Sweet Life (5 page)

She pulls the cigarette from her mouth. “Kitty!”

No movement in the whiskers of unclipped grass along the back fence separating her yard from Fred Stone’s. She smells woodsmoke. Too warm for a fireplace; someone nearby must have an outdoor firepit. She imagines a family gathered, the dad telling ghost stories, the kids roasting marshmallows.

She hasn’t been invited to have marshmallows with any of her neighbours. As the last of the street’s original homeowners, she’s seen the area decay and revitalize, become trendy and popular with young people who want to live in old buildings, but don’t want to associate with old ladies. When she passes them on her way to the bus, she tries to be friendly, but they’re too busy hauling their children in and out of vans to do more than nod. The children themselves ride their tricycles around her legs and stare if she says hello. During the summer, she will, on occasion, chat over the fence with the Hackshaws, a middle-aged couple whose only child, a married daughter, lives in Alberta. Polite people, the Hackshaws, but the formal edge to their conversation makes it clear that their friendship won’t hurdle the boards of the five-foot fence.

Fred Stone appears in his yard whenever she runs the mower over the bit of lawn the trees haven’t killed. She can’t ignore his waves or his hackneyed greetings:
Watch out for those mosquitoes, they’re liable to carry you off, ha-ha.

She looks at his back door now, and there’s the man himself, spying at her while wearing nothing but a pair of white boxer shorts. She’s seen him like this several times. How could she not help but see with the light behind him at his screen door, the solid bulge of his gut hanging over the waistband of his underwear?

If only she can shoo him away. Instead, the hand she raises touches the spot above her left breast where a mole, dark as a splat of irregular pigment, spreads toward her collarbone.

She flips the butt into the dirt. “Kit-tee. Stupid cat.”

Mrs. Kravitz turns and walks through the tiny porch, past the metal shelving unit with her winter boots on the bottom and her rubber thongs on top. A cardboard box in the corner holds paperback novels with the titles on top declaring that
The Season Was Love
and
Desire Remembered Her Name.

She carried the box home, one day, from a garage sale. She liked to poke about those types of sales, see what she could pick up cheap, although the main reason she browsed through other people’s junk was the opportunity it gave to drop another
half-hour of the day into her pocket. She didn’t mean to buy the books; she had picked one up to read its title when a tall woman rushed over and said, “Five bucks for the whole box. Good deal, eh?”

Mrs. Kravitz turned to say no. No, she didn’t read this sort of thing, this trash. She preferred mysteries and could get those free at the library. She surprised herself when she reached into her pocket, unfastened the five-dollar bill from its pin and carried the carton home with its top tucked shut.

This happened the week after she noticed the mole, saw it through the haze of steam stuck to the bathroom mirror. A blemish dark as a hole.

She lets the screen door bang behind her. In her yellow and white kitchen, her slippers snap at her heels until she reaches the cigarette pack on the table, takes one out and lights it with a plastic lighter. There’s a heavy glass ashtray heaped with butts, and next to it, a hairnet looking like a discarded bit of fur. A book spread facedown exposes a woman with a white bosom swooning in the arms of a swarthy young man.

Laughter erupts from the television in the next room, but Mrs. Kravitz pays no attention. The TV racket starts at five when she gets up to pee and remains the day’s backdrop until she goes to bed. Its noise holds back the silence threatening, by slow and incremental stealth, to make her small house coffin-sized.

She empties the ashtray into the garbage bag under the sink, takes a couple of bottles from a cupboard, drops onto a chair and fills a water tumbler half full of gin. She adds a quick slosh of ginger ale. “Hello, sweetheart,” she tells the glass, resting it against her cheek.

Ernie would not have approved. During the ten years they were married he didn’t begrudge her the occasional glass of beer or wine, but he drew the line at spirits. After he walked out, she began with a nip or two in the evenings to help her sleep after being deserted and forced to return to teaching. Forced to deal with children needing more discipline than she remembered. By the time she got home each day, she was wrung out. Gin worked best at settling her nerves.

