Loose Change
Barb is crouched in her bedroom closet when she hears the front door open. Janelle calls up, “Mum?” and Barb immediately wonders what Janelle will be wearing. If it’s dress pants, then she’s only popping in on her way to the clinic. If it’s jeans, then Barb has her for the day. She can’t decide which would be better. She can tell by the sharpness of the edge in Janelle’s voice that her daughter is already annoyed, like she’s come prepared for Barb to do something stupid. That’s their routine — Janelle finding ways to remind Barb that she (the daughter) is the smarter one.
Barb has been counting pennies. She is at 664. When she gets to 700, she will call back down.
“Mum?”
Now Janelle’s voice is more urgent. Perhaps even concerned? But Barb is afraid of losing her place. There must be at least five boxes filled with pennies in her closet. She already found two quarters and six nickels in the first box. Janelle is running up the stairs now because Barb hasn’t answered. She knows it’s not fair to make Janelle worried, but this is the push/pull of their lifelong power struggle. And Barb has to exert some control at the beginning of their visits because she always loses her grasp by the end. She sits back and counts Janelle’s steps, the pounding up the stairs. The barometric rise in her daughter’s panic. Janelle’s panic reminds Barb of a sudden summer storm coming out of nowhere, like the time Kevin screamed for Barb from the basement. Mild-mannered Kevin who tried to wake the dead.
“For God’s sake, Mum! What are you doing?”
Barb looks up. She’s hunched over. Her shoulders hurt from not moving. She twists her neck slowly to turn her face toward her daughter. Janelle is pale, the lines between her eyebrows pronounced. She’s wearing her black dress pants that Barb told her ages ago were too big.
“I didn’t want to lose count,” Barb tells her.
“You were supposed to have his clothes ready for me.”
“I haven’t done his suits, or the drawers. I need to do the drawers.”
Janelle exhales. “And you haven’t because . . . ?”
“Don’t be smart with me,” Barb says, but she knows from the floor she doesn’t look nearly as stern as she wants to, especially cross-legged, surrounded by pennies.
“Do you have to do this now?” Janelle asks. It’s the same tone Barb has heard her use with her boys when they start Lego projects just before bed. Barb tries not to smirk the way she’s seen them do when they know they’ve outsmarted their mother.
She moves onto her knees, knocking over her latest tower of ten coins. She says, “Shit,” and Janelle says, “Honestly.”
Barb’s knees burn as she rises. She looks down so that she doesn’t disturb any more of the pennies as she tiptoes out of the closet. They even remind her of the boys’ Lego cities, mini towers like high rises, like the outline of the Toronto skyline, but this time glimmering copper. She wants to say to Janelle, But look what I made!
Janelle says, “I told you to have everything ready for me in bags by your bedroom door.”
“So come back later.”
“I am. With Natasha. She’s good at what she does, but she can’t stage the house unless you get it ready first.”
“I’m not the one in the rush,” Barb says. Seven hundred pennies and that’s just a dent in the first box. She hasn’t even looked in the others. What if Charlie arranged them by value? What if the last one is full of loonies and toonies?
Janelle grabs the bag of shoes. She’s pouting. She always juts her chin out when she’s losing an argument. Her chin and her flared nostrils. Charlie used to joke she was like an animal in the wild, always on guard.
Janelle says, “Just hide the bags from Natasha. Maybe in the closet. I’ll take them when we’re done.”
“It’s not that I can’t let this stuff go,” Barb says, but Janelle is already heading down the stairs, the bag of shoes bumping down each step, like not just one but a hundred people running out the door.
