pabulum and beans. The cashier looks at her oddly and asks if she wants another brown paper bag for the food bank.

Don't do it, Gail.

“What, Bob? What exactly is it that I shouldn't do?”

She's sitting on a bench in a little parkette the city made out of an empty lot one block north of the grocery store. Philomena Blanding Parkette, according to the plaque she's walked past hundreds of times but never gotten around to reading. She's never sat on this bench before, either, or seen anyone else sitting on it. We are a city of charming little parkettes, she thinks grimly, that nobody ever visits. Named for local heroes that nobody remembers.

Don't give all your money away to some guy on the street.

“I can't, Bob. I'm broke.” It's technically true. The second round of food-bank food, which she left in the bin at the front of the store, took all the cash she had in her wallet. She couldn't give a loonie to a panhandler if she wanted to. “And for your information, that was not some guy on the street. That was Dwayne. He has a name. And he was getting his groceries. In the store where I get my groceries. And now he's going to take them home. He lives somewhere. In this neighbourhood. And on Saturday he's going to come for lunch at All Saints. Where I work. For a while. Until the diocese sells the scrap of land it's taking up. So where's Dwayne going to go for lunch then? Where's he going to go?”

Oh, for God's sake. Who does she think she is? She's no kind of social justice advocate and she knows it. She's not even a nice person. A nice person would smile on Saturday mornings when she opens up to let in the lunch guests. A nice person would have gone up to Dwayne just now in the grocery store and said hello.

But this isn't about Dwayne. This is about Bob. It's him she's really mad at. For being dead. And for not even having a grave somewhere that she could visit at a time like this. “You selfish bastard,” she hisses under her breath, amazed at how fresh her anger still is after all these years.

It was the only big fight they ever had. It was when they were drawing up their wills, in the lawyer's office. Bob came out with it so casually, so, oh by the way, that at first she couldn't believe he was serious. But he was. She just managed to keep the lid on until they were back inside the car. Then she let him have it.

He had told the lawyer, out of the blue, without having consulted her, that he wanted to donate his entire body to medical science. The whole thing. Nothing to bury, nothing to burn. No environmental impact. “Fuck the environment!” she screamed at him in the car. “What about me? You think I want to have to imagine you lying on some slab somewhere? People picking away at you? Slicing bits off?” They finally compromised on donating his organs and his eyes. Gail could have the rest, but not, he insisted, to bury. She could cremate and scatter him, if she wanted. “Put you out to the garbage, more like,” she muttered, still mad.

But when the time came she scattered him. Up at the lake. Off the end of the dock of the cottage they used to rent. The wind shifted the very second she flung the ashes, and they blew back and stuck to her sunblock. She had to wade into the water and wash them off, laughing and crying at the same time.

“So where the hell are you, Bob? Why aren't you here? Now?” She's starting to cry again and doesn't care who sees her. She's a crazy rich lady, sitting on a bench in Philomena Blanding Parkette, with all the money in the world and no spare change.

Spare change,
she thinks, rummaging in her purse for a Kleenex.
I'm a spare change person.
No Kleenex. Great. She wipes her face on the sleeve of her coat.
I am not a big bucks person.
Bob was. He'd have known what to do with big bucks. He'd have never gone back to his job. He'd just have phoned in his resignation and hung up. Then booked them both onto a cruise.

“But that's not going to happen, is it, Bob?” she whispers. “Because you're dead.” She sits on the bench until she starts to get cold. Then she gets up and walks home.

Inside the apartment, she makes the rounds of her plants. Do they really look a little greener? Already? Amazing what just one more inch of soil can do. The trick is to give them just enough. Not too much. It's like overwatering. Put a plant in too big a pot and it doesn't thrive, for some reason. It seems to need something to press against.

Gail has been fingering a leaf of the ficus benjamina. She drops it. Goes and gets the pencil and pad of foolscap she used that time when she was worried sick, listing her expenses. She sits down at the dining-room table and starts sharpening her pencil.
Okay, Bay Street,
she thinks.
You're going to get your list
. She smiles. That's what Bob would call him—just Bay Street. Or maybe even B.S.

At the top of the foolscap page, she prints, DONATION. Underneath that, CONDITIONS. Then she thinks back on what Simon told her about what he would do for All Saints if he could. “There's still some land out back,” he said. “Or we could go straight up, the way the condos do.” She remembers watching his mouth move. This was right after he told her they might have to cut her hours. All she could think was, how she would pay her rent if they laid her off completely? Who would hire her, even part-time, at her age?

