The Company We Keep

by Frances Itani

  “I never did get a college education,” said Dave. “But in high school, I had an English teacher who taught me to love poetry. Because of her, I’ve been reading it ever since. Everyone thought I should be playing football, but I wanted to study poetry, drama, literature. I’m a reader. There isn’t one inmate who shares my love of verse. Not that I can find, anyway.” He carried on, and recited for Tom:

  I think that I shall never see

  A poem lovely as a tree.

  A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

  Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast.

  “Oh yeah, and the last verse.”

  Poems are made by fools like me,

  But only God can make a tree.

  “That’s all I can call up for the moment.”

  Tom was thinking of how Joyce Kilmer had been killed during the First World War. He didn’t say that to Dave, who, in a chilling, rattly voice, suddenly came up with Coleridge:

  He holds him with his glittering eye—

  The Wedding-Guest stood still,

  And listens like a three years’ child:

  The Mariner hath his will.

  Dave gave a hearty laugh and challenged Tom to recite some of his own verses, but Tom wasn’t in the mood. They were silent for a while, and Tom recalled, but to himself, a stanza he’d written earlier in the year. Last New Year’s Day, in fact. Ida had been buried three months by then. He’d been feeling down when he pulled out his notebook. The poem was not to be shared. Not with anyone. Not even Dave, who loved Kilmer’s tree poem.

  What are we to do with all this pain?

  How do we overcome longing

  Admit our losses and stop stop stop

  Our high-pitched laments?

  I’ve begun to find notes

  In my own handwriting:

  “How many days must one go without hope?”

  Can’t be helped; look up there

  Even the inner curve of the moon

  Has been chewed.

  Tom figured if he recited his poem out loud, Dave would laugh. Or maybe not. Didn’t matter, because Tom wasn’t prepared to take a chance that day.

  There was something else he hadn’t mentioned. Since Ida’s death, he’d begun to write his poems at the back of the planet notebook, working his way through the pages from right to left. It was as if he’d begun to compose in Hebrew or Arabic. He decided this was a symptom of missing Ida, his Ida affliction. He’d been turned back to front: What was there to understand?

  HE WAS APPROACHING the town’s outskirts now and thought of the slim pickings in his fridge. Will’s four-day visit was over and the fridge was empty. His son, a tall fellow, had always been a big eater, especially during his teen years. At the end of Will’s every visit, the cupboards were bare. Tom thought of his own teen years, and the summers his mother insisted they spend with her parents in Nova Scotia. Aunts and uncles and cousins had been invited for a family supper during one visit, and at the end of the meal, one of Tom’s uncles told him: “You cleaned your plate, son, and that’s good. But I’d rather pay your board than board you.” Everyone laughed, and Tom had not forgotten the remark.

  He drove directly to Marvin’s, picked up canned salmon and tuna, a bag of frozen peas, a loaf of freshly baked bread, a half chicken darkly roasted and ready to eat, three blueberry scones, a container of potato salad and a bar of dark chocolate. He added a copy of the daily paper to his grocery cart. Since Ida’s death, he’d begun to pay closer attention to the obituaries—something he hadn’t bothered about before—though he hadn’t let on the day Dave had mentioned them. Tom wasn’t morbidly interested, but he did read the mercilessly compressed details of people’s lives with more than a little sadness.

  He paid for the food and his paper, raised a hand to Marvin (who was at the upstairs window) and checked the community board on the way out. One notice attracted his attention:

  GRIEF DISCUSSION GROUP

  What was that about? He didn’t stop to consider. He detached a tear strip from the bottom edge and tucked it into his wallet.