* * *
Two summers ago, Barb and Charlie took The Canadian out west. It was supposed to be their first of many retirement trips. She found him one night, sitting in the lounge car for the sleeper-class passengers at the back of the train. Plush booth seating was on either side of the car, facing the centre so that groups of people could congregate. But Charlie was by himself. There were windows all around, but they were riding through the Saskatchewan prairie, so everything was deep black. Except for the moon, which hung high in the sky like a lone but dim light bulb. Charlie stretched his arm over the back of the seat. He stared past his hand, out the back window, like he had forgotten something. She very rarely saw her husband lost in thought. Charlie was always moving forward, purposeful. She caught her breath at the sight of his vulnerability. She was surprised, even then, at how much she loved him.
Barb wore only her nightgown. The air conditioning blew up her legs. She stood with her knees pressed together because she didn’t have underwear on. Even though no one could tell, she still felt indecent, all that cold air blowing up to her crotch.
She said, “You need to come to bed.”
Charlie looked over at her, startled — as if he was not only surprised to see her just then, but on the train at all. She wondered if perhaps he had been sleeping, upright, his body rocking with the jerky train. He blinked and then said, “I’ve never felt more awake.”
Barb sat down beside him, placed her head on his collarbone. The train lurched and rocked. He held her side but turned his head back to stare out the window. There was something timeless about travelling in the dark. Like there was no tomorrow and they were being propelled backwards. Ageless.
* * *
After Janelle leaves, Barb doesn’t pack Charlie’s sweaters. She flings them around the room. She tosses them up in the air and lets them fall like dead birds, one at a time. She read once about birds falling from the sky, somewhere in B.C., their bodies weighed down and coated in slick oil. Or was that the news report about the gulls and fish washing up on the Pacific shore after a tanker spill? Barb could never keep these earthly tragedies straight. Charlie would have remembered. Charlie would have picked up each sweater she was throwing and quietly explained the correct story to her, like talking down a child mid-tantrum. But in his absence, Barb kicks at his fallen clothes, allows herself to be that angry child, the one who would step on those dead birds just to feel the crunch beneath her feet.
Then, as if she has suddenly heard a noise — like a caw, something snapping, or the sound of a handful of coins tumbling to the floor — Barb turns again toward her closet. She’s willing to bet that whole first box of pennies that Charlie stacked the collection in order of value. She goes back inside the closet and moves the boxes one by one until she gets to the last one. Then she lifts the lid and lets out a laugh so full of weight, glory, and self-righteousness that she scares herself. But there she is, that greedy, heartless child, digging her hands into her treasure trove of loonies and toonies; that catch in the depths of her stomach telling her if she isn’t fast, someone (calmer, more forward-thinking, practical) will come and take this prize away.
* * *
Weeks ago, Natasha showed Barb a condo she could rent for two years. Barb wouldn’t have to commit to buying until she knew she wanted that lifestyle. Janelle was there too. The condo was in midtown Toronto, near Lawrence and Bathurst, twenty minutes south from the suburban two-storey detached home Barb had lived in for the past thirty-five years, the last year on her own. Immediately Barb thought the building was too religious for her. There was a plaque beside the elevator indicating which one would be on Sabbath mode for Friday nights and Saturdays. While they were waiting to go up to see the condo, a young couple came out of the elevator with a large double stroller. He wore a black velvet kippah, she a very shiny brown wig that could have passed for a real head of hair.
Janelle said, “I know lots of people in this buildi
ng, Mum. They’re not all like that.”
Barb asked, “At Passover, does the wallpaper in the hallways peel off from the stench of gefilte fish?”
Janelle muttered, “Give me a break.” But Natasha didn’t know better. She said, “I doubt that. They keep this building in excellent condition.”
They got into the elevator and Janelle finally added, “For God’s sake, Mum. This isn’t 1950s Montreal. No one makes gefilte fish from scratch anymore.”
When they got into the unit, Janelle went straight to the living room window and said, “See, Mum? You can see my place right over there. The boys can wave to you when they’re playing outside.”
Barb looked out that window and knew she’d be getting phone calls. Can you see the boys? Can you just watch them? Janelle said, “Did I tell you about my colleague, the other doctor in the practice? She’s Filipino. Can you believe her parents look after her three kids full time? She says it’s just part of their culture.”
