Fit to Die

by Joan Boswell

  Too bad, Gunboat thought. He was sure his money would be safe if he bet on her really liking the boss.

  THERESE GREENWOOD lives and writes in Kingston, Ontario. She was a finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis 1999 Award for best short story and winner of the Bloody Words 2000 short story contest.

  IT’S A DIRTY JOG, BUT SOMEONE HAS TO DO IT

  I have to keep up this facade.

  I have to run each day.

  I have to look real womanly.

  It’s like I’m in a play.

  I have to wear an itchy wig.

  I have to wear spandex.

  I have to wave at all the men

  Leaning from their decks.

  I have to shave my hairy legs.

  I have to wax my face.

  I wish that I had taken off,

  Instead, I took her place.

  I have to run five miles a day

  And make the neighbours see

  This sweaty, gritty, jogging jock’s

  A she and not a he.

  I have to keep up this facade

  Because I took her life.

  And no one will suspect me while

  I’m running for my wife.

  JOY HEWITT MANN

  SIGN OF THE TIMES

  MARY JANE MAFFINI

  She’s going to kill me. It’s just a matter of time until she gets it right. All I can do is putter about my garden and check over my shoulders for the next sneak attack.

  Don’t think I’m imagining it. The woman is capable of anything.

  Consider her flawless organization of “Citizens Against Community Homes”. Didn’t that just keep those pesky halfway types out of the neighbourhood? People still speak in hushed voices about her crusade against dogs in the park. Her campaign to wipe out street parking was as organized as any militia, though perhaps a bit more bloodthirsty. So, you see, I don’t have a hope in hell. Now is that a fair outcome for someone with a bypass for every artery and seventy-eight years of peaceful living?

  Once, I was a painter. Now I use flowers to colour my life. As far as I can pinpoint, more than ten years have passed since I retired to the privacy of my garden, alone but not lonely. A garden can have that effect. I have grown scrawny where once I was lean, bedraggled instead of fashionably bohemian. I have decided I prefer myself this way, like my flowers, just a bit out of control.

  The days pass quite nicely when your mind is busy with where to plant the bachelors’ buttons and how to keep the phlox from creeping into the lilies.

  I would be happy if only she weren’t closing in daily. This morning, while admiring the gentle pink of peonies in the early sun, I hear her triple-glazed patio door open and then the smart, sharp clicks of stilettos on the cedar deck that shadows my small garden. My heart rate soars in a symphony of agitation. I shrink back behind my French lilacs and hope not to be seen. Why can’t I make anyone understand what she is doing?

  “Miss Ainslie,” she bellows, rather like Wellington lining up the brigade at Waterloo, “you will have to do something about that dog.”

  Now what? How can my dog be a problem? In the five weeks since I brought Silent Sam home from the Humane Society, he’s been nothing but a huge, heaving bundle of gratitude. Loving and loveable. Shambling and confused. I have always placed a high value on randomness, a low value on boundaries. So Silent Sam suits me. Mrs. Sybil Sharpe doesn’t.

  “I don’t have a problem.” I infuse my voice with false confidence, but I am glad to be out of reach of her two-inch fuschia nails.

  “Well, I do. That dog is driving people crazy. If you have no consideration, and I am already fully aware of that, then you will find the city ordinances are firmly on my side.”

  I fail to see how Silent Sam can bother anyone.

  “The city ordinances can be firmly up your backside as far as I care,” I say, but the sound is muffled by the lilacs.

  • • •

  My doctor pats my hand. “You’ve had a bad couple of months. The key thing is not to get upset and to stick with your regimen: strength, flexibility, cardio.”

  “Got it,” I say.

  He does not believe my next-door neighbour is a serious health hazard. I have explained she is deadlier than a random clot, more insidious than a ticking embolism, more determined than a clump of blue cancer. I should know, I’ve held them all at bay, but only Mrs. Sybil Sharpe causes me to gasp awake every night at three, heart twisting with fear.

  “She sent Social Services around. Remember? She said I wasn’t fit to live alone.”

