He turns off the vacuum and cocks his Filipino ear.
“You know, the police came about the dog?”
He looks around then gestures with his hand down low as if pushing something with his fingers along the floor, toward a door. “Poison,” he says and shakes his head.
“Oh no!”
He nods and shrugs, then turns the vacuum back on. She is left to close her own door. She hears on the morning news that tonight is the eve of a lunar eclipse, the night of a full blood moon. Some consider it an omen. She thinks about other tenants in a new suspicious light. You just never know who would resort to such a criminal act, but it must be someone right on her floor.
Janet assumes that people are not a target here, but she is uneasy as she walks down the hallway and rides the elevator down to parking. No one else is in sight. She has decided to go, one last time, to The Gallery to see if she has been missed at all.
There is a poster in the window. Lunatic Artists. She might have known her director would be ahead of the game, ready for the lunar eclipse. A carmine ball looms over mineral rock samples and sculptures, and a slide show clicks along on a back screen with the black-and-white footage of Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are walking on the moon. Aside from all that, lunatic seems the predominate theme of paintings and collages and screen prints and photography: lunatic eyes, lunatic flowers, lunatic pin balls, even lunatic asylums. There is a wall of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon sleeves repeated behind the cash desk.
“There you are. It’s been a while,” her director says as if he was expecting her to appear all along.
She sees that his hair, with streaks of grey, is longer and brushed straight back, and that he has let his beard grow out. He looks like Picasso’s version of the satyr Silenus. She supposes that Sabine has influenced him.
“I see you are still alive,” she says. “So, lunatics?”
“Hah, of course. And what are you up to?”
“Busy, very busy. Redecorating my place. Matisse is the inspiration.”
“Ah.”
“I was wondering if you had any self-portraits of him in your collection of prints.” She had thought this up on her drive downtown.
“Strangely I think we do have one here. It is one from his younger days.”
It is Henri Matisse in 1900 from the top of his head to his knees, standing in front of an easel with his brown hair combed back and a mustache and beard neatly trimmed. He looks very approachable. Of course he would.
“Perfect. I’ll take it.”
“House price for you,” he says. “Nice to see you again, my dear.”
His dear? She has turned into one of those familiar faces to whom he offers a deal for old time’s sake. For the whole drive home, she tries to decide where she will hang her Matisse now that she has paid for it. It was never in the plan. Adjustments will have to be made. She can move the batik that hangs over the sofa so that the print can hang alongside. Or maybe Matisse can reside over the buffet where she can enjoy him every morning for breakfast. She does not let herself think about her director at all and least of all Sabine.
Two police cars are in front of her building, both with flashing lights. Though her parking spot is underground, she slows to a crawl then decides to wait outside in visitor parking where she can watch any kind of action. It is a young couple that the cops bring out. The two who live four doors down on the opposite side. She had already labelled them yuppies, though she knows they are younger than that. She noticed their commitment to a healthy life with their fancy joggers, their trim physiques, and their organic groceries stuffed into cotton totes. She has recyclable bags too but forgets to take them with her. She guesses that the barking was bad for their health. Some people just can’t let things go.
Now that she has some answers, Janet continues on underground to her parking stall, uses her building key, rides the elevator to her floor, uses her apartment key, sets her Matisse print against the wall (portrait side out), and locks her door. Tonight she will raise the venetians, spring weather or not. She will take the winter covers off the balcony chairs, and even if it is after midnight she will sit outside to catch the total eclipse of the moon. She will wear a jacket and blankets and boots if necessary. She will witness her first blood moon, a lunatic moon, an omen so they say. Omen for what she does not know. Maybe Dietrich can move on and find a new love and Donaldson and his wife can forgive him and live in peace. She knows, however, that she must be real. The court will decide how it really ends. She’ll check the Herald tomorrow but try to skip the obituaries.
Hair Matters
THE DYLAN THOMAS POEM runs through Janet’s brain like a song: “And death shall have no dominion.” She stares at herself in the mirror as she sits in the maroon swivel chair with her feet on the chrome footrest, but she does not swivel. There are mirrors all around so she can view the room from several angles. Hard to say what goes through the minds of the others in their chairs.
Janet is here for her Friday appointment. She has never before been tied to a certain day of the week to have her hair done, let alone a Friday, but she found out that this is Shirley’s day off and she has switched to the much younger Megan who is the same age as her own daughter. Megan is taller than Shirley, so she pumps the chair a little higher in order to apply the golden dye to Janet’s mostly white hair. Megan has a sunnier disposition than Shirley, is soon to be married, and keeps a more natural look with her own hair. It is long and blonde, and she sometimes just puts it in a ponytail, simple but still fashionable. This is more in keeping with Janet’s style. At least her style when she was twenty. When she was young Janet also had long hair, left to tumble as hair will when left alone. To this day, when she hears David Crosby sing “Almost Cut My Hair,” tears come to her eyes. It could be because of the pain in David’s voice; she knows he is not just singing about plying scissors. Hadn’t his girlfriend just died in an accident?
