“Family,” Tom told him. “No b. Though I can see how the word can be heard that way.”
“Thank you, Toe-mas. I need to learn the small things about language as much as the big.”
“And how was your dinner out?” Tom hid his surprise at the sharing of personal news.
“The food, yes, fine. But tell me, Toe-mas, why must pork be pulled? Why must peas be smashed before they take their place on a menu in a restaurant that is said to be special? I am happy to be in this country, but smashing peas and pulling pork . . . well. I did not order pork, Toe-mas. I did not order smashed peas.”
“But you did eat something?”
“Arctic char, excellent fish. I did not complain about pork and peas. Those I read from the menu. We drank to the health of my son-in-law. I told stories to the children. Laughter on all faces is good. But later, after we returned to my daughter’s home, after everyone was sleeping, I sat by myself in the kitchen and thought of my father, how he roasted lamb outside, over a firepit. How he told many stories. That was long ago, in our village when I was a boy. Later, we moved to Aleppo. My father died there, age eighty-three, before the present troubles began. There have been many periods of trouble in my country’s history. When I was a child, my father showed me . . . things he wanted me to know.”
Allam looked toward the ceiling and rubbed the back of his hand beneath his chin before he went on.
“He showed me how to make the fire, how to slaughter and roast lamb. How to negotiate with others. To believe that learning is important. To know and remember the past. How can we go to the future if we don’t know our past?” Allam extended his arms as if the past might swoop in and land on his open hands. But the hands pulled back. He closed his eyes. “I was blessed to have a good father who lived many years. Others from my village were not so fortunate.”
In companionable silence, the two men contemplated their separate pasts.
“He taught me steelth, Toe-mas.”
Which Tom interpreted as “stealth,” recalling how silently and abruptly Allam came in and out of the shop.
And just as abruptly, with no prompting, he found himself sharing the only story he owned about his own father. The one first-hand story he had to tell.
“My father was a soldier during the war. He was sent off for training just before I was born. Any detail I knew of him was from a single photograph. Brown and white . . . well, sepia, actually. My mother told me that my father left Wilna Creek on a train, and later in the year, he embarked on a ship in Halifax to cross the ocean. He did not return home after the completion of his training. She told me no stories about him, no history. The only clue to his existence was the framed photograph of him in uniform, propped on my mother’s bedroom dresser. All this seems strange to me now, of course. We boarded in behind Ross and Main, with an older friend of my mother’s. I suppose I didn’t think about other belongings that might have been, or perhaps should have been, in the two rooms that were ours. My father had been born in northern England, border country, and we never met any of his family. As it turned out, they didn’t know we existed.
“I had never seen this man except in the photograph, which I looked at with occasional interest. Few of my friends had fathers at home. I knew the man in the photograph was ‘fighting overseas,’ because that’s where men disappeared to during the war. They were invisible, but they were ‘fighting overseas.’ The families on our street were made up of grandparents and mothers and children. There were old men and teenage boys, but hardly any men of fighting age.
“And then, on a sunny day in October 1945, when I was six years old, everything changed. I remember leaves whirling through the air. I remember the sun’s warmth—even in the crispness of fall. Much like weather we have here in Wilna Creek. Golden leaves were scattered across the grass and along the edges of the sidewalk. When the leaves were spread out like that, I shuffled my way through them and told myself I was walking on the sun. The leaves had to be raked—that was a boy’s job, my job. I see the outline of the leaves now; I see everything so vividly. I recall this detail because in the midst of the scene, a tall man, a stranger I had never before laid eyes on, walked into my yard. He was wearing a uniform, and he picked me up and held me high in the air and said my name. He put me down again and reached into his tunic pocket and pulled forth two gifts. Both were for me. One was a brown leather wallet. The other was a crinkly package of Planters peanuts. He put these gifts in my hands and told me he was my father.
“I was awed by the presence of this man called Father, by the gifts, by his sudden appearance, by the uniform. And then I remembered the photo, which wasn’t exactly this man, but maybe almost like him. I went running and jumping down the street, kicking through the leaves, shouting out to my friends who were playing in their front yards and on the sidewalk. ‘My daddy’s home! Come and see what he brought me! See my wallet! Look at the bag of peanuts, Planters peanuts!’ Everything, every detail of that afternoon, is imprinted on my memory. And when—or if—I think of this, the scene is always enacted as if it took place only moments ago.
“My father was home for two days before he disappeared a second time. He went away, left us—my mother and me—and never came back. The wallet, the peanuts—these are my sad, my deep memories. Running down the street, kicking aside the leaves, shouting out because my father had miraculously appeared. I did not know that within days, he would just as miraculously disappear.
“There was another woman. Of course, another woman. A second family in another country. England, as we found out. Maybe he had other children, I don’t know. I might have had—might still have—brothers and sisters. I never saw him again. Nor did my mother. She had to try to get support; that’s the way she found out about his other wife. Things like that happened during the war. I learned about similar situations later; these were not unheard of. But we never talked about this out loud. My mother was bitter, angry. I was not permitted to say his name, to ask questions.”