  “And are you still living alone?”

  “So far.”

  “My money’s on you in this contest. I figure you’re far more tenacious than any difficult neighbour. And speaking of tenacious, let’s talk about your resistance exercises. How many repetitions?”

  “Twenty of each with the five-pound weights.” I take a sideways peek at him to see if he’s falling for it. Those weights would probably be a piece of cake compared to the clean-and-jerk with the bags of sheep manure I needed for my spring maintenance. It seems a fair substitute to me, but I keep the details to myself.

  “Excellent. What about the flexibility regime?”

  “Fifteen minutes of stretching, twice a day.” It seems prudent not to mention this takes the form of reaching to prune, deadhead and transplant. Bend, reach, bend.

  “Great. And cardio?”

  “Got myself a pooch from the Humane Society. Brisk walks twice a day.” This is not the highest form of truth, since I fail to mention Silent Sam is down to three legs and blind as a mole. Getting him to the nearest fire hydrant feels more like resistance work than cardio.

  He chuckles and shakes his head. “Wouldn’t surprise me to see you in the 10K race one of these days.”

  Once again, I’ve failed to convince him of the danger presented by Mrs. Sybil Sharpe. That’s the problem when your doctor remembers you as his childhood art teacher. He’ll go through life thinking you are inclined to colour things to suit your own purposes.

  “My money’s always on you, Miss Ainslie. Always.” He is smiling. I am not, since I have lost another round. Mrs. Sybil Sharpe: 1, Miss Callista Ainslie: Zip.

  He calls out as I near the clinic door, “You’ll live to a hundred.”

  Not likely. And I won’t even rate an inquest, I’m sure. Pretty straightforward for the coroner. Seventy-eight-year-old woman, recovering from quadruple bypass and with a whopping melanoma in remission, pitches into the day lilies following a stroke. A kindly neighbour’s attempts to get help are unfortunately too late. Mrs. Sybil Sharpe’s broad face would blanket the City section of the paper bemoaning the slow response time of paramedics in our community. I can see it all now.

  • • •

  The animal control officer takes me by surprise. I am concentrating on finding just the right spot to relocate the rosemary, now that Mrs. Sybil Sharpe’s shadowy deck has stolen the sun from the west side of the garden.

  “Sorry to disturb,” he says, “but we’ve had a complaint about your dog here.”

  “This dog? Are you sure?”

  “I think so, Ma’am.”

  “What kind of complaint?”

  “Excessive barking.”

  I laugh merrily. “You must be mistaken.”

  He wrinkles his brow. “Are you Miss Callista Ainslie?”

  “Yes.”

  “And would this be your dog?”

  “That’s right. Meet Silent Sam.”

  Silent Sam takes a shine to the animal control officer right away, and it’s hard to hear ourselves with the thumping of that tail. I fill in my side of the story, being careful to insinuate that Mrs. Sybil Sharpe is as crazy as a polecat and twice as mean. Besides the innuendo, I have a key fact on my side.

  The animal control officer is impressed. “A barkless dog? Can’t say I’ve ever heard of one.”

  “Feel free to check my story with the Humane Society. According to his rap sheet, Sam had debark
ing surgery some years ago.”

  He bends over to scratch Silent Sam behind the ears. “Nice old fella. With a tail like that, who needs to bark?”

  I relax a bit. “Better than any alarm system.”

  The animal control officer looks around. “Nice neighbourhood.”

  “Used to be,” I say.

  “You have a wonderful garden.”

  A close call, but I am not foolish enough to believe this minor victory will divert Mrs. Sybil Sharpe for long.

  • • •

  There was a time when I could have turned to my neighbours for support. But the old ones are in Florida or mildewing in some hole of a nursing home. The few remaining are caving in to the relentless ring of the developers. The new ones have a tendency to scuttle through their front doors the second they see me. Their expressions suggest Mrs. Sybil Sharpe has put out the word I’m some elderly female version of the Antichrist, accessorized with the Baskerville hound.

