Sweet Life (6 page)

“I been once. Honeymoon. Me and the missus had a great time. Beautiful beaches, white sand. I wanted to go back. I said, Shirley, we gotta go back to Jamaica for our tenth anniversary.
And we would of, too, if she hadn’t left me right after our sixth.”

“Any children?”

“Naw. Just as well. I’d have made a lousy father. Drove truck all the time. Never home.”

“I’m divorced, too.” Now why did she tell him? It’s none of his business.

“Hey, turns out we got something in common.”

She sniffs. “Lots of people divorce. Almost half, nowadays. I saw it on TV.”

The music from the TV changes to a tinny, panicking kind of rhythm. Mrs. Kravitz reaches again for the gin bottle, but Fred Stone beats her to it. “Here, let me. Say when.”

“Soon.”

He looks at her, brows raised.

What? Her shoulders and neck are warm. “Joke. My husband and I.” She wants to crawl under the table. She wants Fred Stone to leave. She doesn’t want to drink with him any more, and reaches to cover the glass with her hand. Too late. The gin rises like a white tide, threatens to overflow and flood the room.

When she sees she’s scratched his hand with a fingernail, she says, “Oh, I’m sorry.”

He looks at the white mark. “Call an ambulance.”

Really, Fred Stone is a charming man. What on earth’s the matter with her? She will have a bit more to drink and then hint for him to leave. Tell him, if she has to.

“Why’d you split?”

“My husband.” Again, her voice squeaks. When she lowers it, she sounds conspiratorial. “My husband took up with a younger woman. I went back to teaching and he moved to the States. End of story.”

“Teacher, huh. That explains it. First time you spoke to me, I said, Fred, there’s an educated woman. I could tell by the way you talked, everything all grammatical. You sound nice, too, not like some women. Take my wife, Edith. Oh, she had a mouth on her, that one.”

“I thought your ex-wife’s name was Shirley.”

“Edith was my second. And my last.”

“Making Shirley, your first wife, second last.”

Fred Stone’s eyes narrow, as though judging distance. She shivers. What’s the expression? Something about something walking across your grave. She reaches for a cigarette. Fred Stone lunges for the lighter. Isn’t this a scene from the
movies? Bogart, leaning forward, touches the inside of Bacall’s
wrist while she draws on her cigarette. Mrs. Kravitz glances over Fred Stone’s head at the clock. Ten-thirty. Past her bedtime.

Long past all her bedtimes.

She raises her glass. “Pist-achio.” She watches Fred Stone’s face. “That’s Italian for getting pissed.”

“Where’d you learn Italian?”

She laughs, releases a quick sputter of smoke and shakes her head. “No, no, it’s a joke.”

“Oh, yeah. I get it.”

She sees he doesn’t. She pats one of his smooth hands. “That’s okay.” His glass is still full. Or did he finish it and pour another? She’s come to the favourite part of drinking when all sharp edges become dull, all dark surfaces disappear into mist.

She nods at Fred Stone’s glass. “So you gonna drink that thing or what?”

His lips twitch. He lifts the glass and takes a long swallow. Mrs. Kravitz watches his Adam’s apple move. When he smacks the empty glass onto the table the sound ricochets like a starting pistol.

“I may be dying.” Tears brim her eyes. She draws aside her robe and nightgown, looks down at the mole. “I think it’s melanoma.”

She looks up, again. The tip of Fred Stone’s tongue touches his top lip in a speculative movement, as though tasting the air. “Had it looked at?”

She shakes her head and is about to add, I’m too afraid, when the expression on his face stops her. He isn’t looking at the black spot near her collarbone; he’s staring at her half-exposed breast. A lascivious stare – large, direct and unmistakable.

From the television a male voice croons something about flying. Mrs. Kravitz closes her eyes, drops her hands onto her lap. She wants to raise her arms, arch her back and float to the moon. In a single languid motion, she lifts and stretches her legs beneath the table. Her calf brushes Fred Stone’s bare knees.

