Winning Chance

by Katherine Koller

  Then Frank handed her off to his brother Oscar.

  “Where have you been all my life?”

  “I feel like I’ve just been born,” Violet said, contained in Oscar’s arms.

  That June night, thirty-seven years ago, remained magic. Although she had fallen for Frank, Oscar was the best man. There was no other way to stay close to Frank.

  But ever since Edna died on the operating table in a botched delivery that also took their only and late-conceived infant, Frank had turned inward. He rarely spoke in those twenty years. Oscar had discussed farm matters at the table when he was alive, but now Violet carried the supper conversation. She prickled over the butcher’s wife, who slid up her beef prices after the Mad Cow crisis. Considering Frank had been a rancher and he still had all his own teeth, choice meat remained Violet’s most extravagant expenditure. Good thing Frank was out of the business. After so many drought years, ranching was like asking for a heart condition.

  Frank went on buttering Violet’s home-baked bread as the oven timer chimed the pie golden brown ready. Violet let it ding. Frank did not react. She doubted that his relatively large ears heard anything at all.

  His eyes often stared off, his face turned away from her confessions—as if gazing at a sunset. Violet always assumed he dreamed about Edna. Violet missed her sister, too. Yet Violet never pined for Oscar. He had provided well, but would be unconcerned about the children run amok and five grandkids in unstable circumstances in Grande Prairie and Lethbridge. And leave it to Violet to solve, as he did any other non-farm problem, like leaky faucets, loose doorknobs, or sex.

  She made the tea and cooled the pie on the sill. Violet would never barge in on her children’s messy lives, especially now, but she wanted to travel, explore the world. But how, with foreign languages and currency? What was needed was a travelling partner, and it wouldn’t hurt if that person were a man. Who wanted to get bothered by the Latin element? Then there were the purse snatchers. She longed to ask Frank to be her companion to Europe or Egypt or, dare she, the Taj Mahal temple of love.

  Frank moved to the chesterfield for a lie-down, his habit after a satisfying supper. He picked up a brochure from Sunset Travel for Single Seniors. She’d left it open, enticingly, to the Italian Alps. She, at fifty-five, qualified, and so did Frank, at sixty-two.

  They could take a tour but later break off from the group, be free of any timetable and wander. Lips might flap, but so what? But how to ask Frank? A letter was too formal, like a contract, and Violet had no time for lawyers after what they pried out of Oscar’s once decent-sized estate.

  If Frank would see a doctor about his hearing, then she could discuss her plan with him. Violet thought of putting something in Frank’s stew to make his stomach upset enough to go to Emergency, but she dismissed that idea as a waste of fine beef.

  Since Oscar died, Frank fixed the fence or mended Violet’s cupboard as was his pleasure before a hearty meal. The night he worked on her rain barrel, Violet was transferring gravy to a boat when Frank hurried in to run water over his hand. Violet turned off her oven and stove.

  “That’s a deep cut.” She wrapped it with a clean dishtowel and made him elevate his hand. “I’m taking you to the clinic.” She pulled him by the elbow to her car.

  Frank growled. “Uh-uh.”

  “It’s going to need stitches. And a tetanus shot.”

  After the hand was stitched up, Violet asked the doctor to please look in Frank’s ears. The doctor showed Frank the otoscope, demonstrated what she would do with her own ear, and then investigated his.

  “Balls the size of marbles.” She instructed Violet on how to melt the wax.

  Frank looked worried. Violet firmly took his sinewy arm without the hurt hand and led him to the pharmacy.

  That evening, Frank ate his overdone prime rib with a tilted head to keep the drops in the right ear. Before serving the rice pudding, Violet put cotton balls in that ear and Frank tilted the other way. While he reclined on the couch, Violet flushed out the melted wax from both ears with the water bulb. After the fourth day of eardrops and warm water, Violet clapped her hands behind Frank’s head. Frank startled, then smiled. And began to talk in that dark rummy voice.

  “Violet, what have I missed?”

  “Oh, Frank. Never mind. Let’s look ahead, not back.”

  “That’s all right by me. Except to say that was a tasty roast duck tonight, Violet.”

  Her name again. Nothing enraptured her more.

  “I look forward to tomorrow,” he said.

  But he didn’t go to Violet’s the next night or many after because when everyone found out about Frank talking again, naturally they invited him over. They lined up as if for the sphinx, to hear his resonant voice. He told stories about his ranch, played cards at the seniors’ centre, and sang in the church choir. The ladies trilled at his bass under their soprano. Violet took to phoning Frank to tell him what was on for supper. If he had other plans, she put the meat back in the freezer and opened a tin of soup.

  Frank went in to get his stitches removed by the same doctor.

  “Frank, when was your last physical?”

  “Not since after I married.”

  His bridge game wasn’t for another hour so he let her take his pulse and pressure and order a few routine tests.

  He joked, “Am I fit for love?”

  “Are you thinking of remarrying?”

  “I’d sure like to dance again.”

  “We better have a listen to your heart, then.”

  The doctor counselled Frank to live his life. There was not much to be done but to keep a healthy diet and exercise.

  “The choir singing, especially.”

  Frank called Violet right away.

  “Vi, what’s on tonight?”

  Only Edna had ever called her Vi. Her nickname in Frank’s voice raced to her heart and kindled there. For the second time in her life, she felt Frank open her up to new potential, but the flame was now fire.

  After a hurried mental scan of her freezer, “Sweet and sour ribs,” she said.

  “Can’t resist your ribs. I’ll be over early to finish that rain barrel.”

  “I better get cracking. See you soon, Frank.”

  “Bye, Vi.”

  Violet’s haste heated up her own kitchen. For a little extravagance, Violet added saffron to the rice and hot peppers in the sweet and sour. For dessert, to counteract the heat in the main, lemon meringue pie from scratch. She made it right after getting the ribs in so it could set and chill.

  Violet held the back door open. “Thanks, Frank. Grand to get that job done. Summer’s going to be a hot one.”

  “I hope not another drought year.” Frank dried his big hands, the scar pink.

  He had dug her garden last year after the funeral. His hand was healed now, so she could ask, but what if she let the earth go fallow this year? The corn, millet, and sunflowers already poking up from the winter birdseed, couldn’t they take over? Maybe he’d fixed the rain barrel for nothing.

  Frank sat. “Violet.” He said full her name with all the lushness it contained. “I’ve been thinking about a little trip this fall.”

  She almost dropped the casserole dish of spicy ribs on the table before sinking to the chair. Her oven mitts fell to the floor, her hands to her knees, and her eyes to Frank.

  “All year I’ve been reading your travel magazines and, well, you’ve given me a hankering for Europe.” Here he paused, and looked at her with a kind of awe. “If you want, we could go together, two prairie grouse out for a peek at the world?”

  Flattened to her chair, the air pushed out of her soft places, Violet couldn’t breathe. Not yet.

  For once, she was without words. Frank’s hand waited on the table.

  She reached out one smooth work-worn hand and he covered it with his rough scarred on
e. This inflated her lungs, his chest.

  “I’ve waited the whole of twenty years,” he said. “Since I lost Edna.”

  “Thirty-seven for me,” she said, her eyes tearing. Violet was less charitable to the memory of Frank’s brother, but she kept regrets about Oscar to herself.

  “I suspected it. But not until Edna went, then Oscar, could I—”

  “I know. The same for me.” Violet had loved her sister, too. But after Edna died, Violet allowed herself to love Frank. She never let on to Oscar, but she dreamed, in private, out on her walks, a secret pebble in her shoe, loving one man and married to his brother. But after Oscar, her heart was free to go where it wanted. That’s when she’d started with the travel brochures.

  And suddenly she understood her own children’s struggles. It was simple. They had each fallen for someone else. They had the means. They also had the guts to make changes.

  And so did she. She rose from the table, pulled Frank up into a secure embrace, then a kiss that lasted so long that they had to sit down on the chesterfield, breathless.

  It was some time before they dug into the sweet and sour ribs. The heat had held in the covered casserole. The extra spice made them hungry for more. They forgot about the pie until three in the morning, propped up by many pillows, and ate directly from the pie plate with one fork.

