When I Was Young and In My Prime (12 page)

Had to watch her like a hawk there at the end. She'd put the coffee on with no pot under it and the coffee'd go spurting all over the kitchen. She'd put the milk back in the cupboard under the sink beside the compost bucket and I'd come across it two days later, sour. I remember one day she came out of her bedroom in the morning wearing pantyhose with two bathing suits over them and a dress-shirt of mine over that. She was waving her arms down around her legs saying,
I don't like it so bare down here.
Funny what occurs to you at times like that. Dressing for all her different lives, I thought—pantyhose of a schoolteacher, bathing suits of a lady with a pool in her backyard where all the neighbourhood kids come to swim, borrowed dress shirt of a woman who's just plain confused.
 

I don't know quite why, but that day was the straw that broke my back. I recall steering her to the piano—she could still play with both hands then, and it was the only thing that gave me a break. I pulled out the stool, set the sheet music in front of her, put her hands on the keys at middle C and left her playing so I could rest my head in my hands in the kitchen.

I phoned her one Sunday

she phoned me the next

I phoned her one Sunday

she phoned me the next

I volunteer once or twice a week at the Brant County Crisis Line. When I started Peter said,
Mary, you'll just never learn to say no, will you?
But they'd put a notice in the church bulletin saying they were in need of volunteers, and I thought I should give it a go. It's all confidential of course, I'm not even supposed to tell Peter, but what I can tell you is that there are an awful lot of lonely souls out there. Some of the other volunteers seem to be able to tell right away if a caller is high on drugs, but I must say I have a hard time telling the difference between the drug addicts and the callers who are just plain strange. I always take an egg salad sandwich or a ham and cheese, cut in quarters for a four-hour shift. It helps to pass the time. Some days hardly anyone calls at all.
 

In any case, plenty of the people who call the crisis line aren't really suicidal. Some of them are just simply in over their heads. Sometimes a single mother will call at her wits' end saying that she saw the crisis line number in the lineup at the food bank, and you can hear the baby crying in the background and you can tell from her grammar and her diction what kind of family she comes from, if you take my meaning. Sometimes I positively long to interrupt and say,
We
were,
dear, not we was.
 

And some of the callers are just old. Those are the calls I do best with—I like to think of them as my specialty in a way, although it doesn't work that way of course. There's one old lady who calls every once in a while rather confused—can't remember when garbage day is and can't for the life of her figure out how to find out. Or sometimes she'll call us to find out what day of the week it is. Once she called while I was on shift and she was crying, saying,
I just dropped a vase full of freesia on the kitchen floor. What should I do?
she kept saying,
Help me Martha, I don't know what to do.
She sometimes calls us Martha, so that's what they've christened her in the logbook, Martha, though I pointed out in one of my logbook entries that her name isn't Martha—that's obviously the name of somebody else in her life, so it doesn't really fit to call
her
Martha, if you see what I mean. Well in any case, technically we're not supposed to encourage this kind of call, and some of the other volunteers have tried to make referrals—set her up with local homecare you know—but I don't mind talking to her when she calls. It's nice and satisfying to have some concrete way to be of help sometimes. I always picture her in a kitchen rather like my own, only with a crucifix where our clock is. She must be Catholic.
Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy,
she's always saying.
Lord have mercy,
between every sentence.
 

Of course, there are the times when we get a call from somebody who's actually suicidal. If there's somebody else on shift I'll pass it on to them. They try to always pair up a less experienced volunteer with one who has more experience. Once, though, Marie-Lou Cromwell, who's actually a therapist in real life, called in sick at the last moment and there was no one to replace her, so I was on shift all by myself. I usually take afternoon shifts since I'm retired, and from reading the logbook you get the idea that most of the suicide calls are night shift ones. In any case, this one day when I was all alone, wouldn't you know it, I got a real suicide call. I could tell right away it was serious because the young man's voice was so distant and his silences were so... well, so silent. And long. Oh I can still remember those silences. Gives me a shiver thinking of them. I was trying to juggle so many things at once—trying to remember everything I'd learned in the training about techniques for drawing a person out—what to say, what not to say, and at the same time trying not to remember how in the training my instinct was always to say the exact thing you're not supposed to say, and then trying to remember all the business about making a contract, getting the caller to make you a promise, and at the same time trying to find out where they are so you can send the police, and all the while trying to give them a sense that there's something to live for. Well, for pity's sake. All that and at the same time making sure they know you're really listening because they can tell, you know, and sometimes they'll just hang up on you if your mind is wandering. But then on the other hand trying not to be pushy or say too much because they'll hang up then, too. All that whirling around my head like a blizzard in those silences of his.
 