Even with her eyes closed, she sees him watch, brown eyes alert. There’s his open shirt where his chest hair descends to the steep inclination of his stomach before it disappears behind
the belt buckle. She sees, too, his curved hands waiting, the fine hairs along his knuckles glistening misty pink. Although calloused from years of driving the bus, his palms against her skin will be smooth.

Imp
act

Naomi, Carol and Rod follow a nurse named Gaston
into the Intensive Care Unit. Doctors and nurses speak in hushed voices, glide on soft soles between the beds like the holograph ghosts Naomi once saw at Disneyland. This room, with its pale-eyed monitors and electronic beeping, is more fantastic.

Gaston stops at a narrow bed where a woman is fixed to rubber tubes. A ventilator stretches her lips into a macabre grimace; purple bruises shade her closed eyes. Her arms, sprawled on the covers, are spotted by yellow and green effusions. She lies on a bed of suffering in a room of suffering.

Naomi waits for Carol to weep. This is how she handles serious problems no matter how often Naomi reminds her that tears can’t change a thing. But Carol has a temper and will tell Naomi to quit acting like Sister Superior.

“It’s not a question of superiority; it’s a question of perspective.”

But reason is lost on someone as emotional as Carol.

Now Rod moves close to the bed, his arms straight. Fists clenched. When they were kids, it was Naomi who defended him at school, fought any boy who called him Rod the Runt. Two years later, his nickname changed to Rod the Rooster, and she no longer had to fight for him.

Go on, Rooster. Beat off whatever wants to take Mom.

After only a minute, Gaston asks them to follow him from the Intensive Care Unit. Like children facing punishment, they huddle together while he lists their mother’s injuries in a noncommittal voice. As though a smashed woman is an everyday occurrence.

Clot on the brain, ruptured bladder, a dozen broken bones, internal haemorrhaging. He tells them the ICU waiting room is at the other end of the hall and they move toward it. When Naomi hears someone inside the room, she points right. “Let’s just walk.”

Their grey shadows lurch against the putty-coloured walls. They approach a long bank of windows where the dark glass reflects their dazed faces.

Naomi once read a newspaper article about birds, how lights shining from the windows of high-rises blind the birds. They fly into the glass and, stunned or with necks broken, they drop to the pavement below.

“We’re killing the birds.”

Rod and Carol stop.

“What?” Rod says.

Naomi fumbles in her pocket for a tissue. “Nothing.”

They move forward again, Carol linking arms with Rod. The two of them stick together because they were conceived by Mom’s second husband, Gerald the Jerk. During family disagreements, they gang up on Naomi. But they don’t know how to reason. They make decisions based on how they feel, which is why they have such difficulty solving their problems.

Carol puts her hand inside the pocket of her oversized cotton shirt and takes out a tissue. She started wearing baggy clothing after her third baby, even though Naomi mentioned several times how loose clothes make a person look bigger. Carol doesn’t get stylish haircuts either, yanks her hair back into ponytails.

Naomi has kept herself in shape by working out. She also makes regular visits to an expensive salon and shops often to keep her wardrobe up-to-date. People need to know who they’re dealing with, especially the parents of her grade six class. Carol, a stay-at-home mom, doesn’t value Naomi’s advice about fashion. Religious people often behave as though being a slob has some kind of redeeming value.

It was Carol who insisted Naomi stop the car during the six-hour drive so she could pray aloud. She crossed herself and quietly asked God to heal their mother and help the three of them be strong.

If there is a God, and Naomi certainly has her doubts on that score, why would He let a sixty-eight-year-old woman who was on her way to the hairdresser for her semi-annual perm get knocked down in the street like she was somebody’s dog?

When Naomi asked this question, Carol’s answer made no sense: “Naomi, you don’t understand faith.”

Rod, of course, doesn’t ask questions and ignores Carol when she talks religion. He’s a long-haul trucker, and Naomi’s been told he travels with cases of beer and a sawed-off baseball bat. He’s heard Carol’s lectures several times, about how drinking is a sin and he should know better; look at what alcohol did to their father.

