The Company We Keep

by Frances Itani

  She had also held strong opinions about issues of personal cleanliness. Under the parental eye, Addie as a young child was frequently reminded: “Scrub those dirty elbows.” Even now, close to fifty, she sometimes found herself pointing her elbows at the mirror after a shower and checking for unlikely grooves of dirt. As for the navel, her mother insisted, “There’s no such thing as a child with a clean belly button.” All the same, despite the demands for cleanliness, she’d been a caring and loving parent. Capable, Addie thought. My mom was entirely capable. She could be relied upon. My God, how I miss her. And Father somehow created a balance to all of that. He loved her, too. He missed her after she died, I know he did. Maybe he still does, even though he has a new wife. All the possibilities. Maybe Tye and I should have had children. We talked about adopting, but never did.

  At that thought, Addie fought against the urge to contact Tye, to pick up the phone. Tye was aware of Sybil’s illness because Addie had informed him after the initial surgery in January. She could provide him with an update; that could be her excuse to call now. She watched her hand reach for the receiver. Willed it back.

  She was on a difficult path. Headed toward—whatever lay ahead. Sybil was not going to get better. That was a certainty. Maybe, just maybe, belonging to this small group at Cassie’s would be helpful. Addie reminded herself that the others believed Sybil was dead. Too late now to correct her story, and maybe the order of events wasn’t going to matter anyway. What she was dealing with was the tragedy of Sybil losing her life. Tragedy for Sybil. Tragedy for Addie, who would lose her. Was already losing her, because Sybil was turning away, turning toward something only she could see.

  But what could she tell the others in the group if she did admit that Sybil was alive? That versions of grief had been stampeding through her head during that first meeting?

  Grief was complicated. People grieved when they fought with siblings, when grudges were held, when they didn’t receive an expected inheritance, when they finally understood that their childhood years could never be set right. They grieved severed relationships, marriages that broke down or were abandoned. They grieved loss of hearing, of eyesight, of damaged or missing limbs. They grieved for hundreds, thousands of reasons—as many as the human brain could invent. And what about refugees who’d recently moved to Wilna Creek? Over the past two years, fourteen Syrian families had been sponsored by local citizens. Addie was a member of one of the sponsor groups. The Syrians had been forced to leave relatives, villages, towns, their entire culture. Some admitted to grieving openly when they left the refugee camps, even though they’d lived an uncertain and dangerous existence. They had become accustomed to being in limbo. Later, they grieved all over again when they arrived in Canada, even though they were glad to be here and to be safe.

  Addie was grieving because Sybil was suffering. She was doing her best to face up to the difficulty of looking to the near future and imagining life without her dearest friend. The travellers on this journey, all the travellers—Sybil’s mom, her brother and his wife, Addie, other members of Sybil’s extended family—had begun a slow march toward some sort of open pit that would be created by Sybil’s absence.

  She thought of the letters again. A more relaxed time during her friend’s “good” period—a heartbreakingly short remission.

  For the past month, I have been a lady of leisure. My blood work is good. My stamina improves daily. I firmly believe that the capacity to treat this disease lies within my own body. My responsibility to my body is to mobilize resources and allow it to cure itself.

  Addie, it truly is a new experience not to be under the stress of work all the time. Even though I was aware of pushing myself continuously, it had never really occurred to me just what that meant. My life has changed dramatically. Absolutely no pressure—and to be honest, not a situation conducive to productivity. Some days I believe that if I were any less productive, I’d cease to be classified as human.

  Addie checked the time, irritated to realize she’d be late for an early morning meeting. This was going to be a long day. She had to leave directly from work in the afternoon to drive to Greenley because Sybil was being moved from her mother’s home to the palliative care wing at the health centre. Addie had promised to be there to help her take that step. The family needed support during the transition.

  Some of us really are perpetual caregivers, she thought. Do these roles land on us because they’re predestined? Is there a gene that doles out instructions for caregiving? Because I have certainly noticed that caregivers make up one strip of society. The needy lean. Heavily, at times. If one caregiver turns away, a replacement will be found. Because the needy will always be . . . well, needy. But caregivers seldom turn away. We allow the leaning because we are perpetual caregivers. And we are mostly—but not always—women.