Well finally, after about four or five silences when I kept thinking he was completely gone and then I'd just manage to fish him back in, he was off again, and, well, I couldn't help myself; I just reached the end of my rope. I sat up straight and said,
Open your curtains.
Just like that.
What?
he said from far away.
Open your curtains. You're in the dark, aren't you?
I said.
How did you know?
he said, closer now.
Just a guess,
I said.
Now what do you say you go and open your curtains and let in a little light. It's a beautiful day out, and we're getting nowhere in the dark,
I told him, and he said,
I'm in a basement apartment, lady.
Just like that.
Well, for Pete's sake there still must be windows,
I said, and he said,
Yeah but they're all dirty.
Just like a child.
Well there's got to be a way to get some light in there,
I said, and he said,
I guess if I open the door to the outside it would give me some light.
And I said,
You go and do that now, but don't hang up. Come back and talk to me again as soon as you're done. Okay,
he said, and I'll tell you I held my breath the whole time he was gone. Finally he came back and picked up the phone and I let out my breath and I could hear him breathing too. After a while I said,
Hi. Hi,
he said, and he started to weep. There, there, I kept saying.
There, there.
 

Well, in any case, apart from a few exceptions I'd say a good number of the callers are just plain lonely, and I don't mind chatting with them, or rather, letting them chat to me. I've occasionally even caught myself thinking wouldn't it be nice to have someone I could call—anonymously, you know—and never have to face the person and just be able to pour my heart out. Though I certainly don't let myself indulge that thought for very long. I'm not that sort of person and when you get right down to it, if you ask me, you take a risk letting yourself go like that—there's no telling whether you're going to be able to get yourself back. It's a slippery slope, as they say. Not that I blame the callers exactly. They're mostly all a little touched. But I do find myself impatient from time to time as a woman goes on and on about her problems and I get an urge to just interrupt, you know, just put an end to her nonsense. Tell her to just buck up.
Just dig deep dear,
I'd like to say.
You just need to decide. Your baby is crying, I can hear it. Stop talking about yourself, hang up the phone and go to your child. Just remember there's always somebody worse off than you are,
that's what I say. Or, at least, that's what I'd like to say, sometimes.

Lois King, UCW, on the tea-pouring incident

Once, before there was any kind of diagnosis, before even any kind of alarm—although who knows what she felt, she never said and, to be honest, it didn't occur to me to ask her until it was too late and she couldn't have said even if she'd wanted to, though I don't suppose she'd have said much, she never was one to complain—well anyway, she was pouring tea, looking right at the cup and spout, her one hand on the lid and, well, she just kept pouring. It was a UCW meeting, I seem to remember. She was chairing of course, but I don't believe she was talking. In fact, I don't think anyone was talking at the time. Or, if they were, they stopped as soon as the cup began to overflow. In fact, I seem to remember it felt like a chain reaction of sorts. The cup filling and beginning to brim, and the hush in the room rising in the same way. I remember thinking it looked lovely, actually, a kind of amber fountain, spilling over the edges of the cup into the saucer, then over the saucer into the tray, steaming. I remember thinking, if only the cup handle weren't there it would look so symmetrical. Now doesn't that just take the cake? You see, the curious thing was that we all just sat there watching her pour and pour until someone, I think it was Eleanor Davies, snapped out of it and said her name. Mary. I remember how gently Eleanor said it. And I remember she looked up and stopped pouring, both at the same time, as if her chin and the spout were attached by a string, like a marionette. Only not from above if you see what I mean.
 

Well. I admit it was awkward then for a moment. As if a spell were broken or a dish or—oh something awkward, I don't know. Eleanor got up, helped her put the teapot down and led her by the elbow through the kitchen into the front room. The rest of us still sitting there. Of course it didn't take long for someone to break the silence, change the subject you know, and then we all gradually started to chat again. I remember we talked about that new bylaw, the one that says cats ought to be put on leashes of all things. None of us referred to the incident, except, when I slipped out to the kitchen with the tray to clean it up a bit, Margaret George followed. She touched me on my forearm with those everlasting cold hands of hers and asked me in a whisper what did I make of it. I didn't have time to answer though, because just then Eleanor and Mary came back in and everything went on as usual. Mind you, I could tell everyone was a little shaken. When you get to be our age, it's all a little too close to home.