  HIS HOUSE, THE CAPACIOUS OLD HOUSE—too big for one person now—into which he and Ida had moved three years after they married, was a few blocks from Marvin’s store. As he approached, he saw the Danzigers, neighbours from the cul-de-sac at the end of his street. He knew they were heading out for their early evening walk. The Danzigers were in their nineties and had lived on the street forever—long before Tom and Ida moved to the area. Mrs. D was wearing a scarf over her head and tied under her chin, and she was bent low over her walker, butting her head against the wind. She wasn’t able to be out without the walker anymore because her gait was unsteady. Mr. D was stumping along beside her, supported by his cane, which he brandished in greeting when he recognized Tom’s Cherokee. Tom returned the wave and manoeuvred his Jeep into the narrow garage he’d erected in 1979. Most of the structure was put together from old barn boards he’d been given by a man known to everyone as Mott. For generations, the Mott family had farmed two miles past the outskirts of town. Tom had picked up more than a few antiques from Mott descendants.

  Building the garage had been a project of pride for Tom. He slowed the Jeep now, aimed it straight ahead and watched for the green tennis ball suspended from a string tied to a ceiling beam. The moment he saw the ball thump against the windshield, he braked. He’d come up with the tennis-ball solution after ramming his first car into a workbench he’d installed across the back wall of the garage. As there was little room to spare, the swinging tennis ball saved all subsequent vehicles from minor scratches and dents. He scooped up his groceries and entered the house through the side door.

  He was sorry Will hadn’t stayed longer. His son was good company and there was never any loneliness when he was around. But when Tom was alone, as he was now, his own footsteps echoed. An inner voice reminded him that he was hanging on by a frayed thread. Sometimes the same voice asked: What’s the point? A question that was never answered.

  Ida was the one who’d kept up most of their social contacts. She had organized outings and entertainments. After her funeral service, friends and colleagues came back to the house to support the family. Will and his wife and children circulated, shaking hands and accepting expressions of sympathy. Women busied themselves in the kitchen. Tom noticed that his male contemporaries sat around the edges of the living and dining rooms, rheumy-eyed with drink. One of them mentioned that he’d started up a branch of the Fountain Pen Society, and he invited Tom to join. They needed a few more members before they began to meet at one another’s homes. Tom hadn’t owned a fountain pen for thirty years, and though he could see the interest in old pens—why would that be any different than an interest in old watches?—he declined. The main reason was that he couldn’t imagine himself taking part in discussions about nibs, pens and inks. Actually, he didn’t know what the members talked about, but he couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm to find out.

  During the weeks that followed the funeral, wives left casseroles and tins of date squares at the side door. Whatever they baked was cut into tidy pieces. The phone rang for a while, but gradually these efforts ceased. Neighbours continued to greet him. Acquaintances and regular customers dropped in at Rigmarole to express condolences. But his present life was not his easy, routine life, with Ida looking after most household decisions. The two had relied on each other, and he missed that. He had a flash of memory now about travelling with Ida through a small village in Greece, more than a decade ago. Four old men were sitting in a row on a wooden bench at the edge of the village square, observing activities from which they were excluded. The four kept up a rhythmic clicking of worry beads. Tom did not want to become one of those excluded old men clicking his worry beads.

  He dumped the food onto the kitchen counter and turned on the radio. He needed human voices near; what they were saying wasn’t relevant. He went to the pantry to put the tins away and glanced at his reflection in an oval mirror Ida had bought at auction. She’d hun
g the mirror from a nail on the back of the pantry door so she could do a quick check on hair and lipstick without having to leave the kitchen, especially when they were expecting company.

  The person he saw was a tall man with shadows under his eyes, a blotch on his left cheek where a menacing-looking mole had been removed several months earlier, a thick head of white hair, glasses that needed cleaning. For a moment, he thought his Nova Scotia grandfather was staring back—Grampa William Murray. It was Grampa Murray who had taught him that fishing season didn’t officially start until the alder leaf was the size of a mouse’s ear. It was Grampa Murray who’d walked him around the boundaries of the farm so they could keep watch over fences, fields and soil conditions. When they arrived at two apple trees at the far end of the property line, Tom was told to check the fruit for size and ripeness. If an apple was picked, his grampa took a salt shaker from his shirt pocket because you’d never eat an apple without sprinkling a bit of salt on the tart flesh after the first bite.