Now Mrs. Kravitz swallows and leans back. She touches the spot where the mole clings beneath the robe and nightgown. “Piss,” she says. “Piss off. Pis-tachio. Italian for pissed. Ha.” She runs her tongue along her lips. “Piss-tol. Aiming to get pissed.”

Because she quit going to the senior’s centre, she no longer has someone with whom to share her wisecracks. She got fed up with the incessant card games, the women shoving photos of their grandchildren at her. Better to be alone.

She’s been mostly alone since Ernie. A few affairs didn’t amount to much, the longest lasting two years and ending when she refused to marry the man. If you don’t marry me, I might move
on, he warned. And she replied, Maybe you should move on. Not because she wanted him to leave her
(she mourned the end of that relationship for a year) but be
cause the implied
or else
gave her an idea of how the future with him could be. Both her sisters scolded her for letting go of her last chance. She didn’t bother telling them how, after Ernie, there couldn’t be any good chances.

Mrs. Kravitz drinks gin and looks at the book. Someone told her once – who? Oh, she doesn’t remember; her memory advances and recedes like waves she saw at White Rock during her only vacation to the coast. A male teacher, likely, who remarked in a sly voice, “Guys I know like it when their wives read romances. Gets them in the mood.”

She’s been in the mood a lot lately. An unsettling dream wakes her and, too restless to sleep, she gets up to pace and smoke and take another nip of gin. In her dreams, Ernie looks as he did a few years into their marriage, after driving the bus hiked his belt to circle his waist like a band round a rubber ball. His hair and eyes were a light brown colour, but his chin whiskers held copper highlights. Intertwined across his knuckles grew fine, pink hairs.

She hasn’t gone to fat like Ernie did long ago. And her sisters, since. Whenever the subject’s come up, though, they claim she owes her trim figure to childlessness. No one says barren
.
Not
to her face.

She and Ernie tried for babies most nights during those first few years, snuggled together beneath a cotton sheet, woolen blanket and white chenille bedspread.

be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the rugged hills

Where did
that
come from? Oh, yeah. Buster. A tickling shiver creeps along the inside of Mrs. Kravitz’s thighs. She shifts her feet beneath the table and sucks her cigarette.

She whispered it their first time together. Buster laughed out loud because she quoted the
Bible
while they did it.
Doing it was what he called those times he took a long lunch
break and met her at the Charleton Hotel. She herself didn’t call it “making love.” She wasn’t surprised when a few months into the affair, Buste
r
called from work and told her it was over.

Fine with me, she said and hung up. She didn’t want the sex; she wanted to get even with Ernie after he walked out, claiming he didn’t love her any more. Walked out after she, bewildered and terrified, trailed after him throughout the house while he took what he wanted. She wept and begged as he stood at the door with his sausage fingers bunched around the handles of two suitcases, his brown eyes level with hers. You’re dried up. Get used to being alone.

Oh, but she showed him. She made sure Ernie found out about Buster, made him wait for the divorce after he shacked up with that prissy-faced girl, all long hair and no boobs. And did he end up with babies? A bevy of children climbing onto his knees? No, he did not. Mr. Smarty Pants. Mr. Shooting Blanks.

Tap-tap
. The wind must’ve picked up, knocking poplar branches against the eavestrough. She told Ernie when he planted the tree that it would grow too close to the house, but oh no, he knew best.

This time, a loud knock. Goosebumps along her arms. She remembers that she left the inside back door open and the screen door unlocked. She grabs the table and hauls herself to her feet. She can rush out the front door and yell for help.

“Mrs. Kravitz, it’s me. Fred Stone.”

She looks about the kitchen in a vague way, like a woman who’s forgotten something. Then she crosses the bathrobe over her chest and firmly ties the belt.

On the other side of the screen door stands her neighbour, wearing an unbuttoned striped shirt and a pair of dark shorts. A vivid spiral of black hair curls around the white flesh of his navel.

