Street Symphony (16 page)

What about these unresolved issues, Darren! His excuses had always begun with the word “Look”, and an ominous definite article before “one time” was a hint. But it was the discovery, that December 24, of what, in the old days, would have been a bundle of letters tied with ribbon but what was now an electronic giveaway of tweets and texts. Reading them had shocked her, and opened a dark pit of awareness.

Grief and resentment took over her mind that January. Thoughtfully, Avren made her a manager when she returned to the office. Her job was no different. The change of title was a sympathetic move to get her out of the rabbit warren. She worked with such furious energy at the files, called up dozens of archives for research material, wrote report after report till the boss told her to take a month off – please.

The music ended on a triumphant note of survival and she took the CD out of the player. Was that truly a tap at the door? No. Just the noisy fridge. She wasn’t going to open the door anyway. She wasn’t fit to be seen in this old grey T-shirt and her black shorts, and no one was going to know what she had for her Christmas dinner. She read the label on the cracker box. Sugar and fat in everything. Ninety calories in sixteen of the dry little squares. She’d only eaten about twenty, and three squares of melting blue cheese. She cut the fig on her plate into quarters and sucked on the lush flesh. There was something historic about figs. The sacred fruit of ancient Rome, it wasn’t doing anything for her state of mind, but it did bring a moment of sensual pleasure.

On the front of the cracker box were the words
Picture enlarged to show texture.

Perhaps that was what she was doing as she sat there digging into her sorrow and her feelings of betrayal, searching for texture in the warp and weft, stretching the fabric, looking for colours and flaws and breaks in the pattern. She sat back. Closed her eyes. Thought. In her mind’s eye she saw a cow. A large brown cow called Despair, and she was sitting on a stool milking it. She lifted the heavy bucket to her lips and hit her teeth against the rim. The half-dream died and she came to with an aching tooth and a sense of ending: It was over.

You can’t go on all your life expecting thrills and gifts and rewards and accolades. If there were shares, she’d had hers. Ten really good years with Darren before what she might eventually see as a blip on a screen. The possibility of a moment of wonder and joy? The tap, the foot down the chimney, the return of the sinner. There was absolutely no chance of that.

She picked up her book and found her page in
High Window
. If only some of the people in the office could write about land use and crops and herd migration with Raymond Chandler’s verbal economy. Friends had given her two books about grief, elegies on how to see the world through tears. Neither of them, nor any of the columns she’d read, gave the valuable advice she wanted to share with the bereft: Come home from the hospital and do not tap or click. Extract the SIM card from the cellphone, remove the hard drive from the computer and smash his or her iPad to bits with a hammer. Preserve the memory of her or him whole and uncontaminated like a pear in a jar of syrup.

Posthumous betrayal could eat up your heart and soul and leave no place for life, the counsellor said. But that kindly woman with her comfortable chairs had no idea of the anguish, the one-sided raving argu
ments that, for the first months, had gone on in the night, often ending with a whimpered “I thought you loved me.” The frustration lay in knowing she could never throw a lamp at him and stomp out the door yelling,
I’m leaving you!
And that was the first betrayal: He was the one who had, in his sneaky way, left. Kissing her that morning as he set out for work, shouting over his shoulder that he’d decorate the tree that evening, he went and collapsed at his desk without a word of apology.

“Don’t give up on life,” the books said. Well, she hadn’t. It was only at Christmas, his favourite season, that she replayed the tapes in her mind and indulged in this lonely vigil. “Gleams of joy” had truly become bright lights during the last two years at least. Her curling team was on a winning streak, she had enough money to make the trip to Bhutan, decent men now and then made offers to console her in her widowhood and, at the office, her promotion had long ago been validated.

“Well, Joanne,” she said to the chair at the other side of the fireplace, “you’re gone. Dead or disappeared. Moved back to Australia, or did I say New Zealand? You weren’t really happy here.” Next year, yes, perhaps she would make the feast herself and invite her friends. It was time to let that old spirit back into the house, into her life.
Forgive me
, Darren’s ghost said.
I could’ve been better, could’ve been worse. But I loved. I knew love. What more do you want?

