The Company We Keep

by Frances Itani

  “My name is Tom,” he said. “From Tomas with no h. My wife, Ida, died eleven months ago. She died quite suddenly. Had a heart attack and died in hospital within two days of being admitted. I didn’t have time to adjust, to prepare, to think about the possibility of losing her. But I’ve had plenty of time to think ever since. I guess I can say that I was glad to see the notice at Marvin’s. Almost a year now, I’ve been grieving. I live on my own. I’m the owner of Rigmarole—it was the first antique shop in town. You can find me there four out of five weekdays and sometimes Saturday mornings. The shop is half the size it used to be and definitely more manageable. When I first opened the business, I bought the adjacent property, a long narrow space that used to sell electrical supplies. I joined the two by knocking out a wall and putting a doorway between. Now my shop is back to its original size, and the wall is sealed again. The other property has been taken over by a printing business. Once a week, usually a Thursday or a Friday, I drive for Wheels of Hope and take cancer patients to the Greenley Health Centre for treatment. I’m fine—I tell myself I’m fine.” His voice dropped. “I read, write a bit of poetry, meet with friends occasionally, but . . .”

  He was thinking of a long-time customer named Kay. After Ida died, Kay began to arrive at his shop with small gifts of food sealed with plastic wrap, served on a china saucer so she’d have to make another trip to collect the dish. A slice of this, a slice of that. He never knew when she might come through the door. One day, she carried in a wedge of what she laughingly told him was “hopeful pie.” He remained polite, recognizing the message that new life begins, but he offered no particular hope in her direction. What Kay didn’t understand was that a person was missing from his life and there was nothing he could do, no action he could take, even though he felt he should force himself to move toward pseudo-optimism and usefulness. Kay did not realize the depth of aloneness she was trying to penetrate.

  He nodded, more to himself than to the others in the group. He’d surprised himself, and probably them, by mentioning his poetry. He tried to cover up now, before anyone could comment, and spoke directly to Hazzley.

  “How far along are you on your grief walk?”

  Hazzley was stumped by the question because she’d never heard of a grief walk, which raised all sorts of images, including a memory flash of being with Lew in Cyprus decades earlier, hiking in a rural area, and stumbling across a single-file procession of villagers following a casket carried by four men. The mourners were making their way to the local graveyard, which could be seen on a hillside not far off. She and Lew stepped off the narrow dirt path and waited, their heads slightly bowed, while the procession passed. They were in no way acknowledged by the mourners.

  She recovered quickly. And was able to place the man the instant he mentioned Rigmarole—an antique store she’d wandered into a few times. It was on a street that Hazzley knew because the bookstore she frequented was located in the same block.

  “I guess I haven’t thought about grief in quite that way,” she said to Tom. “Shall we continue? Carry on introducing ourselves and maybe say a word about why we’re here?”

  The other three were staring at the tall stalks of the cosmos and looked as if they might change their minds about being present. And Cass—was she hovering near the doorway?

  “Why don’t I go next, then?” Hazzley said. “Since I’m beside Tom with no h. I’ve been in your store, Tom. I bought a reflector for an old gas lamp from you; that was years ago. It was one of those wall-mounted sconce types. I think the reflector is made of mercury glass.”

  Tom was nodding. He remembered the reflector.

  “Anyway, I’m Hazzley, everyone—my name was supposed to be Hazel, but that’s another story—and I’m the one who posted the notice at Marvin’s. I’ll come right out and tell you frankly that I’ve been lonely. My husband, Lew, died three years ago. Sometimes it seems he’s been gone thirty years instead of three. But there are days when I’m convinced that if I look through the kitchen window, he’ll be out there in the backyard, raking up leaves. There are days when I can hear soft scraping sounds as he rakes.”

  Several people were nodding. This, they understood.

