The Waiting Hours

by Shandi Mitchell

  When she was sixteen, the track was razed for the big-box store and promises of jobs. Old men cried and young ones threw rocks and beer cans. The vibration and roar of the bulldozers flushed swarms of rats across the highway and into the new subdivision. The crowd cheered. She still had a photograph of the fleeing rats. It was shot with an Instamatic. The rats looked like ink smudges, partially obscured by a blurry close-up of a man’s extended middle finger. She regretted not taking the shot of the old men crying just off-frame. That was the day the town died, but nobody knew it then.

  The car’s taillights flashed hesitantly as it crept slowly across the open lanes. C’mon, c’mon. Kate popped the clutch. