“That’s not so bad,” she says, wishing a derailed life could be put back on track as easily. For now, she’s happy to discover a new facet to her independence. She can fix a derailed bike. Suddenly, she’s looking forward to tomorrow’s ride. In her mind she sketches out a route that will take her down the highway, past the industrial area where she played today, and into new territory.
The next morning, Ellen has trouble making it to the kitchen. Muscles she’d long ago forgotten scream in outrage. Her tush refuses to speak to her. Parts of herself she can’t even name vibrate with pain. Her new regime goes on hold while she hobbles into the bathroom and lowers herself slowly into the tub, hoping a hot soak will return a small degree of mobility and, if she’s lucky, restore a modicum of comfort to a sorely tested area.
— 4 —
THE EXPRESS LINE NUDGES listlessly toward the register as Ellen shifts her basket, leaning it against her hip, trying to ease the dull ache that has invaded her shoulder. The elderly man in front of her peers into the basket he’s balanced on the end of the divider rail. The line hiccups ahead, but he doesn’t move. He’s intent on re-checking his purchases, which are obviously over the express-line maximum of twelve items. Coupons bristle in his hand. Ellen sighs and glances at the young woman behind her. A wry shrug agrees with the unspoken comment: this will be a longer lineup than either had planned on. The woman’s eyes flick to the next line, measuring the possibility of a speedier trip. She grimaces. This line is shorter, but will it be faster? Impatience hangs like a cloud around her head.
As though he hears their thoughts, the man turns, his face apologetic.
“I’m sorry to be so slow. My wife used to do all this. It isn’t as easy as I thought.”
“I guess most things look easy until you have to do them,” Ellen agrees.
He smiles. A warm, friendly smile. A Grandpa smile.
“I wish I could take back all the times I complained that she took too long to shop.”
“Mister, I wish my husband could hear you,” the younger woman says, nodding her head vigorously. “That’s about the first thing he says every time I come back from the store.”
Slowly and carefully, he lifts each item from his basket and places it on the conveyor. One tomato, a green pepper, a small bag of mushrooms, a carton of strawberries, two bananas, and half a cantaloupe make a lonely parade down the centre of the black belt. He winces as the cashier bounces each item on the scale and whips it into the waiting bag.
Something from the bakery section is next. He watches anxiously as it’s punched in. The next two don’t cause any concern — soap powder is almost indestructible and the little package from the meat department isn’t vulnerable.
The rest are coupon items — peanut butter, paper towels, eggs, cookies, a tin of soup (there is a brief discussion about whether he has the right kind), a small jar of jam, and a quarter-pound stick of butter. As he places each item on the belt, he shuffles his coupons like a deck of cards, searching for the right one, double-checking, then perches it on top of the container. They look like little birds sitting on a fence.
The goods scarcely leave his hand before they’re whisked away, rung up, and bagged. The cashier’s smile belies her impatience, but her thoughts are almost audible: “Let’s get this in gear. I don’t have all day and that lineup is getting longer” She’d be impatient even if there were no other customers in the store. It’s the way of the young to be impatient with the old. She punches in the last item with a smile of relief and turns, waiting for payment, as the electronic scanner reads out the total.
“Thirty … one … dollars … and … sixty … four …. cents” it says, with a disruptive mechanical pause between each uninflected word. “Thirty-one” and “sixty-four” are each read out as two separate numbers, not run together the way people say them in real life. Whoever recorded the numbers isn’t the same person as the one who said “dollars and cents.” The man’s face registers confusion.
“I’m sorry … how much is it?”
The girl’s eyes widen in disbelief as she turns to read the numbers from her till display.
He apologizes again. “I have difficulty understanding machines when they read numbers. I know it’s silly, but I can’t make sense out of them. Maybe I need to get my hearing adjusted.”
He pauses for a moment, and then laughs ruefully. “Maybe I need to get my mind adjusted. I’m not used to listening to machines and probably never will be.”
At last the cashier’s impatience registers and he reaches into his pocket for his wallet, carefully extracting two bills, slipping the wallet back into his hip pocket, checking that it’s properly in place and buttoning the flap before reaching into his front pocket for a change purse.
“Sixty-four?” he asks.
She nods, her eyes lingering on the parking lot where a gaggle of teens cluster, the girls practising movie star stances while the boys studiously ignore them, shuffling their toes against the nose of their skateboards, sending them upward in controlled loops.
Carefully, the man counts out six quarters, a dime, and four pennies, lining the coins neatly on the counter beside the bills.
“Thank you,” she responds, with all the animation of a Barbie doll, dropping the change into her till and returning the sales slip to him in a single gesture. “Have a nice day,” she adds, in a manner as automatic and as meaningless as breathing.
“Sorry for the delay,” she apologizes, smiling at Ellen.
“That’s okay. I’m not in that much of a hurry. I wonder what happened to his wife that he has to do the shopping now. Must be quite a change for him.”
The girl looks at the man’s back as he shuffles toward the door.
“Died, I guess.”
She dismisses the man and his wife and rings up Ellen’s purchases swiftly and efficiently, as though demonstrating the way it ought to be done.
