The Empty Room (25 page)

“It doesn’t have to be that way, does it? We’re not just all locked into suffering, are we? No matter what the French say.”

Helen chuckled. “Ah, oui, les French, who believe all life is tragic
and if you don’t understand that, you’re an idiot. I respect them for it. I think I have a French soul.”

“I’ve decided mine may be Russian.” Pretty little Russian fairy, wearing that fetching wolf-fur hat, waiting for her back in her apartment. “They believe in suffering as well. Tolstoy and all that.” This was the best sort of conversation to have with Helen—something philosophical. God, that smell again. Colleen held the wineglass under her nose, pretending to inhale the bouquet.

“You’d never make a Russian.”

“Why not?”

“All that queuing for bread. You have no patience.”

This was also true, but Colleen didn’t like Helen saying it. She scanned the room. The cheap carpet, cheap furniture. Those hideous porcelain ducks forever flying along the wall leading to the bedroom. All those photos of sunsets and sunrises Helen would never see because she never left the basement.

“Perhaps you have too much patience,” she said.

“I think you’re right. I put up with entirely too much. You’re lucky,” said Helen. “You don’t have to worry about money at least. I’m existing on scraps. Thank God for Old Age Security or I’d be out on the street.”

“What do you mean I don’t have to worry about money?”

“You’ve got your mother’s money.”

“That’s for her care.”

“Don’t play noble with me. She owes you, Colleen, and you know it. She’s in the nursing home and that’s mostly paid for by
the province. You only have to pay, what, a couple of hundred a month?”

“Nearly a thousand.” Colleen kept a finger under her nose. How could Helen not notice that smell? Maybe something had rotted. Surely that was it. Colleen came over once a week and took Helen’s garbage out to the street for her. She couldn’t remember if she’d been by last week, or if it was the week before. She’d have to take it out tonight. This was unbearable.

“You sold her condo, so you’ve got a few hundred thousand in the bank,” Helen was saying, “and she’s not going to live much longer. You’ve got more than enough to live on yourself until your pension kicks in.”

Pension
. That wasn’t for years and years yet. How old did Helen think she was?

“Don’t look at me like that; it’ll be upon you before you know it. A girl can live on it, if you don’t squander your inheritance and if you don’t drink it all up in the first year.”

“Very funny,” said Colleen. Her glass was empty. She got up and poured herself another. Why not, it was her bottle, after all. But this visit wasn’t going as planned. She glanced at Helen, who was watching the television—a shampoo commercial—even though the sound was off.

Helen had shown her a photo album once, all these pictures of Helen as a young woman—slender and like something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Helen on horseback. Helen with several handsome young men, one in a U.S. Marine uniform. Helen in the
garden. Helen and some girlfriends in London, Paris and Rome. The photos stopped abruptly when Helen was in her late thirties. There had been some tragedy of which Helen refused to speak. And now … this. A basement apartment. A cat. Her only contact with the outside world through delivery people and Colleen, and a niece named Janet who came by once in a blue moon.

Colleen carried the bottle back and set it on the coffee table. “You want some more?”

“Half glass.”

Colleen filled Helen’s glass. “Helen, I don’t mean to be rude, but—” And then a terrible thought. “Where’s Minoche?”

“Now you ask. I’m surprised.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Why?”

Colleen put her glass down. “You don’t know? Well, was it today, yesterday, the day before? I’m sorry, but something smells pretty awful in here.”

Helen’s features screwed up tight, the way they did when Colleen suggested she try walking outside for just a minute, just down to the edge of the driveway, just halfway down the driveway. “I didn’t ask you to come over,” she said.

“I’m not criticizing you.”

“Yes, you are. You think I’m dirty. You think I’m a crazy old lady who never bathes and eats cat food and one day you’ll come in here and find my swollen body lying on the bathroom floor.”

Helen stood, picked up the wine bottle and tromped to the
kitchen area. She wore slippers with no backs and the sight of her cracked, thickly callused yellow feet was stomach turning.

“What are you talking about? I didn’t say anything like that. But you can’t tell me you don’t smell that, whatever the hell it is?”

“I don’t smell anything unusual.” Helen poured herself another half glass of wine and knocked it back in one gulp before slamming the cork back in the bottle with the heel of her hand. She put it in the refrigerator.