  His grampa also tried to teach him to shoot, but Tom didn’t want to hunt animals. He wondered what his late grandfather would have thought of the news report earlier this year about a goose that had fallen from the sky after being shot. The dead goose dropped plumb down, directly onto a hunter’s head. A bizarre story. The hunter was severely injured, and he wasn’t even the one who’d shot that particular goose. Maybe Grampa Murray, if he were alive, would have drawn a moral from the tale; he had often read Aesop’s fables aloud during those summer visits after the war. In his will, he left Tom a beloved book of poetry called The Casquet of Gems, published in Edinburgh in 1885. The final poem in the book was by Robert Pollok, a man whom Grampa Murray had spoken about sadly because Pollok died before reaching his thirtieth birthday. The poem was about Byron, part of a longer work titled The Course of Time. Because of this verse by Pollok, Tom had, in turn, come to admire the work of Byron.

  He touched his harp, and nations heard, entranced.

  As some vast river of unfailing source,

  Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed,

  And oped new fountains in the human heart.

  Tom loved the line “And oped new fountains in the human heart.” He had grown up without a father, but he’d never stopped wishing for one. Every moment he spent with his grandparents was special. On arrival in Nova Scotia, he attached himself to his grampa’s side. In 1945, when he was six years old, he’d met his father, once, but that was a separate memory. One he could recall in intimate detail but didn’t indulge often, and wouldn’t now.

  He glanced back at the pantry mirror again and tried to smile, but the smile was forced. Ida had told him decades ago that he wore every tale of woe on his face. After hearing that, he made an effort to hide his natural expressions. He didn’t want to be held accountable—even to Ida—for every emotion he experienced, past or present. Ida was one of those persons who believed that truth should and would be told on every occasion. But truth was a strain, and he had kept more than a few private thoughts to himself.

  One of his truths now was the heaviness that had burdened him the past year. As months went by, the weight had become more leaden. He didn’t know what to do about this and assumed there was nothing he could do. There was no one around with whom he could share these thoughts. Ida had been taken from him swiftly, unexpectedly. He’d had little time to prepare. He could not have predicted what his life would be like after she was gone. How could he have known that the initial feelings of grief would go on and on? What he felt, when he admitted this to himself, was a disturbing sense of upheaval. A sense of being tossed in a fathomless sea, a sea of memory and shadow. Sometimes he was certain that Ida needed him, that she was calling his name from another part of the house. Sometimes, without thinking, he answered and called back.

  And that was not all. There were moments when he had the distinct impression that she was in the house, just beyond his peripheral vision. He turned his head quickly, as if he might catch a glimpse of her now.

  There was no one there.

  Well, what about this discussion group? He unwrapped the chicken, grateful that it was still hot, and removed the lid from the potato salad container. He sprinkled pepper—no salt—over his food and sat at the table. After Ida died, he had moved into her chair, not wanting to stare at her empty place. He felt better doing that, and Ida’s chair afforded a view out the side window. He told himself he was seeing what she would be seeing if she were alive. He thought again of the notice at Marvin’s and removed the strip of paper from his wallet. He stared at the date, time and place. Next week at Cassie’s, Tuesday night. He and Ida used to stop in there after a movie or a play. They had enjoyed sitting together over a cup of coffee, or occasionally a glass of wine, discussing the performance they’d seen.

  Maybe he would go. He’d been listening to CBC Radio at Rigmarole one morning and had heard about meetings at death cafés: groups of people who met for coffee or tea and discussed ideas and fears and beliefs in hopes of becoming comfortable with the topic of death while making the most of their lives. He’d also listened to a program about grief walks on a talk show. Over the years, with the radio on in the background, he’d acquired knowledge he wouldn’t have been able to invent. Perhaps the meeting at Cassie’s next week would be a death café. There might even be cake; that’s what was uniformly served, according to the people interviewed on CBC. He hadn’t had a decent slice of cake since the weeks following Ida’s death, when food was dropped off at the side door.