“You’re out of here,” she replied.

The knock at the door startled her and she shrank back. It was too timely, too synchronized with her thoughts. The door opened. She stood up and waited for the apparition, the insistent spirit. Julie and Ted came in shouting, “Merry Christmas!” Julie began to say, “We left the others playing charades. I’ve brought pudding and mince pies and shortbread so we can have dessert with you and J –”

Then they looked at her with “eyes like strange sins”, at the chair with a blue dress draped over it, at the untouched glass of wine, at the plate with a cracker and a piece of cheese on it. Eve sat back down and said, “She cancelled at the last minute.”

Julie said, “You didn’t have to lie.”

And Eve knew that Christmas would always come with great delight and wonder for those who believe. It would come for the greedy and the hungry and the unwilling alike. It was unavoidable. Christmases stretched ahead of her in a long line. Eighty-years old, she sat with Ted and Julie, all of them terribly sprightly for their age, chewing on turkey with their well-preserved teeth, and him putting his hand on her reconstructed hip in the kitchen while they slowly cleared up.

Julie said again, “You didn’t have to lie.”

Oh but I did. Choosing to be solitary at Christmas is seen as a perversion, a sign of depression or worse. It’s simply not allowed if you have friends, relatives, anyone who cares about you at all. Think of their guilt!

“We’d begun to suspect.”

“How did you get in?”

“You gave us a key, remember?”

“Come back with us.”

“Stay,” Eve said.

Julie said, “Okay. l’ll light the candles. You and Ted sort this stuff out.”

Arranging the tarts and cookies on a plate, tasting the sweet richness of the pudding, she felt Ted’s hand on her shoulder, his Merlot breath on her cheek, and thought perhaps she had been right to opt out of the Great Season. On this day next year, maybe she’d help serve dinner at the shelter and then take off again for the place called
elsewhere
.

“You’re an idiot,” Ted said.

She let that stand as an explanation for the bare tree and the cousinly figment. She wasn’t going to betray Darren to anyone, ever. There was no good revenge in this scenario. Her friends hugged her when they were leaving. Eve thanked them for their kindness and their love, and said she was fine, just fine. Then she stood by the fireplace and looked at the fragile golden balls on the mantel. Darren’s grinning face was no longer reflected there, but in case it planned to return, she smashed them one by one with his granny’s toasting fork.

The Companion’s Tale

Shireen walked towards the baggage carousel
and let Ms Conrad’s words pursue her like stones.

“Stupid, stupid bitch. You abandoned my mother. You left her alone. She’s nearly ninety! They called me from Vancouver. And now I have to get over there. For Christ’s sake, Shy-reen. She’s paying you to travel with her. To travel
with
her!”

It’s not enough. Was never enough! There isn’t the money.

Mrs. Van Klees’s largest suitcase appeared. Shireen waited for it and then hefted it off the conveyor. It hurt her back once again.

“It was not my fault,” she said. “They made her get off the plane because she wouldn’t pay for oxygen and they wouldn’t take the responsibility for her without it.”

“You were responsible for Christ’s sake. You, Shy–reen!”

People were staring at them.

Ms C stopped yelling and said, ”Well look, here’s the address of the hotel.” Then,
fortissimo
, “But for Christ’s sake, I do not understand. You could have come on the ferry instead.”

They were a bossy, yelling family, the Van Kleeses. They added to all the unpleasant noise in the world. Mrs. VK had been yelling at the flight attendant till a woman in an airline uniform came into the cabin and told her she had to wear an oxygen mask or deplane. So off the old lady went, huffing and puffing and trying to complain though her voice was tired now, croaky like a crow’s. Shireen had got up to follow, but the door had closed and the plane at last rolled along the runway and took off for Victoria.

“There’s the other one.” Shireen took the smaller, expensive green leather suitcase and put it on the cart with its mate.

“You go out there and get a cab. Take everything to the hotel, the Bestway on Waterfront, and we’ll sort this out when I get back.”

“I have luggage too,” Shireen said, hanging on to dignity as best she could. She was determined to tread the high road and wished her shoes were more comfortable.