  I have tried in vain to pinpoint the moment when everything changed. All I know is the neighbourhood is going fast. Post-war bungalows and fifties-style duplexes have been flattened by spreading brick homes, gangling town houses and something called lofts. Where children played jump rope and street hockey, now huge, lumpish vehicles cut off the view. Instead of laughter across fences, now I hear the swish of leather cases and the beeping of small phones.

  Gentrification, they call it. Real estate agents ogle our remaining properties with dollar signs in their eyes.

  I can take that. It’s only Mrs. Sybil Sharpe who pushes things beyond endurance. She has the light of battle in her eye tonight as she rages on about the spread of weeds, as she calls them, from my garden. It was naughty of me to plant mint so close to the boundary of our property, but I have derived a certain amount of pleasure watching it sneak onto her manicured Kentucky blue. I enjoy the resulting puce mottling on her neck when she spots the latest clump.

  • • •

  The woman from the developer sports a pair of python boots. How fitting. She feigns sympathy for the plight of the elderly abandoned in the increasingly dangerous and hostile urban jungle. That would be me. Her hooded eyes give her away. Doesn’t fool me. I know whose prey I am.

  She would like to help, she says. To take me away from this. Set me up with enough cash to fund a retirement residence. She has brochures conveniently on hand. No worries. Round the clock attention. Nurses. Communal dining. Bingo. Naturally, a suitable family could be found for Silent Sam. I am fascinated by the way her tongue flicks in and out as she spins her tale. She makes coy references to the amount I could be offered for my small war-torn property. I am expected to feel lucky.

  “What led you to me?” I ask, all innocence.

  “It’s a booming market. We keep our eyes open.”

  “There’s an excellent property next door,” I point to the pristine expanse of Mrs. Sybil Sharpe’s house. “A fine view of the river from the upper stories. I would think your buyer would find that of interest.”

  The heavy lids close and open again. What does that mean? Could the so-called developer be none other than my enemy next door?

  “I’m more interested in yours.”

  “What company did you say this was again?”

  “It’s a numbered company. I am not at liberty to say.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s not significant. Guess what they choose to offer,” she hisses.

  “An apple?”

  • • •

  Certainly the randomness of my garden outrages Mrs. Sybil Sharpe. But logic tells me it is the house that causes her eyes to bulge out so dramatically. She’s not one to appreciate the sexy curl of the roof tiles, the holes in the screens that beckon to adventurous bats and the lovely weathered grey shingles under the peeled paint. I will not be able to afford to paint properly for two years. There may not be any shingles left by then. They seem to have more health problems than I do.

  If only I’d spent my working life like a sensible person instead of hopping overseas for a year or two whenever my savings built up to the price of a ticket. A sensible person would have a full teacher’s pension. And wouldn’t have to choose now between a cluster of new climbing roses and paint for the house. It wouldn’t come down to repairs to the roof or a pond on the east side. A new lock for the back door or a new dog at my side. But then if I’d been sensible, I wouldn’t have been me. Now I’m hoping I can continue to be me just a little bit longer.

  I keep checking the price of paint at Decker’s. There are other regulars there, including dangerous looking young men who hang out in front of the Krylon display.

  I am standing in the garden considering whether to take advantage of fine bargains on leftover custom-mixed paint at Decker’s. No two colours are even remotely alike. Some you would think couldn’t possibly belong to the same spectrum. I like that. I think the entire effect would be rather like Joseph’s coat.

  I have half convinced myself that climbing my old wooden ladder could be classed as a flexibility work, and a heavy enough paintbrush would be an improvement on my prescribed routine with handheld weights.

  I can’t do it, of course, because the exuberant colours would overwhelm the subtle shades of the hosta and astilbe on the east side and provide unfair competition to the purple coneflower and hollyhock on the west.

  • • •

  Of course, she’s nice enough when she wants something. You would think I was her favourite aunt at the community meeting she organized to combat graffiti. She hit the combat trail at the first swish from a spray can. Tolerance of graffiti is the sign of a community in decline, she says, and she will wipe it out if it kills somebody. I wouldn’t want to be one of the junior expressionists if she comes upon him. Mrs. Sybil Sharpe takes no prisoners.

