Waiting for Joe

by Sandra Birdsell

  More than breakfast, though, she longs to be clean, for warm water against her skin. She goes to the bedroom and changes out of her jeans and sweater, puts on the brown track suit, clips up her hair, and gathers several toiletries and puts them in the tote bag. When she presses the button on the panel beside the door, the Meridian steps unfold with a resolute whirr. Before leaving she pats her pocket, assures herself that she’s got the sock, and the twenty dollars rolled up inside it; the lanyard with the ring of keys hangs from her neck.

  Judging from the few vehicles in the parking lot, she’ll likely be among the first in Walmart this morning. The door swings open and she braces herself for the cheerless smile of the white-haired greeter and is relieved when she doesn’t see him in his usual spot. Nor is he hovering near the shopping carts, with the roll of stickers. Instead she’s confronted by a rack of geraniums parked just beyond the entrance. The sparks of crimson draw her over and when she smells the pungent odour she can’t help but regret the loss of her backyard garden; forgetting that her anticipation of it in spring was quickly defeated by indifference when it ultimately failed to live up to her expectation.

  She feels watched, turns and sees the greeter and a female employee leaning on their elbows at the customer service desk, looking her way. Letting her know that they know she’s in the store. She hurries off along a frozen food aisle, the frigid air raising goose flesh, through the chocka-block of kitchenware, toward the back of the store and the washroom. Along the way she must skirt a wire bin filled with toss cushions and a tower of DVDs that weren’t there yesterday.

  She notes the sign on the washroom door declaring that no merchandise should be taken beyond this point. Although she hasn’t any, she hesitates, thinking of the toiletries she brought with her in the tote. As she enters she’s met by the push of warm moist air smelling of disinfectant, gratified that the floor looks freshly mopped and that the row of sinks, although mineral-stained, appear to have been cleaned, too. She sets her tote in a sink and takes out the jar of sculpting face cream she’d bought the first day in Regina, satisfied by the clink of heavy glass when she sets it down. Then she takes out the new cake of soap rolled in a washcloth and her small towel, toothpaste and brush.

  She’s about to turn on the tap when she realizes the sink doesn’t have a stopper, but a metal screen, of course, it wouldn’t. She berates herself for not having thought of this, and is crestfallen that her plan for a warm water sponge bath has been thwarted. She picks at the edge of the screen with a fingernail, thinking she might stuff the drain with something, but is unable to lift it. A nail file, something to get underneath it, she thinks, and when she sees herself in the mirror she takes out one alligator clip, her hair falling down the side of her face.

  After several attempts to hook its teeth under the screen, she succeeds in pulling it loose. Then she jams a corner of the washcloth into the hole, works it down tight into the drain and turns on the tap. “All right,” she says, congratulating herself, as the water rises up the sides of the sink.

  She glances at the door before unzipping her track suit jacket, then quickly peels off her sweatshirt and drops both onto the counter. She’s startled by her face in the mirror, the crackling energetic person she knows herself to be is an ashtray this morning. Thumbprints of blue beneath her eyes, her mouth looking like a dried-out squeegee. She straightens her shoulders and sees a slightly muscular tanned and freckled woman in a lace full-figure brassiere, in recent years a staple of her wardrobe. At near to a hundred dollars apiece, she had the foresight to buy several before she couldn’t.

  Her breasts pop free from her bra when she unhooks it and it dangles from her arms as she dips the towel in the water and works up a lather of goat milk soap, the scent a pleasant twist in her nostrils. Just as she’s about to sponge the acrid worry smell from her armpits, the door opens, and the woman she saw at the customer service desk enters the washroom, her eyebrows rising at the sight of Laurie’s nakedness. Quickly she looks away, her face tightening as she goes into the nearest cubicle. Laurie hears her mutter.

  Sent to check on her. She slides her bra back up her arms and fastens it, her face growing warm. Likely the parking lot has video surveillance and the security men saw her dip into the garbage can last night, which accounts for the keen interest in her this morning. She glances at the ceiling. Surveillance here, too? Well, at least she gave them something worth peeping at. She yanks the washcloth from the drain. Moments later the toilet in the cubicle flushes and when the woman emerges and comes over to a sink, Laurie is dressed.