“Urrrrgh.” With a growl, Ursula Conrad née Van Klees click-clacked off on her heels towards Security and Vancouver.

Brought her over on the ferry indeed! As if the old lady would have allowed Shireen to change the set plans. As if Shireen knew where the ferry was. She’d had misgivings about accompanying Dora Van Klees all the way from South Africa to British Columbia via London, but she’d coped so far by being patient and holding her tongue, and had failed only in this last and shortest lap.
It will be the trip of a lifetime for you. And you’ll maybe get a chance to go home to North Bay.
That’s what Miriam and Jimmy had said after the fire and the problem with the insurance company. They made it sound as though she needed to leave the country for a while. And there was a bit of truth in that. But her chances of getting across Canada to Ontario were slim to zero at the moment.

The “trip of a lifetime” had so far been a pattern of “Where’s my medication?” “Where are you?” “Where’s my green jacket?” The week in London, to which Shireen had looked forward so much, had passed by in a stream of visits to the homes of Van Klees relatives and friends. She’d seen the Palace and the parks and the Houses of Parliament and once the Tower, all from the back-seat windows of various cars. Kindly, she was included in all the plans, but she’d recognized this “kindness” as a way of ensuring that Mrs. VK was no one’s problem but hers.

One afternoon, her employer had said, “If you want to wander round, Shireen, off you go. But be back by five for my injection.”

Too tired to go far, she sat in Hyde Park and watched boats and ducks on the pond and then went to the Orangery for a quiet cup of coffee and a cake, pondering as she stuck her fork into the creamy bun whether she should have known better than to accept the job. Pandering to the wealthy had been all very well, a necessity even, in the days of genteel old maids and elderly daughters of indigent vicars. She was none of those, simply the friend of a cousin of a cousin who’d worked for Dora VK in the past and said she was a sweetie pie and needed a travelling companion. On a Saturday at home, a fine Saturday, she would have… No, in fact, she wouldn’t have cleaned her apartment because it no longer existed. She shuddered when she thought of the charred remains of her life. Camping out with Miriam and her husband had been okay till Jimmy seemed to take a fancy to her, perhaps preferring her rounder shape to Miriam’s skinny body.
Running away again, Shireen?
That was her mother’s voice. And at the back of Shireen’s mind was the thought that should the frail old lady die here, she might stay in Canada, find a job and look for the man she’d left behind seven years ago.

“Here you are,” the driver said, pulling into the driveway of the hotel. Mrs. VK was to stay at the Conrads’ house, and this then was the servants’ quarters. It could be all right. Through the lobby window, she watched a float plane glide along the surface of the sea and then heard the roar as it rose up into the air.

So she was here, back home in the country she’d left in a mad desire to go far, far away from
him
and her sister and everything to do with them. And the money was hers by right, as they well knew. The cottage was likely still there. And the farm. Just two or three thousand miles from here, over the mountains, across the prairies, a hop, skip and jump. She sighed for the beauty of those childhood summers. Mother baking muffins, making pancakes. Mother telling her always to do the right thing. Mother’s ashes scattered on the lake.

“Madam. Madam?”

“Sorry. It’s been a long day – night. I came from London.”

“We have a room for you. It’s ready now if you’d like to go up,” the smart young man behind the counter said, smiling as he gave her the plastic key card and asked if she needed help with the luggage.

She wasn’t sure whether to take the green bags up to her room or leave them in the charge of the concierge. She decided to keep them with her; she’d lost their owner, better hang on to the stuff. The room was small but looked out on a scene from a calendar: red kayak, pale water, white sails, blue ferry bringing people most likely from Seattle. She waved to the seagulls and said, “I am free too.” Free for a couple of hours at least. She felt the bed and turned on the TV. It would be all right. The family would help with their mother/grandmother. The big celebration would go ahead. And like Cinderella, Shireen too would go to the ball. Caught up in preparations, they would forget that she’d left the old lady behind. Besides, it hadn’t occurred to Ms Bloody Conrad, when she was shouting her fool head off for all to hear in the airport, that security required a person to travel with her checked-in luggage. And that checked-in luggage contained the wedding gift.
I was guarding the treasure.