Barb heard the incredulity in her voice but also the question. Janelle was always setting her up like this. They only ended up disappointing each other.
“Yes,” Barb said. “Well. That must be why they’re so good at looking after people. Isn’t your nanny from the Philippines?”
Janelle answered quickly, her voice rising. “She is. I was just saying. It’s interesting, different cultures.”
Natasha walked through the unit, her heels ticking loudly against the parquet floor. A plane flew over. Barb watched it descend in the distance. There was no balcony with this unit, but Barb daydreamed about leaping off one anyway. Not to fall or plummet, but to fly, following the plane on its tailwinds.
“Is that the airport over there?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s quite a ways away. You won’t be bothered by any noise,” Natasha promised.
“I don’t mind,” Barb said, turning away from the window. “I always liked to fly.”
* * *
Barb drives with the boxes resting side by side on her back seat. She uses the seat belts to hold them in place. Even still, the coins jostle when she goes over speed bumps, when she makes a right turn onto Bathurst, and then again as she follows the curve of the on-ramp for the 407. She had expected a note from Charlie in one of the boxes, a hint, something to indicate what his intentions were for the money. She remembers at the end of the day how he would empty his pants pockets into a dish on their dresser, the coins chiming against the stoneware. Sometimes he kept a pack of gum in there too. Even now, the dish smells like mint. She gets a whiff of it in the morning, when she opens her underwear drawer. She never thought about what happened to the coins when the dish was full. After all, it was just loose change.
She checks the clock on her dashboard and she giggles. This is just like Charlie. Seizing opportunity. Like after the summer train trip, how he decided he wanted a pair of real train seats to finish off his basement lounge. The walls above them were covered in old VIA, CN, and CP plaques he’d collected that read Spitting prohibited, No standing in the vestibule. There was a poster of the silver Canadian cutting through the Rockies. The mountains had been spectacular, but when Barb thinks back on their trip, what she remembers most is the contrast between the open, clear sky of the prairies and those fields after fields of yellow canola. She remembers feeling like they were riding through a blank canvas. There was just so much possibility.
Charlie found Kevin online on some train forum. Kevin worked at a train yard not far from their house. He said he could source train seats from a retired car. When he showed up at the house with the seats in the back of his truck, Charlie danced a jig on the driveway. Barb stood on the front steps with her arms folded, trying hard to look disapproving, but she had to bite her bottom lip to keep from laughing. And sweet Kevin smiled bashfully at the ground. He reminded Barb of one of her students from when she taught high-school French — a basketball player named Dan, quiet, tall, large hands. Helpful. Once, the boy helped her move her desk across the classroom.
Charlie and Kevin were such a study in contrasts as they carried those heavy steel seat frames out of the truck and down to the basement. Kevin’s young muscles bulged with confidence. Charlie’s old arms quivered. Of course, once they set the seats on the floor, Charlie had to sit down to have a rest. He had no business lifting those seats in the first place. It’s no wonder his heart stopped beating beneath the poster that proclaimed Breathtaking scenery.
* * *
Barb walks into the airport with the boxes of coins stacked on one of those luggage carts, along with her blue overnight bag. Her own heart flutters. She should have gone to the bank first and she laughs at herself because what is she thinking? The coins jingle as she pushes her cart. She passes families travelling with carts piled with suitcases. The scene reminds her of the holidays, the faint sound of bells, all those expectations.
There are no customers at the ticket counter and Barb realizes she’s never bought a ticket this way before. Impulsively. They always booked their travel through an agent, with Charlie making the call. For the train trip, they sat in the travel agency office, pamphlets on the table between them and the agent, a woman who was Barb’s age. The agent arranged their train tickets right then and said, “This is just the start for you. Your adventures together.”