Janet was Shirley’s client for about a year. She envies women who know they are the one to be served, not the other way around. Instead of openly choosing a stylist at any given time Janet became indebted to Shirley and now, like anyone avoiding their debtor, she sneaks in on Shirley’s day off so she will not have to explain her shift in loyalty, as if she is a traitor.
Just last week, out of the blue, curious thoughts crossed Janet’s mind. Was Shirley still working at the salon? Did she have enough clients to pay the bills? As it turns out some kind of intuition was at work in Janet’s mind. Unlike a lot of these relationships Shirley unloaded to Janet about her difficult life. Usually it is the hairdresser who hears all the gossip. It got to be a little too much, worrying about Shirley, a woman the same age as herself. A woman who was divorced and had to sell her house and move to an apartment, not unlike herself. One big difference was that Shirley’s hair did not have a hint of movement. It was clipped close to the head, shaved thin at the neck, streaked blonde and sprayed so that not a hair was out of place. Meticulous and not what Janet wanted for herself. Shirley was wound into a tidy skein except for the yellowed fingers and nicotine breath. Janet could not imagine Shirley in her twenties with braided daisies in her hair, disdaining corporations and Americans in Vietnam, listening to Bob Dylan sing “Lay Lady Lay,” inhaling marijuana and in fact wanting to get laid, as the expression still goes. What would they have in common?
In her last gasp of single life, travelling abroad, Janet went to the musical Hair. Nudity was new on stage agendas at the time so it was a kind of titillation. But more to the point was how the protest of the Vietnam War and established ways of thinking manifested in the uninhibited growth of people’s hair. It had nothing to do with a trip to the hair salon And then there was “Easy To Be Hard.” She still plays Three Dog Night’s version of it, and it runs through her mind inexplicably on this day, how people can be so heartless. Love was not always in the air for the one right in front of you.
It was easier to emote for a cause.
Janet leans closer to the mirror. Her hair is coated with creamy dye, and sections stick out in all directions. Some of her scalp is painted too, especially around the edges of her face. It makes her skin look pasty white, even a little grey. Her wrinkles are not as prominent, but then she acknowledges that without her glasses they do seem to fade away.
Megan always gives Janet a copy of the latest celebrity gossip magazine to while away the time while her hair oxidizes. Janet learns who is a binge eater, who is pregnant, who miraculously has her trim body back after the birth of baby number one, who is planning a spectacular wedding for the third time, who lives with plastic surgery nightmares, and who, out of two, best wore a duplicate outfit. It is all irrelevant to her life so a relief for that very reason. At home she reads the obituaries to see who is still alive.
To be fair Shirley did ask questions about Janet’s personal life and at first Janet let secrets roll off her tongue. But she began to ask herself why she would confide in someone she barely knew and didn’t even relate to; it felt like going to a priest for confession when she is not Catholic or to a psychiatrist for diagnosis when she already knows her own foibles, except priests and psychiatrists are sworn to secrecy. Megan’s life seemed easy and optimistic, with a wedding in the works and a home in the suburbs to settle into. Shirley, on the other hand, was meeting men online and had even moved in with one of them for a time followed by her own cynical analysis. Megan was too young to be curious about the romantic or sexual lives of women their age, as if Janet and Shirley were too old for such passions. Now, with Megan, the conversations remain uncomplicated and limited to the achievements of Janet’s granddaughters, the changing of the seasons, the births and deaths of certain friends and relatives, and the style of Megan’s wedding dress. She must ask Megan how she will do her hair with the veil.
Janet thinks it is odd that people will share intimate stories with those they barely know. It reminds her of her previous next-door neighbour, Monica, who liked to joke about her stint at Al-Anon where they operated on a first-name-only basis. Monica became “best friends” with one of the women in the group as they divvied out similar stories each week about surviving the tribulations of their drunken husbands. The friend ended up in hospital, and when Monica went to visit she realized she did not know her best friend’s last name so she was not able to see her. Monica shared this story so many times, first with tears and then with laughter, that Janet almost felt she had joined Al-Anon herself. She thinks about this now because she realizes she does not know either Megan’s or Shirley’s last name. And if she had known Shirley’s last name she would not have missed her in the obituaries.
It was lung cancer. And the chemo was short-lived since the cancer spread so rapidly. Would it be rude to ask if Shirley lost her hair? Is it insensitive to think about the irony of it all? A line from Hair, about keeping hair shoulder length or longer, runs through Janet’s mind again as Megan snips away. She acknowledges that she can now make an appointment on any day of the week.
Janet never lost her hair, but it is short. Perhaps it is foolish to think this deemphasizes her wrinkles. Turns out she did have something in common with Shirley. More to the point she still comes to the salon once every month on the days that Megan is available. Any day of the week will do, unless of course she decides to make a change. It is odd how one becomes indebted over hair.
“You know, when I was your age I cheated on my husband,” says Janet.
“Oh!” says Megan.
“Before we had our daughter, you know. So how will you do your hair for the wedding?”