  “I carry on. I have things to do. I work part-time as an editor. I freelance from home and love the work. But there are things that are undone. Unfinished, incomplete.” Her words slowed. “And maybe never will be complete.” She thought of the two rooms she had emptied. She thought of the boxes in the basement, hidden away under a tarp after Lew’s death, cardboard boxes filled with empty bottles, the flaps taped shut. She had not dealt with those. She had never talked about the boxes—not to Cass, not to Sal, even though Sal had been aware of her father’s drinking. Hazzley could not bring herself to load the car and drop the boxes off somewhere. Or put them out on the curb. Or drive country roads until she saw a sign for a garbage dump. Or hire Sam the Man with Truck to haul them away. Many times she’d imagined a man arriving in a truck, the expression on his face when he looked at the boxes and heard the rattle and immediately understood the quantity of liquor that had been consumed.

  She gave up on this train of thought and stretched an arm toward the woman to her right. Poised, younger. Shining black hair recklessly gathered into a spray held by a single elastic. Asian descent, Japanese Canadian, maybe?

  “My name,” said the young woman, “is Chiyo. The name is supposed to mean ‘a thousand years,’ or maybe ‘eternal.’ I’ve been told it dates back to the seventeenth century. My parents were traditional when it came to naming. My dad died when I was young, but I remember a few things about him and I try to hang on to the memories. It’s my mom who recently passed away. That was April, five months ago. Losing her has been difficult because, well, she’s my mom. We relied on each other—we’ve always lived together.”

  My mother is gone, she was thinking. Disappeared, forever. How does that happen? How am I supposed to deal with that? With a person’s disappearance? Despite the logical answers. Dust to dust. You speak to a person one day—engage, laugh, cry, whisper, shout, love or not love—and the next day you never see that person again. Nor does anyone else.

  She carried on. “I’m a fitness instructor. I conduct classes for city programs, and those include tai chi and yoga. That’s how I earn my living. But even when I’m working, I can’t stop thinking about the steady stream of caregivers who were in and out of our home at all hours during the final stages of my mother’s life. She died in her own bed. I’m forty years old—I’ll soon be forty-one.” She added that, as if someone had instructed her to reveal her age.

  What Chiyo’s memory was hauling up was the difficult period during which she had shouldered every responsibility on her own—without caregivers—long before outside help was approved and granted by the health system during the last months of her mother’s life. By the time her mother was deemed eligible for nursing-care hours at home, Chiyo was worn out. One morning, a nursing supervisor arrived and announced that she was there to do an assessment of the home situation. She handed Chiyo a form—a full page of questions—and asked her to fill it out, ranking her feelings about any stress she might be under. Chiyo studied the eight questions while the woman stood quietly by her side in the kitchen. Chiyo was aware of the bedroom door ajar behind them, could feel her mother’s eyes watching.

  4. Do you experience frustration while caring for a patient?

  7. Do you feel alone and unsupported while carrying out your responsibilities?

  One question addressed degrees of anger. Another asked her to rank her feelings about interference. Did the patient’s illness interfere with other aspects of her life?

  Leonard. Her classes. Her students. Clients. Her life. Trying to get to a movie once in a while so that she could stay sane. Leonard had fallen away, but Spence had come into her life. Thank heavens for Spence, who could make her laugh, feel loved and wanted, who made her feel beautiful. Thank heavens for tai chi, which helped her to meditate, keep her energy level
up.

  When she looked over the questionnaire that day, she found herself holding back laughter. Laughter or rage—the two at that moment were interchangeable. She stared at the supervisor and handed back the form.

  “No. I won’t be filling this out,” she said, and the woman, to her credit, did not push.

  A soft answer turneth away wrath, Chiyo thought at the time. She had not forgotten the proverb, learned one summer during her teens, when her mother had insisted that Chiyo accompany her to a Bible study group held in the basement of the Anglican church they attended. Chiyo didn’t want to be in the study group, but her mother overruled.