And now their mother, the woman Gerald the Jerk used as a punching bag, is lying in a coma.

They walk past the elevators and washrooms, around another corner, and they’re back at ICU. Naomi could press
the intercom buzzer. Ask Gaston about their mother’s X-rays
. Instead she makes an abrupt turn and once again heads for the waiting room.

This time there’s no one there. The room smells of salt and grease. Fast-food wrappers fill the garbage container.

Naomi instructs her students on the importance of proper diet, but it’s no use. At home, they cram their silly faces with hamburgers and pizzas. Instead of getting outside to play, they waste time in front of the television. Why don’t their parents have any sense? If Naomi had children, she’d feed them nutritious meals. Provide the wholesome entertainment and exercise necessary to create strong minds and strong bodies.

But Naomi has no husband and no children. Just Carol and Rod, who are, of course, not her children. Look at Carol now. Kicking off her sandals and falling into a chair like she would in her own living room and not in some God-forsaken hospital where no one has the sense to choose proper colours for a room where upset people have to
wait for news about their mothers who could be dying,
for God’s sake
.

Naomi takes a breath. There’s a drink machine in the corner and she heads for it. She’d the foresight to drop money into the pockets of her linen slacks and leave her purse in the trunk of the car. Inside the purse are a phone, a pen and notebook, ID, a credit card and makeup. Wherever she goes, she travels prepared. She can handle anything. Rod and Carol depend on her, and she will not let them down.

She counts out some change, drops the coins into the machine. Each time a coin clacks its way downward, she flinches. When she sits on the couch, coffee spills onto her thumb. Must not be hot, because she barely feels it. Her limbs settle, degree by degree. Like sticks tossed into setting concrete.

Rod quits prowling the room and stops next to her, his hands tucked into his jeans pockets. “Are you okay? You look kind of funny.”

“I’m surprised you can fit your fingers inside those pockets.” If she stays calm, he’ll stay calm. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all tight.”

She looks at her watch. Midnight. A new day will begin in exactly...forty-five seconds. In a few hours, a new dawn full of light. And Gaston will wheel Mom out of the ICU.
There’s been a mistake,
he’ll say.
She’s fine; take her home.

Rod leans over Carol and they whisper. What are they up to, now?

“Hey, you two. I can’t hear the loudspeaker.” Naomi holds her breath. Anticipates her own name. But a woman’s steady voice announces a code-blue alert. “What? What does she mean?”

Carol gets up and sits next to Naomi on the couch. “You look exhausted. I don’t know why you insisted on driving all the way yourself. Why don’t you have a nap?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Rest your eyes, then. Lie down and stretch out. There’s plenty of room.” Carol takes Naomi’s cup.

“There’s no way I’ll fall asleep.” But, to keep Carol happy, Naomi does close her eyes.

~

When she opens them,
she sits up and looks around. No Rod or Carol. She gets up, jerks forward. Robot woman. The hallway’s deserted. She heads to the bank of windows and peers through the glass. Beyond the pale pouch of her face are the distant, intermittent spots of lights pocking the sides of a high-rise building.

The washroom next to the elevators is disgusting. Dirt on the baseboard, water spots over the mirror, grey filth in the sink. What kind of slob tossed a used paper towel on the floor? Not until Naomi picks it up does she notice the fine smear of blood across the white weave.

She pumps the soap dispenser, beats at it with the palm of her hand. It takes a long time to get the water hot enough to scrub her arms. Over and over she scrapes a paper towel across her skin.

In the hallway once again, she waits, certain there will be another announcement.

Nothing. She rushes around the corner, all the way to the ICU. No one. She is alone. Cut off from the world by four hospital corridors.

Back to the waiting room. How could those two leave her alone in the middle of the night? Some protector, Rod. Some Christian, Carol. But when she enters the waiting room, there they are. On the couch.