“This place could become an abbey,” Simon went on. “A place where you could come if you were poor or sick or some disaster had happened. You could get a meal. A shower. A bed for the night. Or longer than a night. Maybe some counselling. A decent outfit to wear to a job interview. Some pro bono legal help. Why not? It wouldn't be that hard. It doesn't take much, usually, to get somebody back on their feet.”

Her list fills up a page and a half. When she's finished she prints, MUST BE
ANONYMOUS
. Right. No fucking little parkette named after her with a plaque nobody will ever read. Then, near the bottom of the page, SOMETHING FOR ME. IN A TRUST FUND OR WHATEVER. It won't have to be a lot. Just enough. Just so she can stay here in her apartment. And so her church pension will keep pace with inflation. When she can't work any more.

“That'll be the day.”

Was that Bob? No, that was her.

“Bob?”

She sits listening to the quiet. That
less alone
feeling is gone. She's not sure she's going to miss it. Probably be too busy.

She reads through her list. Makes some changes. Checks her watch. Time to go drop in on B.S. Get this show on the road. When she phoned a few minutes ago, his executive assistant said he could just fit her in at four. Well, la-di-da.

At the door, while she's pulling on her jacket and checking her pockets for her gloves, she wonders how long it will be before Simon tells her the news. Some morning a few weeks from now, once he's picked up his mail and gone to his office, she'll hear him running back down the stairs. She'll have to arrange her face. Act surprised. Overjoyed. Relieved. All that stuff.

She's not much of an actress. But she's going to have to be. Unlocking the back door every morning to let the construction crew in. Putting calls from the architect through to Simon. Directing the cleaning staff to hang plastic sheets to keep the dust out of the sanctuary.

She makes sure she has her keys. Puts her hand on the doorknob. Stops. Then says, “Okay, Bob. This one's for you.”

She's not good at this kind of thing either. But she'll give it a go. She starts by bouncing on the soles of her feet. Feeling silly. She makes it into a bunny-hop. Flaps her elbows. A grin splits her face. Becomes a giggle. She bird-dances back into the living room. Spins around, turning the plants into a green blur.

“I won!” she screams in a whisper. “I won! I won! I won!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heroes

 

 

 

 

 

Brian got a crane last week
for his birthday. Peter was there when he opened the box. It has a big hook on a chain and he can make it pick up anything. So far this afternoon, he's made it pick up one of his dinky cars, his dump truck and the tin barn from his farm set.

Now Peter watches as Brian trundles the crane toward a tomato box his mother gave him. He manoeuvres the swaying hook into the space between two slats, then turns the crank. This is the part that makes Peter afraid he might cry. It's something about how the tomato box tilts up and up until it's off the ground. Brian can take it anywhere now—clear to the other side of his room if he wants. Then he can set it down again by turning the crank the other way. He can even trundle the crane out into the hall and dangle the tomato box over the edge of the stairs, raising it higher, then lowering it, up and down, up and down forever, just by the way he turns the crank.

Peter's mouth is dry. His birthday was back in March. He could ask for a crane for Christmas, but it's only October.

“Can I make it do something?”

Brian frowns. “You have to go home soon. It's time for supper almost.”

Ever since he got the crane, Brian has acted like he's older than Peter. But he's only seven, and Peter is seven and a half. No. He's way older than that. He must be. Look how big his hands are all of a sudden. And there are brown spots on them, like Grandpa's.

“It's just five o'clock,” Peter says. His voice has gone all deep, like his father's voice. “I don't have to go home till five-thirty. Let me have a turn.”

“I don't know.” Brian shakes his head in a way that makes Peter want to give him a shove. “This crane is brand new. My dad says it cost four dollars.”

“Please?” Peter thinks he might hate Brian. Even though they're best friends. “I'll be careful with it.”

“No you won't. You'll break it.”

Peter grabs the crane. Holds it high above Brian's head where he can't reach.

“Give that back! It's mine! Mom!”

“You can't have a mother anymore!” Peter crows down at Brian. “You can't have a crane either! You can't have anything! Because you're dead!”

He shouldn't have said that. It's not Brian's fault that he's dead.

“I'm sorry,” Peter says, suddenly small and seven again and wishing he could give the crane back. But it's too late. Brian is in his coffin, dressed in his funeral suit and tie. His eyes are shut and his face is the colour of a candle.