  “You’re from the motorhome, aren’t you? The manager would like to talk to you. Come by customer service and ask for him,” she says while washing her hands. Then she flicks them dry and begins to pluck at her hair while looking in the mirror. “This washroom is here for the use of our customers. And it’s certainly not a place for you to take a bath.”

  “Where’s the sign that says that?” Laurie asks. Her sarcasm startles the woman who stares at her, her mouth open.

  Laurie gathers up her toiletries and tosses them into the tote bag with more force than she needs to, energized by her smart mouth, surprised to find her younger self so instantly there.

  When she goes through the paint section there’s a man supposedly perusing paint chips who has been sent to watch her too, she concludes, as are the several people wheeling carts along an aisle in groceries. The greeter stands near the entrance, his hand rising to his hip as she nears him. He turns toward her when she passes by. She’s in the foyer, the door swinging shut, and his failure to call out Thank you for shopping at Walmart is a stone pitched against her back.

  “Steve, it’s Laurie,” she says, almost shouting, when he answers the telephone, and for a moment she’s unable to continue for fear her voice will break. Then he tells her that he’s heard from Joe. He expects to see him by the end of the day.

  “Hitchhiking,” she exclaims and grasps the receiver with both hands, presses it hard against the side of her head as though to transmit the information more directly into her brain.

  “That’s what he said. He called from the road last night, around Brooks. You’re in Regina, I take it, in a motorhome. So, what’s up with you guys?”

  “We’re broke.” Laurie looks out beyond the windows of the mall foyer at the parking lot, filling with vehicles now. Groups of people hurry toward the entrance, children running on ahead. When the door opens, the chilled grey air washes across her face.

  “So I gathered,” Steve says.

  “Did he tell you that we’ve lost the house?”

  “Jesus. No. Where’s Joe’s dad?”

  She senses he’s holding his breath. “In Deere Lodge. We didn’t have much choice. I mean, what else could we do?”

  When he doesn’t reply she tells him about having sold several pieces of jewellery for their gold, Joe having sold his vintage pinball machine. Verna’s mantel clock.

  “Everything’s gone. Including the Explorer, and my car.” Her little boredom-buster, which sped her away from scenes of inertia and the pervasive question of what was she doing here? In the world. With her life.

  She’s stuck in Regina, she tells Steve, without money, waiting for Joe, not knowing where he was. “And I think I’m about to be evicted from the Walmart parking lot.” When she becomes aware Steve hasn’t said anything for several moments, she says, “Steve? You there?”

  “I’m here,” he says.

  “How did Joe sound to you?”

  A woman’s voice interrupts and their connection is severed as she instructs Laurie to deposit more money. She digs frantically through the sock for dollar coins and then feeds them into the pay phone.

  “Steve?”

  “It’s me,” he says. “Listen, there must be a Western Union somewhere in Regina.”

  She remembers seeing a sign at Safeway, she tells him.

  “I’ll send you some money. I’ll go down to the one here and you’ll have it within an hour. Put som
e gas in that thing. You could make it here in a day and a half. Stay in a motel tonight. Call me when you get into town and I’ll tell you how to find me.”

  “I think it’s obvious Joe would rather I don’t come,” she says and holds her breath while she waits for his reply.

  If you ever think about leaving Joe, I want to be the first to know, Steve once said. In the bar at the Ramada Inn where they met whenever he was in town. Where they’d spent long afternoons eating one another up, the sex hot and hard, and sometimes she was left with bruises on her breasts, and a soreness down there. She wonders now if too many years have passed. If Steve even remembers having squeezed her hands, not letting go of them until she had promised.

  After a moment, Steve says, “Look, you get here, and then you and Joe can figure things out. I don’t like to see you stuck like this, Laurie. But I’m staying clear of whatever’s going on between you and Joe. Dakota and me, we’ve got something going for us and we have a deal that we both keep away from trouble.”