“Have a nice day,” she says as she turns to the next customer.
The man stays in Ellen’s mind, prodding her curiosity. There was tenderness in his face when he spoke of his wife. Fat chance Al would ever speak of her that way. But then, there’s no catch in her voice when she discusses him, either. No hatred, no anger — just nothing.
Once there was passion and fire … and love.
What happened? she wonders.
She remembers one special day — a day they worked together in the garden, tying up tomato plants and clipping off the lower leaves. Ellen’s nostrils prickled with the pungent scent. It was a piercing odour that bore no relation to the way a tomato tastes.
“You go ahead,” Al told her. “I’ll put the stuff away.”
She shed her clothing as she walked down the hallway, ready to step into the shower as soon as she reached the bathroom. The water was wonderful — warm and steamy, clean and refreshing at the same time. It tingled on her skin. Suddenly, the shower door popped open.
“Move over, Babe. Room for two in here.” He grinned, lunging toward her.
They kissed, a soggy embrace that left them laughing as water streamed down their faces. They shuffled around, trying to keep the water from their eyes. He took the soap from her hand and gently lathered her back, arms stretching around her, pulling her closer, then turned his attention to her bottom.
“Nice butt,” he declared, stepping back, then changing his focus, carefully applying lather and moving his soapy hands over her breasts. “I wonder what else we could do in a shower?”
They did.
He left and she was alone again in the steamy spray, savouring the gentle rasp of the water against her skin, still sensitive from his touch, his kisses and his nibbles.
It was hard to remember the last time they did something that spontaneous or that much fun. Somewhere along the line they ran out of steam, but Ellen can’t recall when or why.
As she puts away the groceries, Ellen’s mind goes back to the man in the store. He fascinates her. She tries to ferret more information from the brief en
counter. What happened to his wife? Is she disabled? Is he now care-giver as well as shopper? She thinks again of the goods in that lonely parade — not enough for two people. Perhaps she had died. When a wife dies, it means a whole new way of life for her husband. But when a man dies, it doesn’t alter the basics. Women have always shopped, cooked, and cleaned. They may do it with less money, but the tasks they perform are no different.
Still, Ellen muses, closing the crisper drawer, the hardest of all are the social relationships. Some women have skills that yield both money and an “office family.” A few of her friends work, but none has what could be called a career, only part-time jobs that help cope with the cost of living. Just as important as the money is the sense of achievement, the chance to get out of the house and do something that someone values enough to pay for.
She stretches, rubbing an ache in her lower back, then opens the cupboard to put away the rest of the groceries. Tiny clusters emphasize how little is there.
Living on her own isn’t a big deal for Ellen. She already knows how to cook, clean, and shop. Al has his girlfriend to look after these duties now, so he, too, has solved his problem. She wonders how good he’d be at looking after himself. Housework looks easy when you don’t have to do it.
Grimly she smiles, thinking of all the times Al watched her do something, then launched, unasked, into criticism: “That would work better if you blah, blah, blah.”
He had an inexhaustible fund of suggestions. She could never figure out where all this expertise came from, since, to the best of her knowledge, he’d never washed a floor, ironed a shirt, mended a sock, or cleaned a toilet — especially cleaned a toilet. His mom had waited on him in his childhood, and Ellen took over after they married.
The man in the store was different. He was doing his best to learn, not standing around being critical or waiting for someone to look after him.
She constructs a scenario for the man: His wife had a stroke a year or so ago and died soon after. He’s in process of rebuilding his life. There’s a family, of course. The children (she decides there are two, a son and a daughter, both married with teenaged families) live elsewhere. They want him to come and live with them. Their intentions are of the best, but he doesn’t want to be a burden or interfere with their lives, so he stays here, on his own. He visits them once in a while and loves the time he spends with his grandchildren, but keeps his life separate from theirs. They fuss over him, write and call frequently to make sure he’s okay, but lovingly give him space because they respect his need to be independent.
Ellen sighs, comparing the make-believe scenario to the reality of her own life.
“I wonder if he gets as lonesome as I do,” she asks the electric kettle, gleaming mutely on the counter. “And I wonder if he gets as bored as I do.”
Sometimes it’s hard to remember what day it is. They blend, one into another, like watercolours running together on wet paper. She seldom goes out. The people she thought of as her friends were really Al’s. She was Al’s wife. Part of a couple. Al’n’Ellen, said like a single word. As a lone woman she no longer fits neatly into the barbecue and party groupings. Al and what’s-her-name are now the couple and Ellen is the odd one out.
She doesn’t care that much. Invitations create their own problems: it’s hard for her to reciprocate. When they were younger, lack of furniture didn’t matter. It was fun to sit on cushions on the floor. Now age-stiffened joints and added weight have changed all that. The floor is a lot farther away than it used to be, and the cushions aren’t as soft. Beer and pizza generate heartburn and cause extra trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Ellen thumps the cupboard door shut. When the children were younger, she’d have given her eye teeth for some time to herself. There were so many things she wanted to do, so many places she wanted to go. After the children grew, when she had more time, she still couldn’t escape. You couldn’t leave your husband and go travelling by yourself — at least not if Al was your husband.