Fuck her, thought Colleen. That’s my bottle of wine. She thinks I’m leaving it here, she’s crazy. “I’m going to use the bathroom.”

Colleen walked down the hall and, just as she feared, the smell got worse the nearer she got to the bedroom. She had never been in Helen’s bedroom and didn’t want to go there now. She wanted to go home. This was what always happened: she felt locked in the apartment, alone while all the rest of the world was at a party to which she wasn’t invited, but when she did go out, conversations twisted round like snakes eating their own tails and she got panicky and wanted to be alone again. Is that how the agoraphobia started for Helen?

The wine wasn’t working. She felt lightheaded, but there had been none of the chattiness, none of the lubricated conversation she so craved. Instead she felt thick-tongued, and her head hurt, right at the base of her skull, and the pain radiated up over her head to behind her right eye. Maybe whatever was causing that smell was toxic.

In the bathroom the kitty-litter box stood between the toilet and
the bathtub. It was full of feces, and clumped with dried urine, the fumes positively wavering in the air above it, acrid and sharp. That might have contributed to what Colleen smelled in the living room, but it wasn’t the smell; in fact it masked it somewhat. Colleen peed and washed her hands, letting the cold water run over her wrists. Her head pounded, and she patted water onto her temples and the back of her neck.

When she came out of the bathroom she turned right and headed for the bedroom despite her apprehension; whatever the smell was, it emanated from there. The bedroom was tiny and painted yellow. A double bed with a white and grey coverlet was pushed into the corner and pink curtains hung from a small window high on the wall. Another curtain, this one a yellow shower curtain, hung in front of a closet. The smell was thickest here. There was no doubt: whatever it was, was in here. Minoche wasn’t anywhere to be seen—unless she was under the bed. Colleen bent down and looked, her heart in her throat. A fair amount of dust and one sock, but no cat.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Helen stood in the doorway, holding onto the jamb with both hands. She was shaking and pale with fury.

“I was looking for Minoche. That’s all, Helen, I wasn’t snooping. I just wanted to see Minoche.”

“Well you can’t, okay, you can’t, nobody can see her anymore—you’re not the only person with problems, you know.” And with that Helen sank to the floor and began blubbering. “You’re not the
only one in the world with a broken heart and no one at all to care about her. That cat loves me. She loves me.”

Colleen knelt down next to her. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” She patted her friend’s shoulder. “Where is she? Where did she go?”

Helen pulled a wad of Kleenex from her sleeve. She rubbed her eyes and blew her nose. She pointed to the closet.

“Can I look?” asked Colleen.

Helen nodded and went on crying. Colleen was, as always in a moment of crisis, calm and sure of her competence. Even as a child Colleen knew that no matter what happened, it was best not to become too emotional when someone else was breaking down. (The pull to join them was often great, however, because it would be a kind of relief to be the one other people had to deal with instead of the one having to do the dealing.) And so now, with Helen dissolving into puddles and what was clearly something revolting behind curtain number one, Colleen steeled herself and strode to the closet.
Remember the Alamo. On Dornner and Blitzen. Into the Valley of Death
… It was possible she was drunker than she thought.

When she pulled aside the shower curtain Colleen found Minoche’s red velvet bed on the floor by a pile of shoes, and on the bed was a cat-shaped form in a blue pillowcase. Rust-coloured seepage stained the cloth. The smell was pungent and eye-watering.

“Okay, okay,” said Colleen. She went back to Helen. “Let’s get you up, come on.” Helen was heavy and it was hard to pull her to her feet, but they managed to move her so she sat on the bed.

“I’m so sorry, Helen.”

Through a slurry of snot and tears Helen said, “I just woke up in the morning and there she was, dead. Poor little kitten. Poor little Minoche. I should have taken her to the vet.”

“You weren’t to know.” Colleen was not entirely sure Helen would have taken her to the vet even if she had known. No matter how sick poor Minoche had been, it was unlikely Helen would have made it out the door. “You could have called me, though, if there was a problem. I would have taken her.”

“What are you talking about? I did call you.”