Tom remembered finding his mother in the kitchen with two other women from the street, all three slumped on hard-back chairs in tight-lipped silence when he entered the room.
Allam was listening closely. “You have told this story to others?”
“Only Ida, my late wife. There wasn’t much to say. The memory was painful. Is painful.”
“Yes. There would be pain. Our fathers are important.”
“I knew, if we ever had a son, I would be present in his life.”
“You have a son?”
“Yes, in Edmonton. He was here a few weeks ago. Ida and I named him Will, after my mother’s father. My grandfather, William Murray, was an honourable man. He was strong, and he was protective of my mother and me. Every summer, we spent time with him and my grandmother in Nova Scotia. He set an example as a father figure. I was determined that I would do the same when the time came. I knew this from childhood; that’s when I made up my mind. At seven years old, I decided that not only would I find myself a wife when the time came, but I would have a family and be a father. I intended to be a good one. I thought about this for a long time when I was a small child. Even at seven, I was considering how I might find a wife.”
Both men smiled at this.
“You were learning to measure your decisions, Toe-mas. A good sign.”
Allam got up from his chair and wandered about the shop for several minutes. He returned and placed both hands on the desk.
“I have been thinking about an idea. A question I would like to ask.”
“Fire away.”
“What do you do with ordinary items that people use every day? Items that have little value in an antique store such as this.”
“In the shed around back. At the moment, it’s more than half full. Sometimes I’m forced to purchase an entire lot when I’m at an estate sale. A lot of the items are just memorabilia, not antiques. Do you have something in mind?”
“There are newcomers to this city who have not many belongings. Have you
thought of donation?”
“I’ve donated in the past. Actually, I’m no longer buying or accepting large furniture because I have only my Jeep, out front. It holds more than you’d think, but not really large items. I used to own a small truck, and that was pretty useful. After I reduced the size of the shop, I had no further need. The Jeep transports pretty much everything.”
“I could tell you of a place where there is a need for ordinary items—what you call memorabilia.”
“If you bring in finds like the old chair over there”—Tom gestured—“I’ll be happy to join you in emptying the shed from time to time. As well as paying a commission when you find such beautiful pieces—if I can sell them. Or if you bring in a buyer. That, too, might happen.”
“That sounds good, Toe-mas.”
Allam headed for the door.
“And by the way,” Tom said, “take the second key with you.”
A Normal Life
ADDIE
Before leaving for work, Addie sipped at her coffee while listening to Haydn’s First Symphony. She was thinking about what she had walked into at Cassie’s over the past several weeks. And willingly. She enjoyed talking to the people who turned up at the meetings. Each person so different. She just wasn’t convinced that she belonged. She liked Hazzley, the organizer. Capable, experienced, someone who’d been through ups and downs across a span of decades. She liked Chiyo, in whom she detected wry humour, an alertness that appealed. A woman unafraid of her own feelings; someone older than her years, who could take action when action was called for. She’d probably had to assume family responsibilities at an early age.
Haydn’s tempo was too quick so early in the morning, and Addie’s ears objected to the overabundance, the surfeit of intent. In her mind’s eye, she saw courtiers flinging themselves in circles, violinists racing on tiptoes, horns blaring, the entire Haydn assemblage making unexpected stops and starts. An assault on her revved-up brain. She switched off the radio. Felt the sudden collapse into silence. Good.
Peace was good.
She would make a quick omelette for breakfast, no toast. She liked breakfast, needed to eat before starting her hospital day. But she had to lose weight, too. One egg or two? She began to bargain, accustomed to inner debate. “I’m not the kind of person who eats whites only or yolks only,” she said aloud. “That seems extreme, even bizarre. Eat the egg or don’t. No, this is a question of quantity: one egg or two. Fat content? Eggs are a wonder food, aren’t they? Like blueberries, wild sockeye salmon. Don’t forget the vitamins in one egg. Oh, give it up. Whisk two eggs and be done with it.” She pushed away the idea of diet, but only for the moment. She had made a promise to herself and would honour the promise. Maybe.
She checked the time, turned up the heat under the pan, looked through her kitchen window. The smoker was on her balcony, puffing away in her blue-black pyjamas, a fixed bruise on the side of the building opposite. Exhaled smoke was spirited away by errant gusts of wind. One balcony below the smoker, a pair of armchair rockers made of cocoa-coloured cane tipped back and forth in tandem, an empty-chair dance. At ground level, a bright-yellow crosswalk, painted across pavement, resembled a ladder laid out horizontally, tapered at one end. A vanishing point perceived from above.
Addie looked off in the distance toward a silhouette of undulating hills. Clouds had gathered in a moody, broody sky. September and October could be unpredictable: windy, sunny, sometimes cool, sometimes sweltering. Tom, at the most recent Tuesday meeting, had lamented the humid days of summer they’d all endured, and then he’d quoted Keats. Addie had learned the same poem, “To Autumn,” at school in Quebec, long ago.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.