  A young police officer has been assigned to explain the phenomenon of graffiti to us. We learn a lot from the meeting. Graffiti is not meaningless. It consists of territorial messages and threats of bodily harm. We learn that it flourishes where young people are outlyers, lacking positive outlets for their time. I immediately think of street hockey.

  He tells us some of the city’s graffiti artists are just creative kids in competition with each other. I hear a sharp snort from you-know-who on this. But as a former art teacher, I would grade some of the samples he shows us quite highly. We learn a lot about “tags”, which are signatures, and “bomb”, which means to cover an area with your work, and “burn”, which means to beat the competition with your style. The teacher in me is impressed with many of the designs.

  Mrs. Sybil Sharpe clearly has the young officer in a panic. He loosens his collar and explains for the third time why we can’t call 911 every time we see a swirl on a mailbox. He keeps trying to edge away. I could tell him it’s not easy to do.

  Mrs. Sybil Sharpe intends to petition our Member of Parliament to have it dealt with seriously. The police officer clears his throat and explains that vandalism is already well covered in the Criminal Code. If I were a legislator, I would start looking over my shoulder.

  I have nothing to lose, really, so I put up my hand. “Does a bit of graffiti really matter? Can’t we just paint over it and get on with life?”

  Mrs. Sybil Sharpe shoots out of her seat. Her face is the colour of my clematis. While purple is attractive in a flowering vine, it can’t be healthy in a human. “Does it matter? It is the slippery slope to the teeming, drug-infested slums. It is nothing less than the rape of our neighbourhood. I, myself, feel violated by every instance of it. We have our investments to consider. The next thing you know we will be surrounded by hovels.” The look she gives me tells the world who the subject of the next community public meeting will probably be.

  “Oh, well then,” I say.

  • • •

  What next? I should have been expecting the property standards by-law enforcement officer. I had not realized that broken windows were within their purview. Of course, I hadn’t realized I had a broken window. But
there it was. The small one high up. What would have been called a piano window in my day. How could it get broken? There wasn’t even a branch near by. No children play with balls in my garden where Mrs. Sybil Sharpe could pounce on them. No one can even see it. I look up. Well, it is within sight of her vast deck. Something else is even more interesting. Anyone pussyfooting through my garden with the intent of doing a bit of damage is completely hidden. She could destroy my garden and the back of my home and no one would be the wiser.

  I feel my aorta lurching. Not even the scent of viburnum is enough to calm me.

  The enforcement officer doesn’t really think my home comes under the heading of derelict properties, even if the hinge on the gate is a bit on the loose side. He trusts me to fix the window. He does not believe my herbs qualify as noxious weeds. Still, this visit has upset me. Score: one all.

  • • •

  Of course, I should have been more vigilant. I take my own share of the blame.

  How did she set Silent Sam free? Perhaps she used sirloin to lure him away, and he was too blind and befuddled to find his way back to his new home? And unable to make his voice heard. I am filled with black thoughts. Seventy-eight years without a dog, and now I can scarcely cope for a few hours. Perhaps it isn’t worth it to stay in this house.

  • • •

  I am looking for Silent Sam many blocks from home when it happens. The sidewalk has seen better days in this neighbourhood, which is still on the before side of gentrification. The sun has set when I become aware of someone following me. Someone large and fast. This would never happen if Silent Sam were there. Mrs. Sybil Sharpe will get her way if some mugger kills me.

  He is even with me now, walking fast, his head down. Will he push me into a bush? Dump me into the alley ahead?

  I have nothing to lose by standing my ground.

  “You’ll find I put up a pretty good fight,” I say. “For that I thank the weight training.”

  “What?” It’s just a boy, this mugger, still rangy, hands and feet waiting for his body to grow to meet them. He has so many rings in his face. But he doesn’t seem any happier to see me than I am to see him. Maybe it’s my Antichrist look.