“No—”

“Of course I did. I called you last week.” Helen stood up and pushed past Colleen. She went to the closet and squatted next to the corpse. “I tried for two hours to get through to you, but the phone was always busy, and when I did finally get you, you were too drunk. I could tell. Spouting some crap about how you were going to go off to Tunisia and walk the desert alone in search of your soul like Melville did. You weren’t any good to me then.” She turned, dabbed at her nose and glared at Colleen. “And you aren’t much good now.”

Colleen did not remember the phone call. She did remember reading about Herman Melville and how he sought relief from his depression by long sojourns in the desert wilderness outside Jerusalem. It had sounded attractive when she read it; it still did.

“If it wasn’t for you,” Helen said, “Minoche would still be alive.” She burst into tears again.

“Well, wait a minute,” said Colleen, but then she stopped. It would
be easy to say it wasn’t her fault—she wasn’t the one who couldn’t leave this
oubliette
, who would rather let her beloved cat die than step into the open air—but she couldn’t. Helen was a wretch and Colleen understood wretchedness. She understood the impossibility of stepping over the wreckage of your own life to get to something better. “Minoche can’t stay here, Helen. You know that, right? So, would you let me take care of her?”

“You’ll just throw her in the garbage.”

“No, I won’t. I promise. I’ll wrap her up in some plastic and I’ll take her to the twenty-four-hour vet up on the Danforth. They’ll take her and see she’s properly … They’ll take care of her. You can’t keep her here.”

Helen sank into the considerable bulk of herself as if a balloon inside had collapsed. “I know. I know. My landlord’s been complaining. Threatening to come down with the Health Department. Accused me of hoarding.” She let out a juddering sigh. “Promise me you won’t just throw her away. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Helen buried her head in her hands. “Do what you have to.”

“Come back out to the living room and let me handle it, then, okay?”

Helen stood and walked down the hall with Colleen following, breathing through her open mouth. She could taste the decay on her tongue. She took the bottle out of the fridge, uncorked it and poured herself a full glass. She drank half of it. There wasn’t much left and after considering what she had to do, she finished it off.

While Helen sat on the couch, crying again, Colleen found a garbage bag and went back to the bedroom. It was a horrible task. She gagged several times, swallowing repeatedly to keep from being sick. When the cat’s liquefying body was safely in the plastic bag, Colleen washed her hands under water so hot they remained red for minutes afterward.

Minoche had been about eight years old. The cat, Colleen realized, had spent its entire life in this basement. Chasing centipedes and spiders had been its greatest joy. Colleen wondered if it might not have committed suicide. Insects would take over the place now.

By the time she came back to the living room carrying the bag as gently as she could, cradling it and not letting it hang at the end of her arm like so much trash, Helen had pulled a coverlet up to her chin and was curled in the corner of the couch. The television sound was back on. A doctor holding a cane in one hand and a clipboard in the other told a patient, “I like you better now that you’re dying.” Helen looked away from the screen and when she saw the bag she moaned. There was such pain in the sound that Colleen felt a stab in her chest. It was just a cat, just a fluffy grey cat with a bad habit of trying to climb up your leg, but when you had so little, such a loss was great.

“Do you want me to stay with you for a while longer?”

“No. I don’t. Just take her and go, will you?”

Colleen set the bag down on the floor while she put her coat on. Helen didn’t move to help her, or even look at her. “I’ll take good care of her, Helen, and I’ll check on you tomorrow.”

She was halfway up the stairs when Helen called out to her. “You should have been there when I needed you, when Minoche needed you.”

The words were scalding, and although Colleen did not deny the truth in them, nor her own self-loathing, something in her rebelled. Was Helen responsible for nothing? “I’ve said I was sorry.”

“Go home, Colleen. Thanks for taking care of her body. We’ll leave it at that.”

It was tempting to leave the cat’s body on the stairs. Then what would the old recluse do? As Colleen walked toward the street she wondered what the hell she should do with the carcass. She wasn’t about to take a bus to the subway and then make the long journey over to the Danforth, and she wasn’t going to pay for a cab either. When she’d walked far enough from Helen’s low window that if the woman stood on a stool to look after her she wouldn’t be able to see her, Colleen shifted her burden and let the bag dangle. Now what? The night was cold as iced steel and the stars were bright, distant and utterly disinterested. No one had their garbage cans out, which left only one solution.