  What would the supervisor standing in her kitchen have done, in any case, with the high-ranking score Chiyo would certainly have totalled up? Anger, stress, frustration. Her score would have revealed outrageous and even dangerous limits. Was anyone prepared to help Chiyo in her caregiving role? No one on the horizon that she could see. Everyone was too busy filling out forms, going from one house to another, complaining about having to keep track of heavy caseloads. The supervisors and coordinators who arrived to do assessments were weary and overworked. Not one of these women—all were women—returned a second time. Burnout must have been high. They were reassigned at a rapid rate, becoming faceless as they replaced one another. Each handed Chiyo a business card for contact information. Chiyo stacked the cards in a teacup. Meanwhile, the caregivers themselves—a more stable group than the supervisors they reported to—carried on with varying degrees of efficiency and self-preservation. One excellent caregiver to whom Chiyo’s mother had taken a liking took three weeks off to return to the Congo, where she was born, but she disappeared inside her homeland and never showed up again on anyone’s radar. The agency was at a loss to explain what had happened to the missing employee.

  Of course, the physical care had been focused on Chiyo’s mother. As it should have been. Chiyo was a casualty of a different kind.

  She looked at the faces around the table; everyone seemed to be waiting for more. Her thoughts were tangling. She was the youngest—she could see that. Would the others understand? Could she even articulate how complicated her relationship with her mother had been? Aware of her vulnerabilities, she decided she’d said enough.

  “Thank you, Chiyo,” said Hazzley. “At forty you’re half my age, more or less. Well, not quite. I’m seventy-seven. And not in any rush to meet my next birthday, coming up in November.”

  “Likewise,” said Tom, who knew the feeling. “I just turned seventy-nine. I’ll be eighty next year. If I can hold off the celebrations—if there are any—I will definitely try.”

  The woman beside Chiyo began to speak softly but did not offer up her age. She was tall and thin, wore no makeup, had ginger tints through the natural grey in her hair. Hazzley thought she might be in her early sixties. Attractive as she was, she wore drab browns and beiges, no jewellery, no other colour. Her back was hunched; she looked down at the table, glanced up and then down again.

  “I’m Gwen. I’m happy to meet everyone.”

  Happiness was not what Hazzley was seeing. The woman looked as if she might bolt. Indeed, she kept eyeing the doorway as if a predator was expected. Hazzley succeeded in making eye contact, and after that, Gwen fixed her gaze on Hazzley’s face and scarcely blinked while speaking. The word “fragile” scurried its signal through Hazzley’s mind. Easily broken, of delicate frame or constitution.

  “I saw your notice that windy day last week,” Gwen went on. “Objects were flying through the air: branches, leaves. Road signs tipped over.”

  Others were remembering. Tom thought of the black bag lodged in the oak. On windy days, the flapping plastic resembled a huge crow with one ragged, beat-up wing. Perpetual motion that yielded no results. The crow was too high for him to dislodge; he’d have to get out the ladder. He’d written a few lines in his notebook on one of those windy days:

  Leaves falling, the sway

  Of earth now felt and seen.

  Is this all we have come to?

  All we have been?

  Hazzley was thinking of geranium petals, an eddy of red swirling about her ankles. She held her gaze steady on Gwen and saw the tightness of her jaw, the neck and facial muscles.

  Gwen carried on. “I decided it would be good to talk to people who’ve had similar experiences. That’s why I’m here. My husband’s name was Brigg.” She looked over at Chiyo. “He, too, died in April. He had a stroke—a devastating stroke. And. Well.” Gwen had lost track of her thoughts. After a pause, she started up again. “The meaning of the name Brigg is ‘dweller by the bridge’—Old English.” She said this with a straight face, perfectly serious, but Hazzley, watching her, sensed irony, or humour, or the threat of humour beneath the surface. “I haven’t dealt with Brigg’s clothes,” said Gwen, making a sudden U-turn. “In his closet, you know. Five months and I haven’t been able to force myself to the task.”

  Tom interjected. “Ida’s, too,” he said. “On shelves, in drawers. Winter boots, ankle boots in the front closet, shoes on the rack. An old church hat with a navy-blue veil. I keep promising myself to get the job done.” He said this wistfully. He was thinking of Ida in hospital the day before she died. Propped against pillows, the head of her bed raised, her skin pale and cool, the low and steady hiss of oxygen administered by means of a nasal cannula. He held her hand and she said, “I’m thankful, Tom. I’m content with the life I’ve lived. I feel blessed that we’ve had so many years together.” Ida had grace; in that moment, she’d been filled with grace. He wanted to weep. Then and now.