  Despite being entirely worn out, Addie could not imagine herself turning away from Sybil’s needs. She could not remember a time when she’d walked through her days with so little energy. Thinking about this, she recalled a Cambridge study that had moved across her desk earlier in the year: about genes playing a role in empathy. Sure enough, several months later, an Oxford study contradicted. Neither one was going to alter Addie’s course at this particular moment.

  She glanced at the clock one more time, scooped up her papers and, in double time, headed for the car. She checked herself, and slowed deliberately. She was thinking of Tye again. Vaut mieux arriver en retard qu’en corbillard, he’d once warned. Better to arrive late than in a hearse.

  Madame Levesk. She still enjoyed the title. She and Tye had made an effort to learn Portuguese phrases from their building superintendent in the early years of their marriage. The man had enthusiastically shared his language, and Addie could still haul up a few words and expressions: Como vai?—How are you? Adeus—Goodbye. Tenho saudades daqueles tempos—I miss those times. Desculpe—I’m sorry.

  Who was sorry? She. Tye.

  Tye carried on with his life, as did she. The last time Addie phoned, a woman answered. For heaven’s sake, she told herself. That could have been the voice of a neighbour, friend, cleaning woman, landlady. And so what if someone else lives with him now? Is that my business? Qui va à la chasse perd sa place. Move your feet, lose your seat.

  Addie had dated a man named Henrik after her split with Tye, but briefly. Henrik told her he was a scientist and had to leave the city during the summer, to conduct fieldwork. His project at the time was to determine the population of mice in certain wooded areas. So he went off to do his fieldwork counting mice, taking an assistant with him. He carefully explained the procedure to Addie before he departed. He and his assistant spread peanut butter on small plywood boards that were then set on the ground around trees and undergrowth in a given area. A day later, the two returned, collected the boards and counted tiny turds so they could estimate the population and tabulate results. The woods were divided into sections, and each of these had to be accounted for, given the known range of the movement of mice.

  Addie learned that peanut-butter-smeared boards weren’t the only ones Henrik set out. After another absence from the city, he confessed that he was a Stompin’ Tom Connors fan and made stompin’ boards from plywood, and then—uninvited—presented the planed and polished boards to the singer at his dressing-room door. That is, if Tom happened to have a dressing room. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes the stompin’ board was presented before, sometimes after a performance. Henrik was a one-person groupie.

  Their relationship ended fairly quickly. She’d confessed to Sybil that she couldn’t deal with the obsessions of Henrik, whom she’d begun to think of as Plywood Man.

  Now, after several years of separation, Addie still dreamed of Tye. In the most recent dream, her father had entered from the side, knowing she was upset but unable to comfort her directly. He stood with shoulders drooped, wearing slippers, a kind of shuffling position. Not at all the way she pictured her energetic father in Spain. In the d
ream, he would not or could not face her directly. She knew that he cared for her and Tye, and that he was sorry the marriage had not survived. The morning after the dream, she phoned her father in Sitges but didn’t mention Tye or the dream. Had she done so, her father might have thought she was losing control.

  Control was necessary, yes. She’d learned control long ago from her capable mother. Addie had inherited the caregiving role. It had definitely been passed on through the genes. But what was she to tell the Tuesday night group about Sybil?

  Nothing, she decided. For the moment, she had enough to face on her own.

  Backroom at Cassie’s

  Before the discussion started, they purchased drinks in the main part of the café—group decision—and carried them to the backroom. This week, there was an air of familiarity, the mood slightly jovial. Perhaps, in part, because of the extra person. At the second meeting, Tom had mentioned a friend who might be joining, and he’d been encouraged to bring him along.

  Tom was wearing grey tweed, a steel-blue sweater under his jacket. His glasses needed cleaning. Allam, with ceremony, with solemnity, shook hands and repeated each name as he was introduced.