 

Pete looks around the almost-empty coffee shop. There's a man about his age at a corner table. He's partly turned away, but the shape of the collar is visible. Tall, lanky guy, to judge from the width of his shoulders. Funny. The voice on the phone had conjured up someone shorter. Stockier.

He starts toward the man's table, padding like a cat.
He hasn't seen me yet. I could still turn around and walk out.
But the priest hears him. Turns.

“Pete? Simon. Nice to meet, finally.” They shake hands. Simon gestures down at the table, his drained coffee cup. “Can I get you something?”

Pete wonders if anybody ever answers that question in the affirmative. Says,
Yeah, get me the large pumpkin latte special with extra nutmeg.
Then sits there and drinks it while the other guy drums his fingers. “No thanks. I'm fine.”

“Maybe we should be on our way, then.”

They step outside into the late October night. The streets are shiny black from recent rain, the sidewalks slippery with fallen leaves.

Pete feels a familiar trickling in his stomach. He used to tell the kids on opening night that stage fright was all about backstage, that the minute they got out under the lights, it would disappear.
Don't worry,
Simon had reassured him on the phone,
There is a script to follow
.
And the whole thing is very dignified.
A touch of irony in his tone, as if he was saying,
You're not being drawn into a cult.
Now Pete wishes he had gotten a coffee after all. Taken the time. He could have used a bit more preamble.

“It's been a mild fall, so far.” He hates small talk, but the silence is spooking him.

“Yeah, but they say the winter's going to be a cold one.”

Silence again, broken only by their footsteps whispering on the damp pavement.

Okay. Fine. I can be meditative too.
As they walk along, Pete steals a look at the priest's still mouth, his profile. Character actor's face. Not pretty, but workable. Expressive.
This face you got. This here phizzog you carry around …
He used to give that poem to the kids to recite in the first class of September. It was funny, so it helped them over some of their self-consciousness. Got them thinking of their faces in terms of a mask, too.
You have an ideal actor's mask, Pete.
Sally, his one-time agent.
Perfectly even features. Could be anything.

He must have been slowing down. Lost in thought. Simon has pulled a few steps ahead of him. Pete stops walking altogether. No idea why. It just feels right, like something in an improv.

Why did he agree to this? It all seemed so reasonable over the phone. Simon spoke calmly about the importance of ritual, the need for
closure.
Again that slightly ironic emphasis, letting him know he was aware it was a cliché. Pete was disarmed. Then intrigued. It couldn't hurt. Might even be therapeutic. And yes, he was curious. But now that the two of them have met and they're actually on their way—

Simon is a whole half-block ahead now, unaware that he's been walking alone. As Pete stands watching, the priest says something. Looks to the side. Stops. Turns. Then stands still himself and watches and waits. As if he understands perfectly what Pete is up to.

That makes one of us.

 

Simon has been thinking ahead, unconsciously speeding up. It has just occurred to him that they can't use the sanctuary tonight. Eduardo might notice a light on and come over and catch them. His office, then. Which means he'll have to dismantle the smoke alarm. Damn. He should have thought of that. He should have thought of a lot of things.

“Pete, do you have any experience tinkering with smoke alarms? Pete?”

What's he doing back there? He's such a small man. Boyish. Jutting ears. One of those faces that never get old, for all he must be pushing sixty. By the time he phoned, Simon had given up on hearing from him. Then Gail put the call through to his office. The voice—
Peter Aspinall here—
was deep. Resonant. Conjuring up a tall, craggy type.

Right now, standing all alone on the sidewalk, he looks like a scared kid. Simon can see himself walking slowly toward him. Taking him in his arms. One of those odd, dangerous notions he gets now and then. Completely inappropriate, yet strangely right. Like the first time he met Kelly. When they shook hands, he had to deliberately take his hand out of hers and grip the back of a chair, for fear of just pulling her into his arms.

Okay, Pete
.
Let's stand here and wait. For whatever we're waiting for.

 

Dear Mr. Aspinall,
Simon's letter had begun.

I'm writing to determine if you are the Peter Aspinall who was a student of Miss Alice Vipond at Claredale Public School in 1957. You may have read about Miss Vipond's recent death in the newspapers. A year ago, I conducted a brief correspondence with her, and she mentioned a boy named Peter Aspinall who was absent from school the day of the tragedy.

Your name rang a bell for me. My late wife Ruth took a beginner acting course from a Pete Aspinall a few years ago and spoke very highly of her instructor. I hope you don't mind my writing to you care of the college. I considered e-mailing you through your website, then decided that some things are best not entrusted to the Internet.