  Gwen acknowledged Tom, and continued. “I’m retired now, but I used to work at Spinney’s, the office furniture business over by the ravine. I’m an accountant. I was the company bookkeeper there for years.” A memory darted in: She’d been sent by the manager to take a three-day computer course in the mid-nineties. The class was small, about ten people. The man at the desk beside her in the classroom moved his mouse around like a toy truck. He was in his fifties and thought he was amusing her. He whispered, for her benefit, “Vroom, vroom.”

  “I’m sure I’ve seen you at Spinney’s, Gwen,” said Chiyo. “I bought a desk there last year. And a two-drawer filing cabinet. You look familiar.”

  “I came out to the sales floor occasionally, though most of the time I was in the office,” said Gwen. “I miss work,” she said, abruptly. And added, lest the others think her cold, unforgiving, “And I miss Brigg. I loved him.” She had no explanation for blurting out that unnecessary and untrue piece of information. She stopped because she could think of no further admission to make, true or false. She looked down at the table again, silent.

  “Thanks, Gwen. We have one more person to hear from,” said Hazzley. She looked across the table at someone she was sure she’d seen at Marvin’s checkout. A woman in her forties who looked as if she’d willingly sit down with strangers and listen to their long-drawn-out life stories. A woman who would know how to impart wise counsel about matters of the heart and soul.

  Addie sighed audibly and smiled.

  “I’m Addie,” she said. “I work at the hospital in town—I’m unit manager for the newly expanded Danforth Wing, a busy job. We’ve probably passed each other in a hospital corridor at some time over the years. I seem to have been there forever. Well, not forever, but it feels that way. I applied for the job after deciding it was time to leave Montreal. I graduated from McGill years ago. I’m not a nurse, but my mom was. She was heavy-set and she was tough. She had to be tough because she worked in a psychiatric hospital in Quebec—one of those sprawling Victorian buildings that were erected on fenced-in grounds and housed hundreds of patients on locked wards. So many men and women lived out their final days in those places.”

  What did that have to do with grief? And what did her mother’s weight have to do with anything? Was she stalling? Why was she startled by the fact that each of the others in the group had spoken about someone who had died? Now that she’d mentioned her m
other, maybe the others assumed she was here because of losing a parent. Her mother had died years earlier of complications from what had begun as a blood clot in her leg. She’d had excellent care in Montreal, and Addie had been with her as much as possible, but her mom died suddenly, while supposedly recovering. Now Addie’s father, at seventy-eight, lived comfortably with his new wife in Catalonia, year-round. Addie loved him and saw him every two years. She still grieved her mother, but . . . she was losing track of what she’d intended to say.

  “My dearest friend,” she said. “Sybil.” She could think of nothing else to say without the entire story of the past eight months pouring out. “Breast cancer.” She heard something like a sob coming from herself and felt a hand on her shoulder. Chiyo, the young woman to her right. The personal trainer. A brief but reassuring touch. Soothing.

  “She was a professor of nursing and worked in Montreal, but after she had surgery, she quit her job and moved home to Greenley, where she grew up. She had to move back in with her mother. She and I were friends from our first day at McGill, when we were just starting out.”

  “It’s terrible to lose a good friend,” said Chiyo.

  Hazzley added, “I’m so sorry, Addie.”

  What had just happened? Her closest friend was dying, not dead. Addie lowered her head, horrified at the mistake, at describing Sybil in the past tense. She could hardly correct herself now, could she? When you lie, quote a distant witness.

  “Sounds as if we’ve all dealt with the illnesses of our loved ones—some for short periods, some long,” said Hazzley. “Short or long, the stress of this takes its toll.”

  What have I done? Addie asked herself. I didn’t actually say that Sybil has died. Everything else I said was true. If she were only here, in Wilna Creek. But that would be selfish, to move her away from her mother and her family. And Greenley’s hospital does have palliative care, which we don’t have here. She’s going to need that type of care—all too soon. And now the people around this table believe she’s dead.