“What do you want?” She doesn’t mean to be rude, doesn’t intend to look angry. In defense, she says, “It’s ten o’clock.”

“I saw, uh, heard you call your cat. When I took out the garbage just now I saw a black cat in the alley and figured it could be yours.”

“I wouldn’t have a black cat.”

“Why not?”

“Bad luck.”

Fred Stone grins.

Mrs. Kravitz moves to shut the inside door.

“What’s yours like?”

She stops. “What?”

“Your puss.”

Fred Stone moves in closer and she hears a slight rasp when his shorts rub against the screen. His thick, black hair shines; he must’ve just showered. This is closer than she’s ever been to him before, close enough for her to reach out and, through the tiny holes of the mesh, touch his chest hair.

“Calico.” The word jumps between them. She clears her throat and speaks slower. “You know. Orange and black.” Her tone becomes instructive. “Calicoes are almost always female. Mine is. Yes, that’s what it is, a calico.” Her shoulders relax. She sounds like a reasonable woman.

“Uh-oh. Looks like somebody can use company.” Fred Stone nods toward the kitchen. “They say drinking alone is a bad sign.”

She glances over her shoulder to where the gin bottle sits in plain view. The nerve.

“I’m going to bed now.”

There’s no mistaking the disappointment in his blue eyes. “Sure. Okay. Women like to get their beauty rest. Not that
you
need any.”

A tingle kneads her chest. “Maybe it would be all right. For a few minutes.”

When he puts his hand on the door, she wants to change her mind, but he pushes his way inside. “Sure, sure. I won’t stay long. Just a drink between neighbours, hey? Nothing wrong with that.”

Mrs. Kravitz inhales the musk scent of his aftershave. She decides to keep the inside door open, just in case. In case, what?

Fred Stone raises an arm and gestures as though distributing largesse. “Nice place. Can tell it’s a woman’s joint. Me, I’m a plain guy. No pictures, no cutesy ornaments.”

She sees him notice the hairnet and she pounces, gets it shoved into the pocket of her bathrobe. “I’ll get you a glass.” Her voice squeaks. What’s the matter with her?

Instead of sitting across from her at the table, Fred Stone pulls out the chair to her right. “I can pour my own. You just relax. Wow, nice glass.”

“Steuben crystal. Got four as a wedding gift.”

“First time I drank gin out of crystal.” He mixes his drink half-and-half. “By the way, if you want to smoke, go right ahead. I don’t smoke myself, but I don’t mind other people lighting up. I used to smoke once in a while, especially after s – oops. Nearly forgot I was talking to a lady.” He raises his glass. “A toast.”

They clink glasses. “What are we toasting?” she asks.

“The future.”

“Well, that certainly narrows it down.”

When he laughs, she sees back partials hooked around his incisors. How old is he? She remembers he once mentioned he’d retired early. Did he dye his hair? She quit colouring hers after she retired from teaching at sixty-two, nine years before.

“Mrs. Kravitz, I had no idea you have such a great sense of humour. I bet you’re full of surprises.”

To hide her smile, she reaches for the gin bottle. “Needs freshening.”

He speaks soft and steady from the back of his throat. “Sure,
sure. Top it up. So how come I never seen this cat of yours? I’ve
been here three years and I’ve never seen a calico cat.”

“Three years? My, it doesn’t seem that long since the Morgans moved out.

“Buying up, they said. House in the suburbs with a hot tub. I don’t miss them. Snooty people. Now the Hackshaws. Nice enough, but boring. Go to work, come home and watch TV every night until they go to bed. Don’t go out much except
to church on Sunday, leave at ten thirty-five on the dot.”

Rap music from the television bounces into the kitchen. Fred Stone taps his fingers on the table. Long, smooth fingers. “You know where this music came from? Jamaica. Ever been there?”

She shakes her head. She feels the gin, the warm fizz slinking through her arms. Making her steady. Oh, she’s poised as a cat on a fence.