  “Before your hearing came back, when you gazed off to the corner, Frank, what were you thinking about?”

  “I was trying to hear what you said. My ear to your face.”

  The August morning of their departure, the taxi arrived minutes early.

  “He’s here,” Violet called to Frank in the basement.

  Violet hurried to rinse the breakfast dishes. Frank turned off the main water tap, and checked the timer light.

  “Did you close the bedroom doors?”

  “Yes, Frank.” Violet loved how thorough and practical he was.

  “And unplug all the lamps and appliances?”

  She enjoyed the call and return between them.

  “I did the toaster and the coffee machine and the rest last night, dear.” She’d taken to calling him dear as if he were her thirty-seven-years-long spouse.

  “I’ll take one more look around upstairs. I may have left the bedroom window open.”

  He loves fresh air, Violet thought as he ran up the stairs. The mountain air of the Alps and the castled valleys of the Rhine would be their first trip of many. She gathered her purse and house key and waited for Frank at the front door. After he came out, puffing a little, she double-locked the door.

  “Here we go, Frank.”

  He carried their two suitcases down the walk as the driver opened the trunk. But after lifting Violet’s small case and his even smaller one in, Frank was sweating. He held his chest, got himself into the taxi beside her, and Violet knew. The pink was leaving him, turning his skin ash grey. She redirected the taxi driver.

  To Frank, she said, “We’re going to fix this.”

  “I’m sorry, Vi.” Pain distorted his voice.

  Violet hushed him and told him to hang on. She kept calm, for him, but her insides had fallen into a canyon.

  Frank managed to whisper with the same arousing intimacy as when they danced the very first time, “Go, Violet, and tell me all about it.”

  Then he blacked out, before Violet could pray or promise anything. The sound she made came from a pit under a cliff.

  The taxi driver did his best to get to the hospital in time and admonished himself for not lifting the suitcases.

  “He never would have let you,” Violet cried, and held Frank to her.

  Violet buried Frank in the plot beside Edna. An empty space waited for her in between Frank and Oscar. At home, she stared at her weeds, grieved for Frank, and listened to her hollowed out heart.

  Weeks later, she softened toward the lady doctor, whom she blamed for Frank’s demise, but who had cried into a tissue at Frank’s funeral service as Violet left the front pew with her son and daughter supporting each arm.

  Violet went in for a complete physical.

  “Violet, you’re fine. Better than fine, for your age.”

  The doctor encouraged her to do whatever she wished. Frank’s phrase, “before we die,” rolled like rocks inside Violet’s heart.

  Sunset Travel for Single Seniors offered her credit for her trip and Frank’s, both paid on her card. A week later, she booked in on a cancellation to India. Twice as expensive as Europe, but she had enough credit in her account. Frank had left his estate entirely to Violet. Frank’s lawyer, a young tenor in the choir, let her sob on his shoulder and asked her to send him a postcard.

  “The trip of a lifetime.” She pressed Frank’s words over her heart whenever it hurt.

  With a thermos of ginger tea and a sandwich, Violet knelt on a tasseled aubergine pillow at Frank’s graveside in an open corner of the cemetery on the outskirts of the city. She wore an amber caftan that rippled in the constant wind across the dry prairie grass. Violet assembled a vase with giant gold and orange marigolds.

  “Frank, if it wasn’t for our summer of love, I never would have gone anywhere. Your hand in mine. How easy we were together, after we touched. Like anything in the world was possible.”

  Under a rambling bit of scrub brush, a pair of grouse scrapped at the ground. Violet tossed them the crusts of her tomato and sardine sandwich. They gobbled up the unexpected prize.

  As do we all, Violet thought.

  Violet needed to pack for the Nile and the great pyramids of Egypt. She held the marigolds to her nose, then placed them in the shelter of Frank’s headstone and picked up

  her pillow.

  The Teeny Tiny Woman

  Stooping to pick up a green apple that rolled out of the bin, Mrs. Fisher looked at Zoë eye to eye. Mrs. Fisher was older than anyone Zoë knew. Zoë sucked on her mitten string and kept hold of her mother’s hand. Her mother put down her shopping basket and laid her arm gently around the

  woman’s shoulder.