Jumping to Conclusions
SHE KNOWS IT IS CHILDISH but cannot stop herself. Janet drove into her underground parking stall on Tuesday and saw the black garbage bag right at the end of her stall. Jumping to conclusions is her pet peeve about others, but she assumed that the bag had been placed there by the occupant of the right-hand stall since it sat closer to that side. She turned off her engine, grabbed her purse and her bottle of merlot, locked her Fiesta with her remote key, and then grabbed the bag and plunked it right down at the end of her neighbour’s stall. How dare someone dump their garbage on her! And now here it is back in front of her. She moves quickly this time. She puts the bag back in the right-hand stall and heads to the elevator before anyone sees her.
Inside her apartment, she takes off her boots, hangs up her jacket, and goes straight to the window. The window is where she goes to calm her nerves. She looks out across her balcony to the grove across the road, a small stretch of nature to the right of apartment buildings and between her and the strip mall. She spied mule deer foraging there in December. There is a hint of green on the tips of the trees. Maybe spring is coming after all. She ignores the apartments across from her. They extend more to the west. Windows are covered, curtains drawn, venetians closed; strangers are all trying to keep safe and secure, shutting out neighbourly probes.
She is cutting a chicken into parts and dropping skin and bones into her kitchen garbage when she suddenly wonders what might be in that black bag. She hadn’t bothered to check. She questions the state of her mind. When she cleaned out her car, after her granddaughters stayed, she put their wrappers and apple cores, along with cardboard from the trunk, into a black garbage bag. Has she forgotten that she set the bag temporarily against the wall? Is the garbage really hers? Is she losing a grip on her mind? No. She remembers taking it to the bins. It isn’t a difficult chore. So why would anyone leave their garbage to her? They are insulting her for sure.
If it happens again, if it is put back in her stall, she should open the bag just to see what is inside and look for clues about the owner. But as she imagines herself doing just that, she recoils and envisions herself with contaminated hands, with what she does not know.
Sure enough the bag is back the very next day, and this time there is a ripped piece of paper under her windshield wiper. Janet is heading to the South Health Lab, but gets back out of the car to retrieve it and read it even though she is running late. It is printed in awkward letters as though it was done in a hurry. This Is Not My Garbage! Do Not Put It In My Stall! She goes over a response in her mind. “Jumping to conclusions! It’s not mine either. Childish both ways you know.” She searches her purse at least three times so she can reply right away on the back of that paper and put it on the window of that neighbour’s van, but she can’t find her pen. Perhaps it is just as well. “Take your time this time,” she says to herself.
She is going to her appointment. She knows all about this routine, the callback, since she had surgery and radiation two years before. It is a different lab though. She has since moved from her house and neighbourhood of thirty years to an apartment further south. The complex is full of immigrants, including children and pets, who will move on to their Canadian dream homes as soon as they can, and young singles out of their parents’ homes for the very first time, plus a few like herself who have abandoned the dream and settled into apartment ennui.
The Health building is only three stories high, but it takes up a block in length and has more than one entrance. Janet is oblivious to signs giving her directions. She is still fuming about the bag. She parks and then once on foot she reads the signs and clips along to the lab at the other end of the parking lot, knowing she is late. Cool morning air refreshes her brain until she finds herself in the waiting room after all. She renews her angst over the bag of garbage. She cannot help herself.
She is used to stripping down to her waist and leaning against the cold metal machine while the technician positions each breast in turn between the parallel plates. The plates come together and compress the tissue as flat as flat can be until the buzzing sound tells her she is zapped by a remote with ionizing radiation. Experience comes with age for sure, but not with reassurance. She’ll treat this like any other day and deal with results on another day.
She heads straight
back home and presses her own remote to enter the underground parking lot. Her neighbour’s van is gone. She could open the garbage bag and look inside, but she is repelled and cannot stand to touch it. She will go up to her apartment and get a pen. Better yet she’ll take the ripped paper upstairs and compose her response in a thoughtful way instead of her knee-jerk reaction.
Janet returns in the evening when she least expects direct confrontation. She places her polite reply—My Apologies, But It’s Not My Garbage Either—under the windshield wiper of the van, then notices the bumper sticker for the very first time. Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself. Okay, she has a religious person on her hands. This was not on the van before. Is this little message just for her? Who does bumper stickers? Not anyone she knows well.
It is the Festival of Crafts at Stampede Park on Mother’s Day weekend, which Janet is spending alone. She is going to see the latest work of artisans and artists. She might pick up some exotic tea or a bag made from reclaimed leather or funky jewellery for her granddaughters. She has stopped looking at jewellery for herself. But first she checks out the paintings. Though she’s retired from The Gallery, she likes to imagine who she would pick for a showing. Next to a display of Rocky Mountain watercolours is a booth called Fun Laser Designs. This is not exactly art to her, and of all things they sell bumper stickers. She is not an impulse buyer, but this is pure serendipity. Starting on the left side of a sticker, This Is Earth is printed in blue letters. In the middle is the Earth orb with green continents and blue oceans, and on the right is Not Uranus. Keep It Clean. She whispers it to herself. “This is earth, not Uranus. Keep it clean.”
It is hard to explain her joy and urgency to go home and clean off her bumper. Maybe she needs new avenues for self-expression. She presses the sticker to the right side of her bumper as it will be closer to the van and more likely to be seen. She is aware that the bag of garbage is still on her side but decides to leave it alone.
Dear Hearts Page 16