  “I understand,” she says.

  She’s a source of trouble he wants to avoid.

  At Smitty’s she sips at coffee, the remains of breakfast set aside, surrounded by the din of happy people; the waitresses scurrying by, some of them stopping to chat with customers. Beyond the window, an elderly couple make their way across the parking lot, the woman holding back for the sake of the man using a walker. Alfred was right, she thinks. There’s just no way a person can use one of those and look dignified. But he’d taken to the Yak-Traks quickly enough, they were the cat’s meow he’d said, and had lifted his feet at the door for her to stretch them onto his boots. And he liked the ski pole she’d given him to poke his way along the icy walk, while linking his other arm through hers. She smiles at the thought of his strategic stops along the way to point something out, giving himself a moment to rest, to swipe at the briny icicle drip at the end of his nose. How’re you doing, Dad? Had enough, Dad? Should we turn around now, Dad? Sometimes she suspected she had married Joe so she could claim Alfred as her dad too.

  She feels winded suddenly, remembering how Alfred had struggled to be free of her and Joe as they’d dragged him across the yard. Pleaded with her not to let Joe do this, while Joe fought to pry his hands from the door frame of the Explorer and wrestle him inside. Joe, shouting for her to get behind the wheel when Alfred made a lunge for the other door in an attempt to escape.

  She snatches up the receipt the waitress left on the table and her tote from the seat. As she slides out and up from the booth the bag hits a glass of water and sends it flying. She’s aware of people staring, the water streaming over the edge of the table, a young waitress rushing toward her with a cloth. To hell with Joe, to hell with Steve.

  The Meridian starts immediately and she adjusts the seat, the steering wheel, still feeling the heat of anger as she eases out into the traffic lane and drives toward the lights at Gibson Road. Beside her is the silver fox jacket and parka crammed into the oversize bag from Clara’s Boutique. Although she knows the right-of-way lane is wide enough for the Meridian, her palms begin to sweat as she inches into it, then waits to check for oncoming traffic, her view obscured by a tour bus making a wide turn at the intersection from Gibson Road.

  She’s vaguely aware of people at the bus windows, seniors from an assisted living complex, she guesses, being taken out for a morning of shopping. There’s not as many fender-benders when some of them come on the bus, the woman at the information desk said. You would not believe the parking lot on seniors’ day, you’re taking your life in your hands. Only last year someone got run over, was dragged under the car up and over the median before the yelling of bystanders registered in the old man’s brain. By the time he stopped, the woman was dead. The woman being his own wife. Apparently his bowels were loose, he was anxious to get home and took off before she was fully inside the car. She hung onto the door, then fell.

  Pride, the last thing to go, Laurie thinks. Like Alfred, stuffing his soiled Pampers behind the bed, thinking she wouldn’t notice. The bus makes the turn, and the long line of cars waiting to gain entrance to the mall begins to move forward. The food court and washrooms will be busy all day.

  When there’s a lull in oncoming traffic she turns onto Gibson Road, and in anticipation of having to turn when she reaches Albert Street she forgets to signal, cuts into the outside lane to the immediate blast of a car horn. A moment later the car swerves round the Meridian and guns on past. No giving her the finger, though. Good morning to you too, she mutters, aware that her foot has begun to tremble on the accelerator.

  She’s never driven anything this big and had been taken by surprise by the responsive steering. Now, as she approaches the lights at Albert Street, she’s surprised when she barely touches the brakes and the motorhome lurches to a dead stop and sends the bag flying from the passenger seat onto the floor. The light changes and she eases forward more carefully. Only several blocks down the street she nears the strip mall, and next to it, Clara’s Boutique. The motorhome lists to one side, as she glides up onto the uneven curb and stops.

  The brass bell tinkles when she steps into the store. There’s a fustiness to it she hadn’t noticed yesterday. A different woman is behind the counter, a middle-aged woman with a pen tucked behind her ear, dark short hair framing an angular and unsmiling face. She glances at Laurie briefly, looking business-like in a grey pantsuit and white blouse. But Laurie notes her tie, red with yellow palm trees and an elephant.