The fact is, if you are the Peter Aspinall in question, I would appreciate having a conversation with you concerning Alice Vipond. This would in no way resemble an interview. I'm sure you've been pestered enough recently by reporters. I would not record or publish or make any inappropriate use of anything you told me. However, it would be very helpful for me to have some contact with someone who knew Alice—Miss Vipond as she would have been to you.

I was left somewhat affected by my association with her. The staff of the institution in which she spent most of her life have been thoroughly professional and helpful. You, however, have the advantage of having known her before the fact, if only for a short time when you were very—

 

Pete had stopped reading there. He was tired. The Brian dream had wakened him at three, and he hadn't been able to get back to sleep.

He took the letter over to his paper shredder and stood holding it an inch above the metal teeth. There had been phone calls from two newspapers. A microphone shoved into his face one day when he was leaving the college. Everybody curious to know what it was like to be the survivor. Default survivor, he wanted to correct them. At least that kid who went over the falls in the fifties and lived—there'd been a
Where is he now?
article in the paper a while ago—at least he did
something. What did little Peter Aspinall do?

He could still hear his father on his way out the door that morning.
He's not sick again. You're spoiling him. Turning him into a little fairy. Make him go to school.
Did his father remember saying that? Afterwards? It hadn't sounded like him—the slow, careful use he normally made of words. The way he would answer questions over the counter about something like cough drops—taking the time to describe in detail how relatively effective each kind was, how pleasant or less pleasant to take.

But not that morning.
Little fairy.
Pete remembered ducking under the covers, curling up around his phony stomach­ ache. Wondering if he was already turning into a little fairy. With wings? Like Tinkerbell? Is that what happened if you lied about being sick because you wanted to stay home from school?

The shredder teeth were waiting.

Pete took Simon's letter back to his desk. Finished reading it. Put it face down in his IN box. Where it stayed for six weeks.

 

A week before he wrote the letter, Simon sat listening to a voicemail in his office:

Simon? It's Marylou Meister? You know, from the Philomena Blanding Institute? I guess you got the news about Alice Vipond, one way or another. The papers have been on it, God knows, and we've had all kinds of reporters phoning us here. I'm calling because, frankly, you're the only one from the outside who had anything to do with her toward the end. Well. For the last almost thirty years, actually. Her parents died back in the eighties. And she had no other family, or nobody who wanted to be bothered with her. So your letters were it. Sorry that whole thing ended under a bit of a cloud, but I don't blame you for putting a stop to it. Not one bit. Anyway, I'm rambling on here. We're going to have a short memorial service for Alice in the chapel on Thursday at two. We always do, whenever one of our residents passes on. It's for the family, but even if there is no family, it's good for the staff, too. I mean, you do get to know people, especially somebody like Alice who came here years before a lot of us were even born. And whatever you might think of her, she was a sweet old dear. Always did what she was told, never complained or gave us any trouble. And it could have been different, believe me, what with the level of surveillance we had to impose. For her own safety, as much as anything else. Anyway, Simon, if you can make it to the service, that would be great. There is one thing I have to ask, though. I need you to be very discreet about this. We're breaking the law, technically, by having even a little half-hour thing for Alice. Really. The powers that be made it clear that there would be no service, no marker, no disclosure of her grave site. They can do that, in cases like this. Because the last thing anybody wants is a media circus. Not that she'll be here in person. I had to turn her over to the coroner's office, so they'll dress her and put her in a box, all at taxpayers' expense of course. Then they'll bury her in what used to be called Potter's Field. And nobody will ever know where she is. Just as well. Lot of nutcases out there—worse than any that are in here, believe me—people who would turn her grave into a shrine, or dig her up and sell her on eBay or God knows what. Sorry, Simon. I'm rambling on again. Anyway, do come to the service if you possibly can. And I know I can trust you to keep mum about it. Take care.

Simon couldn't go. He had a wedding that day. He was distracted during the ceremony, came close to ruining it once or twice. Kept wondering in the back of his mind whether he would have driven up to the Institute if he had been free.

As soon as he could decently leave the reception, he got into his car and drove around the city. He had the feeling he was looking for something, but didn't know what. He ended up back at All Saints, in his office, where he opened the bottom drawer of his desk. Alice Vipond's letters were in a paper bag at the back.

He sat holding the package, breathing shallowly. The letters gave off a very faint institutional smell. Stale air with an overlay of chemical freshener.