It was later that evening, with the pamphlets spread out on the kitchen table, that Barb took a call from a parent. She could hear his son, Dan the basketball player, crying in the background. Earlier that day, after he helped her move her desk, she found him smoking up in the back hall. Even now, she remembers his pale face, his blind panic, that wide-eyed look of wondering: What is she going to do to me?
“How dare you threaten my son?” the father said. Barb felt his venom like a crashing wave, the roar of water overhead. “There are scouts looking at him. You’re just his French teacher.”
“No one is allowed to break school rules. There are consequences.”
“You can’t fucking play with people’s lives!” He raised his voice on “fucking.” Barb felt her throat tighten, as if the father had reached through the phone and grabbed her neck.
“I will drag your name through the mud,” the man said. “You report him and I will make sure you don’t work anywhere, ever again.”
Charlie was motioning for the phone while Barb was trying to wave him away. She couldn’t even put a face to this irate man, so she pictured the boy, his forehead scattered with pimples, his back as well. He wore a sleeveless jersey and she remembered noticing the acne on his shoulders as he ran away from her. She was saying, “Now listen . . .” But then Charlie grabbed the phone and went on about how dare he. Barb was trying not to cry because she didn’t want to be like that boy, dissolving in the background while someone else did the fixing. But she felt her chin jutting out while she pouted, while she breathed heavily through her nose, her flared nostrils.
When Charlie hung up the phone, he pointed at her and said, “Tomorrow you hand in your resignation and we take this trip together as retirees. I’m tired of assholes like him telling my wife how to do her job.”
And Barb said, “Okay,” because it was easier than arguing. It was always easier. But oh, did her insides burn. She busied herself with the pamphlets, but she felt such hate, and not toward the father, or Charlie, or even that weak, useless boy. She hated how easily she always gave up. And so she burned with hatred for herself. Her fingers shook as she flipped through pages of grey-haired couples, their reflections in the train windows, the sun softening their smiling, worry-free faces.
* * *
Now Barb stands in front of the ticket counter. The agent has long nails, bright pink, and they click at her keyboard, like Natasha’s heels, like the echo in the condo Barb has just realized she won’t be taking. Barb is thinking of the airplane taking off, of it flying over Janelle’s house, the boys running around in the backyard, the nanny on her cellphone not looking up
when the plane roars overhead. The boys jumping and waving and Barb waving back through one of those thick, tiny windows, waving over the boys, the roof of that empty condo, Janelle racing along the highway to the airport when she realizes what her mother has done. Barb blowing kisses.
The woman looks up and smiles. “Can I help you?”
Barb says, “Yes. I’m ready to go.”
The Greatest Love Story Never Told
Draft One
Sol was looking after his granddaughter, Jessica, a fourteen-year-old dancer who had broken her ankle in her last competition. She and her mother had recently moved into his house because of the divorce. There were still boxes piled like collapsed pyramids all over the place. Jessie lay on the coach eating potato chips and watching one of those trashy soap operas, the kind of show his Bella used to watch. His daughter, Hillary, hated that. The crappy TV, the crappy food. Before she left for work, she said to Sol, “Don’t let Jessie lay around all day surrounded by junk.”
It seemed to Sol that since the separation, his daughter had taken to barking orders, the way a dog lashes out when it feels threatened.
Sol turned to Jessica and said, “So, do you want to hear the real story of how I met your grandmother?”
She shifted on the couch so that she was sitting up. She brushed the crumbs from her lap and licked her fingers, nodding her head. The couple on the screen were kissing surrounded by lit candles, a bed made with satin sheets, the woman’s blond head tilted back, the man’s hand lost in her hair. Sol turned off the TV and said, “I’d be a skeleton in a cave right now if it wasn’t for her.”
Edits
Hillary used to have two last names, but a couple of weeks ago she decided to drop her soon-to-be ex’s. When she told Sol, he said, “So does that mean I can just cut your business card in half?”
You Are Not What We Expected Page 8