  Gwen, in a shapeless black turtleneck over black pants, no jewellery, no adornments, sat at the table with her decaf latte and silently admired Cassie’s centrepiece of oak leaves circling a small but brilliantly orange pumpkin. How did nature manage a colour so perfect for the waning season of fall? She wondered about Rico’s response to colour. Was he attracted to orange? In her search for information, she’d read that certain parrots refused to eat any food that was red. Others refused food chopped a particular way. Like humans, parrots had idiosyncrasies, likes, dislikes. But surely they had colour vision; eyesight was their prime feature. Why would they be adorned with spectacular shades of their own if not to attract one another, mate, stake out territory, be seen? She would do more reading in that direction. Her thoughts continued to drift.

  Allam, the new person, was seated beside her. She looked over and then away. He was almost the same height as Tom, who had introduced him, but Allam was slightly wider in the shoulders, bulkier. His hair was dark and thick at the back, but with whorls of grey. He slipped off his jacket and Gwen was certain she could smell autumn wind on his sleeves as he draped it over the back of the chair. She wondered how Layamon the priest would have described autumn wind in 1200. Maybe he had, and another chronicle was lying in a monastery somewhere in England or France, still undiscovered.

  Addie was looking around at the others and thinking, Let’s stretch our boundaries, push into ever-widening circles. She liked the way Allam joined in with a tone of earnestness that could not be feigned. Each word spoken as if it was of vital importance and equal to every other word. She wondered if anything Allam expressed would ever be considered lightweight. Probably not—but then she thought better of this. Why wouldn’t he have lightweight thoughts, the same as anyone else? She wondered if he was from Syria. She didn’t recognize him from the sponsoring group with which she was affiliated, or from any social gathering at which new Syrian families had been present. Not that she’d attended many. At the last, held at a church hall, she’d watched five or six children laugh and shout as they took turns riding a bicycle in circles around a small courtyard. Inside, she’d spoken with a group of women who surrounded her, ambushing her with questions. They were perpetually trying to make sense of new ways of doing almost everything. Addie was recognized as a problem-solver, partly because she’d managed to persuade the hospital to hire two Syrians: a man, a woman. They were doing basic jobs—laundry and kitchen—but they had full-time hours, a foot in the door. Four feet in the door.

  Hazzley, delighted to have a sixth member seated at the round table, was reminded of the weekend crossword: idiolect, speech habits peculiar to a particular person. She listened closely to Allam’s purposeful pronunciation. “I am honoured to be part of this company,” he announced as they took their seats. And from that moment, he referred to the group as “the company.” No one thought of themselves as a member of a company, but no one objected, either.

  Company of Good Cheer, Tom said to himself. Or more correctly, Order of Good Cheer. He called up history, Champlain’s tedious and difficult winters at Port-Royal in the early 1600s. Champlain—or someone in his company—must have come up with L’Ordre de Bon Temps to fend off bad times, sad times, confinement magnified to a state that could lead to madness. Alleviated, supposedly, by the bountiful supply of moose and woodland caribou and small game; by storytelling, singing and merriment after the meal. Maybe those men four hundred years ago had a handle on events in life that were worthy of celebration. Maybe there was that much contrast between cheer and the stark conditions that threatened survival.

  Tom was feeling cheered for another reason: the day’s transactions at Rigmarole. After some delay, the couple he’d contacted about the papier mâché chair had arrived that morning and purchased both chair and tray, two substantial sales. He was sorry Allam had not been present to see the appreciation on their faces. He wondered now if his friend would pull out an interesting fact or two for this group—this company. The man had an unending supply.

  Chiyo was thinking, Tragic hero, Letters from Iwo Jima. The new member of our “company” is about the same age as Ken Watanabe. Allam has tragedy written all over him, but he’s not a brooding presence. She and Spence had gone to see the brooding Watanabe in the recent film Bel Canto. Some scenes were difficult to watch. When violence was portrayed, she closed her eyes.