  “Mrs. Fisher, how are you? And your son?”

  “Oh, bless you for remembering my name. That was a long time ago we worked together. I enjoyed those days, busy in the office.”

  “Before I had kids. An eternity ago.”

  Zoë held her mother’s hand tighter as she peeked at the son. She wondered how a teeny tiny woman like Mrs. Fisher could have a son as big as him. He lay in a wheelchair with the back partly down like her old stroller. Zoë’s brothers used the stroller for their newspapers because it had big wheels that drove even in snow. Mrs. Fisher carried applesauce, bananas, and white bread in the crook of her arm. Zoë’s mother had pink candles, eggs, and icing sugar in her basket. Mrs. Fisher turned to Zoë again.

  “Are you the youngest? Is it your birthday soon?”

  Zoë nodded and held up one hand with all five fingers poking up and extracted her other hand to add one more finger.

  “You’re a big girl now.”

  “I’m in Grade One.”

  Mrs. Fisher and Zoë’s mom talked some more, Zoë silent as the big son. He had a blanket over him, red with a black stripe at the bottom. It covered even his feet. She put her hand on it, and it was as scratchy as it looked. Around his neck hung a bib made out of a dishtowel. Zoë sounded out the words on it, “Vi-va Las Ve-gas.” Mrs. Fisher wiped her son’s chin with the bottom of the towel, one gentle swipe in the middle of her sentence.

  “We manage. As long as I can get to the store. I bring Ben so I don’t slip.” She touched his cheek and then a sunshine smile came out and then a cloud moved over. His face went from crunched up to smooth to crunched up again. Mrs. Fisher and Zoë giggled at each other with their eyes. Zoë’s mom picked up her shopping basket and followed Mrs. Fisher to the cashier.

  “You be sure to call me if you need us to run to the store for you. Zoë and I co
uld do that. And soon, Zoë can do it on her own.”

  Zoë looked up at her mom, surprised. Her mom took her hand again with a little squeeze. Zoë squeezed back.

  Mrs. Fisher paid for her groceries from a little change purse she pushed back down into her pocket, then patted Zoë’s cheek. Zoë pulled away. A frozen leaf. The hand that touched Ben, that wiped away his drool.

  “Sorry. I have such poor circulation now. Another reason to get out and walk. Plus, it’s almost spring. A grand day.”

  “You’re amazing, Mrs. Fisher,” said Zoë’s mother. “You and Ben look very well.”

  “Ben holds the groceries for me.” She lifted up the blanket. Ben wore red-striped pyjamas and a navy blue bathrobe. After hooking the plastic bag of groceries under his curled up hands, Mrs. Fisher tucked the red blanket back under his chin. Now he had a Santa belly. Zoë reached up and patted it, still hanging on to her mom, but Ben didn’t light up again. Mrs. Fisher did up her coat tight at the neck, pulled her scarf up over her head and tied it with a snug knot, and got her mitts back on.

  “Every day, there’s something good that happens. Right, Ben? Today we met you.” Ben kind of clucked his tongue. Mrs. Fisher let out all her air to start the long wheelchair moving.

  She turned as the automatic door opened for her and waved, “Happy Birthday, Zoë.”

  Ben said, “Ha-bee.”

  “Bye, Ben,” Zoë said.

  A man coming in the store helped Mrs. Fisher turn the lying down wheelchair toward home. Zoë looked up at

  her mom.

  “How old is that teeny tiny woman?”

  “She must be eighty,” said her mother. “Every time I see her, I wish I’d gone around to check on her. She only lives a few blocks away from us, on the way home from the store.”

  “We could take some birthday cake.”

  “If there’s any left. We should.”

  “Does she feed Ben like a baby?”

  “She does now. He’s her baby again.”

  The cashier, whose nametag said Brenda, smiled at Zoë and offered her a sucker. Zoë took a green one, but put it in her pocket for after because she wanted to carry the groceries, too, like Ben. She stuffed her hands in her mitts and put one arm under the bag because of the eggs, and held them to her belly. Mrs. Fisher and Ben were already gone.