  He looked out the window just as a plastic garbage bag blew into the large V of the oak at the edge of his yard. The black bag snagged on a ridge of bark and began to flap and flutter as the Danzigers came into view, returning from their walk. The wind was now at their backs, but the two had slowed to half their previous pace. Something wasn’t quite right. Tom looked again and realized they had made a switch. Mr. D was now bent over his wife’s walker, and Mrs. D was walking with the support of her husband’s cane.

  For reasons Tom could not explain, one eye began to water. He was witnessing an act of love.

  He wanted to be loved. Or even liked. Love would be a bonus. He asked himself, Isn’t that what everyone wants? Ida and I loved each other in comforting ways. We were together many years. The emptiness of this house is too much to bear.

  He looked at the strip of paper again. A discussion group about grief. Well, maybe on Tuesday evening he would walk over to Cassie’s and see what was going on. His attendance wouldn’t hurt anybody, would it? Maybe he would just go.

  Facing Up

  ADDIE

  By late afternoon Saturday, the sky was awash with charcoal clouds nudging one another, shaping and reshaping until they merged into an edgeless mass. Addie leaned back in her living-room chair, feet raised on the jute ottoman she’d put at the top of her want-to-keep list years ago, when she and Tye split. She was listening to Beethoven’s Ninth and rose reluctantly during the abrupt silence that followed the tumultuous “Ode to Joy.”

  She put away the CD and thought about Vienna, and about Beethoven in his fifty-fourth year. He was on stage the night of the premiere, but because of his deafness was uncertain of the moment he should turn to face the audience after the final note. A woman close to him on stage came to the rescue and gave a signal, hoping no one else would notice. Trying to save him from embarrassment but wanting him to know that the audience was applauding wildly behind his back.

  Joy. Beauty. Music saves me, Addie thought. Music saves us all. I could not get through a day without listening to music of some kind.

  She pictured Beethoven, entirely deaf while composing his magnificent final symphony, but never hearing a note except in his internal imaginings. Imaginings that, for him, would not have been silent at all. His interior creative self. Would the Ninth be the same if he’d been able to hear? This would always be unknown. Every time Addie listened to the final feverish note, she wanted to sit upright, fill her lungs with . . . well, song, actually. Yes
, song. When she thought about this, she realized that she hardly ever sang.

  She went to the kitchen to make tea and returned to the armchair. Her ankles were definitely swollen, thicker. She was putting on weight. She looked over at the Montreal letters, which were in chronological order atop a pile of books. The first had arrived eight months ago and was about the lumps. She knew the words by heart. At the time, Sybil was refusing to text or email. She refused to use her iPad while she was an in-patient after surgery. She wanted nothing to do with smartphones. What she did want was to articulate her thoughts clearly; to do this, she wrote them out in longhand. Now, all these months later, she had access to computer and phone but was too weak to use them or even to care.

  At the beginning of August, Sybil had been moved from her apartment in Montreal to her mother’s home in Greenley, Ontario. She wasn’t as far from Addie now—only an hour from Wilna Creek. Sybil had other family members in Greenley besides her mother: a married brother and his wife, a niece, an uncle. Caring people who could be relied on to provide solid support. But Addie was Sybil’s closest friend. She and Sybil were each other’s de facto family.

  Sybil’s mother and brother had recently begun to turn to Addie for decisions that had to be made, asking questions that were impossible to answer. Today, before Addie drove back to Wilna Creek, Sybil’s mother had stopped her on the front step and pleaded: “How much time does she have left?” Addie did not want to reply. How could she know? Being forced to contemplate her friend’s death was difficult enough. She hugged Sybil’s mother on the doorstep and the two cried quietly, being careful that Sybil, in her bedroom down the hall, wouldn’t hear.

  Addie held power of attorney. She and Sybil had appointed each other the year they turned forty. Now they were forty-nine. Neither of them had anticipated this. This being the blatant, real and obscene fact that one of them was dying.