  A company, Gwen said to herself. A pandemonium of parrots. She knew how much racket one parrot could make. No surprise that a company of parrots was also known as a pandemonium. Maybe someday, she would be fortunate enough to see and hear a company of parrots in their natural habitat.

  Not very likely.

  She had nothing to contribute. She waited for the discussion to begin and looked to Hazzley, who was ready to take up the reins of leadership.

  “We’re glad to have your company,” Hazzley told Allam. “Tom probably told you that the reason we meet is because all of us have experienced loss of some kind recently. Grief in our lives. Though that’s not the only topic we discuss. We talk about anything, everything.”

  Allam nodded. “Yes, Toe-mas has explained.”

  “Do you live in this area, Allam?” This was Addie.

  “Close enough to walk,” he said. “But tonight I am in the car with Toe-mas. I have been in Wilna Creek not yet one year, and I live with my daughter’s family. They arrived three years past, and together we rent a house. The house is having an extra bedroom, even for me. Someday I will have my own place. I can’t forever live with my daughter. Of course, she would not ask me to leave.” He tossed his head back and laughed as if the idea were preposterous.

  “At my daughter’s, we have more space than we have known before. I was in a refugee camp in Turkey, near the border. I was sponsored by my daughter, who left Syria before me. She went with her family, also through Turkey.” Allam shrugged. “Life is good now, but in the past, not so much. And we don’t forget the people left behind. In camps—thousands, hundreds of thousands. In Lebanon, close to one million Syrian people are registered with UNHCR, the agency for refugees.” He stopped. “Many more would leave if there was a way of doing this.”

  This was more information than he’d previously shared. Perhaps Tom hadn’t asked the right questions. But he had respected Allam’s privacy, believing that a man said what he had to say when ready to speak. And hadn’t Allam also respected Tom’s privacy? The two men did not approach subjects head-on. Information was gleaned in small bits, like the stories about their fathers. Knowledge was built incrementally. Sometimes facts were given, sometimes not. And yet, knowledge was what Allam was all about. Before his life changed in ways he couldn’t have imagined.

  “In Syria, people disappeared,” Allam was saying, his voice rising. “People I knew most of my life. Not seen again. During the worst fighting, w
hen I was in Aleppo, we heard rumours about a body lying face down in the street. Or maybe three bodies in sprawl somewhere. Someone saw this, or spied through ruins of a building or through a doorway before running to get away. Rumours spread house to house, one family to another. The bodies disappeared. Some were never found. Many in our area were killed when barrel bombs were dropped from helicopters. No one was safe. My grandchildren stopped going to school. We had no electricity, no running water. People left quietly in the night. They passed through checkpoints, sometimes paying much money, and escaped to another country. My daughter and her family arrived at safety. I was glad when word came to me from Turkey.”

  There was a long pause, and everyone sat quietly, waiting.

  “My wife,” he said softly. “Killed when a bomb destroyed the building where she visited to help a neighbour. Her body was one that disappeared. Before my daughter left the country. Now my wife does not exist. We gave up our hope of finding—as you say—the remains of her.” He looked at no one. He stared straight ahead. “After that, there was nothing left in that place for me.”

  Hazzley saw effort, intention. He had spoken these words of loss before and stowed them away. As he did now. Deep sadness, private place, private space. But he had shared that much, and shared with strangers. Hazzley thought of the capacity, the reservoir each person carried inside. She turned the idea over in her mind. With no warning, up from the deep well, up from the reservoir came grief.

  Allam broke his own silence, his voice strong again.

  “My daughter is speaking English,” he said. “She is speaking well because she studied English in university, before the war. Now, in our new country, she works, but she reads at the noon meal or after her children are in bed. She and friends at her work talk about books they borrow and lend. She told me about a book by a Canadian woman. A friend gave her stories to read about one family. In the stories, when a man dies, after the funeral service the women roll down the hill by the graveyard. Not the men—only women, when one of their men dies. Each woman lies flat and crosses her arms over her chest and rolls. Over hard earth and rock and stone and sticks, whatever is there.