Now she has no husband and no excuses, but lacks the ambition to pack up and go.
Her mind turns again to the man in the grocery store. How does he fill his days? She’s sure he has lots of friends. Death brings friends closer. Divorce sends them running.
She constructs a typical day for him. An early riser, he makes a small, tidy breakfast each morning. Oatmeal, she decides, cooked in the same Pyrex double boiler his wife used. He cleans up his breakfast dishes before he goes into the yard to look after the small, tidy vegetable garden. He wears a cardigan sweater — grey heather. Leather patches on the elbows? No. A plain cardigan, she decides, carefully buttoned up.
After he finishes in the garden he visits with friends for a while. Maybe he works as a volunteer at a food bank somewhere. She wonders about his vacations. Does he always go “Back East” to visit his children? Probably. She knows many parents do that. She could, too, she knows, but she has other things to do.
Such as? There’s that miserable voice in her head again. It’s with her a lot lately, challenging and goading. Come on, it repeats. Let’s have some answers here.
Ellen opens her mouth, then crossly shuts it. She doesn’t have to answer. This is silly. She’d love to travel, for one thing. Everyone wants to travel. There are all sorts of wonderful places to go. Why can’t she name one?
The television drones on in the background as the day drifts on, creating visual wallpaper and the illusion of friends and activities. She doesn’t remember anything about the shows that were on earlier. She concentrates on the screen. There. She recognizes that place. It’s in California. San Francisco. And there’s another, farther south. Probably Santa Barbara. Poor old Los Angeles. It’s never featured in commercials, just on the shows dealing with murder, drugs, or gang warfare; shows set in LA always have something awful happening to somebody.
Ellen finds the commercials more interesting, but even they get boring with repetition. Like the car commercial in the Grand Canyon that was once a knockout, now she’s tired of seeing people and vehicles perched on top of improbable crags or driving up roads that look like ski runs in the summertime.
A talk show begins. They’re the most boring of all. No action, no scenery, just people blathering away. Do they really do the things they say they do? And if they do, why talk about them on national television?
Her mind drifts. What would be the best way to see some of the places in the commercials? Not by car. When you drive you’re too busy to really look around. Planes take you above and you never really see anything but a mosaic below: brown and green for countryside, a quilt-like grid of cement roads and rooftops for the cities. Perhaps a train? But trains only go along a narrow pathway? Bus? No, buses aren’t ideal either.
Another commercial comes on. A young couple gallop horses down a beach. She laughs. Most beaches have leash laws, pooper laws, or flat-out ordinances prohibiting dogs and other animals on the beach. She’s pretty sure horses aren’t welcome either, unless someone paves the way for the commercial with a generous contribution to one of the city’s special funds. And cleans up after, with a shovel.
Horses might be an interesting way to travel. Just like the pioneers did, although traffic and urbanization would create problems. And if you check into a motel overnight, where do you put the horse? No, that isn’t the solution either.
The program changes again. She’s surprised when the commercials end and the late night comics come on. Abruptly, she realizes it’s late and she’s too tired to listen tonight. She hasn’t decided yet if she likes any of the late night comics. She had a friendly (albeit electronic) relationship with Jay for many years on The Tonight Show. She still misses him and wishes the network would just play reruns of the old Tonight Show. Everyone else plays reruns and with all those seasons on file she’d die of old age before they started over again — or lose her memory and not recognize them as shows she’d seen twice before.
She switches off the set and moves to her end-of-the-day routi
ne, slathering cream on her face, imagining the rich emollients soaking into her skin, plumping up the wrinkles and propping up the sags. She wears pyjamas now. She never used to, but they feel protective, like some kind of safety coating.
When the kids were small, it was a problem. If one cried during the night she had to put something on before hastily running down the hall. The children napped during the day, but at different times. One was wide awake at night while the others slept. They did a magnificent job of coordinating their sleep/wake schedules so they were never all sleeping at the same time. She grew dazed and groggy, yearning for an hour of uninterrupted unconsciousness.
Once, Al decided they needed a break and asked his mom to babysit. They set off like a couple of kids on a date.
“What do you want to do?” he asked eagerly.
She had no idea. They drove to a local park and tried to decide how to spend their precious evening out. She hadn’t the energy for dancing; he didn’t want to see a show.
“How about dinner?” he suggested. “We could go to Stuart Anderson’s.”
She shook her head. “I’m not that hungry.”
The evening grew cooler and sudden shivers quivered across her shoulders. Al reached out and pulled her close, snuggling their bodies together the way they did when they dated, their breathing synchronizing, mutually warming and caressing each other. Suddenly they were teenagers again, isolated from the world in a darkened car. After, Al held her for a long while as she slept, cuddled in his arms.
It was almost midnight when she awoke. “We’d better get back,” she stammered.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Al agreed. “Silly as it sounds, I really enjoyed this.”
She rearranged herself on her side of the car while Al started the engine and pulled away. Driving past the local theatre he suddenly stopped, opened the car door, and ran over to the entrance. He bent over, picked something up from the ground, then rushed back to the car.
On the Rim Page 5