The hospital wing where Addie worked was air-conditioned, but she’d walked home in the heat one evening, along Main Street, in an effort to be serious about exercise. She remembered her clothes being soaked in perspiration, the sensation of wading to her thighs in a warm, soupy sea. Without thinking, she’d kicked her right leg out to the side to disentangle her twisted underwear. Having done this, she looked around, knowing that if she’d been seen by anyone, she’d have been judged comical, unfeminine, unwomanly. Why should she care? Well, she did care, she reminded herself. It’s just that she couldn’t care right now. During that same humid spell, she had been out on her balcony after dusk one evening, sipping at a glass of Scotch, thinking about Sybil, thinking about work. She wondered what people in the building opposite saw—or imagined they saw—when they looked across or down at her. A doughy specimen with arms and legs, stuck to the side of cement like a flat figure on a felt board. The specimen raising one arm in strong drink. “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said aloud.
She stepped back, away from the window. She wasn’t so plump, surely. She had to get a grip on her life, that was all. She tilted the omelette onto her plate and, still standing, dug in with a fork. She took a last sip of coffee and admitted to herself that there were days and nights when she wanted to call Tye. Come back, she would say. I need to lie beside you, talk, tell what is important to me right now. I need to be close. But Tye didn’t know about the weight she’d put on. She’d have to lose a dozen pounds before any meeting with him. Buy a couple of flattering outfits. Stop worrying about her thighs sticking to chair seats in summer heat.
How could any of this matter? Tye was in Montreal and she was in Wilna Creek, and there wasn’t going to be a meeting. She was running on overload: she had information about new privacy laws to disseminate, meetings, obligations, departmental concerns about security of staff and patients, long drives back and forth to Greenley. The utter and complete responsibility for Sybil’s care on weekends. Not to mention the way Sybil’s mother looked to Addie as if she alone could save Sybil. And of course, she could not.
Addie had not lived a normal life for a long time. She had to dig back in memory to think what that might mean. Life as normal, before everything was put on hold while she began to help care for her friend. Nothing she did anymore added up to what she was used to—her routine, she supposed. But what exactly was on hold? Maybe the days she was putting in did add up to normality of sorts. Working, holding meetings, managing staff, being on call, driving, waiting for news, bracing herself for one more request by phone or text.
She thought of her late mother’s professional life. What about that norm, the parental norm? Leaving home every day to work on a locked ward where an obsessive-compulsive man stuffed his pyjama pants with toilet paper every half hour, was chased out of the ward bathrooms, only to duck back in behind a stall when the nurses were occupied so he could refill his pyjamas again. Where a man hanged himself in the shower on an evening shift. Where a female patient in a manic state threw a brass sculpture at the wall of her room, creating a dent the size of her head. Where one of the permanent night nurses, as disturbed as the patients she cared for, gave up all pretense of practising her profession and slept behind a glass cage at the nurses’ desk through most of her shift. She neglected everyone and everything but her need for sleep, chin propped on a stack of phone directories, reference texts and a thick vademecum, the total of which held her head upright so that the night supervisor, passing by at the end of the corridor, would see, through a narrow barred window in the door at the end of the hall, the nurse’s profile and believe she was hard at work over her charts. The supervisor did have a key to the locked psych ward, but she refused to enter because several months earlier she’d been threatened by a patient with a gun. And though the gun turned out to be a plastic toy, the supervisor would no longer do her night rounds directly inside the ward. She’d had quite enough.
Those were some of the stories Addie had been told. Her mother took the work conditions in stride and carried on. She was used to dealing with danger, with the bizarre and u
nexpected. Addie recalled how her mother had always been positive, searching for ways to help. An optimist, because she could make things happen. She was trusted by people around her, and she was tough.
But her mother had also puzzled over ordinary moments, over normality. Addie remembered how she had talked about her basic nursing education, about living in residence for three years.
“Just before Christmas,” her mom told her during one of their drives home at the end of the day, “the head nurse on the ward I was assigned to for three months happened to mention that she’d be spending her holidays with a group of yodellers. She was unmarried, about fifty. I was eighteen years old and couldn’t reconcile what I saw as her two lives. All that starch and poise on the job. She was strict, demanding. And there we were, in a structured, dignified setting governed by rules and decorum, always with people’s lives on the line, and she was going off somewhere at Christmas to yodel and bellow and holler, or whatever yodellers do. I never saw her in quite the same way after that. My eighteen-year-old and obviously limited imagination couldn’t grant her a separate private life. I thought the image of her yodelling was preposterous.”
Addie was aware of the fact that her mother had not been ordinary in the slightest. She was sturdy and strong, could roll up her sleeves and do what had to be done. That was her legacy to Addie. Do what has to be done. Addie secretly believed that her mother charged headlong into fraught situations because she knew that if she had to, she could wring someone’s neck as easily as she could wring water out of sheets in the laundry room when the mangle was broken. If anyone even used a mangle anymore. Apparently, her mom had, because she’d mentioned mangles more than a few times.
The Company We Keep Page 12