  “I’m not quite opened yet. But go ahead and have a look around,” the woman says.

  “I’m not shopping today.”

  “Okay,” the woman says carefully and takes in the huge bag at her side.

  Laurie hefts it onto the counter and the woman cannot conceal her interest. She sucks at her bottom lip when Laurie holds up the fur jacket and lays it out on the counter. Then Laurie pulls the blue leather parka from the bag and drapes it on the counter beside the fur. The softness of the leather brings on a twinge of regret that she didn’t wear it more often.

  “They’re both like new,” she says.

  “But they’re not new. And not in season, either, unfortunately,” the woman says, calculating their worth. She peers at the label on the parka, then fingers one of the toggles.

  “That’s deer antler,” Laurie says.

  “I’d have to store them for months. But they are in pretty good shape,” the woman concedes, then she picks up a binder beside the cash register and opens it, plucks the pen out from behind her ear.

  “Your tie is great, by the way.”

  The woman feels for it, then looks down. “Oh, that. It’s my party tie. I just couldn’t seem to get going this morning so I decided to wear it.” When she smiles, her angular severity is gone.

  She lifts a section of the counter and comes out from behind it to reveal her whole self, holds up her foot to display her ankle boots, obviously hand-painted, grey, with red tongues, pink laces and a pink and orange sunset on the sides, framed by palm trees. “Someone brought these in a week ago and I couldn’t resist.”

  Nor would Laurie have been able to. “Wild.”

  “I have to fight with my daughters to get to wear them,” the woman says and laughs and ducks back behind the counter, her attention focused on the silver fox now as she runs her hand across it.

  Laurie glances about the store to gain courage, noticing that the display on the far wall has been changed since she was in, the pantsuits gone. In their place is summer wear, shorts and tops, sundresses, straw hats. “How much will you give me for the jackets,” she asks.

  “Oh,” the woman says, her lightheartedness fading. “You must not have an account with us.” She shuts the binder and puts it back beside the cash register and then leans forward on the counter and clasps her hands.

  “It works like this. If you want me to sell the jackets you have to open an account. We take clothes on consignment. If they sell, we’ll give you a credit and you can use it to shop in t
he store. If they don’t sell within six months, we donate the clothing to charity. That’s the agreement. How does that sound?”

  “At this moment the last thing I need is more clothes. You wouldn’t be hiring, would you?” she hears herself ask, her voice gone hoarse.

  The woman is startled, and looks down at the jackets for a moment, glances at Laurie, then away.

  “I’m running a family business here,” she says finally, as though entering midway into a talk she’s been having with herself. “My daughters work for me. I wouldn’t make anything if I had to employ outside help.” After a pause she says quietly, “Do you need to find a job?”

  Yes, she wants to find a job, Laurie realizes. She wants to do something other than wait for Joe as she has throughout the years, doing nothing of consequence behind the reception desk, except be there, a pretty presence trying not to notice the pile of growing unpaid invoices. Staying after work with Joe to help clean and assess the damage and restoration of a used motorhome he’d bought for less than nothing and planned to resell, though he never got around to it. The most taxing part of her job had been payroll, the government forms that needed filling in at the year end.

  So far, the friendliness of the people in Regina is appealing. Even at Walmart, no one came to physically haul her out of the washroom and hustle her through the door. No, the woman said, go to the service desk and ask for the manager. That man, Pete, leaving the lawn chair just in case she could use it. Maybe she’ll stay on here, disappear in the crowd at the food court, be immersed and carried along with the chatter of recipe sharing, the comparison of physical ailments and treatments, places to stay down south. She’ll learn to gripe about the price of oranges at Safeway. And of course, line up along with everyone else to buy a lottery ticket, her retirement savings plan. Stay for a time, anyway. Until Joe realizes he can’t live without her and comes looking for her and the Meridian. She’ll need to find another place to park it, hook it up to services. Perhaps a trailer court on the outskirts of the city. Maybe she will. And then, she cannot hold back her tears any longer.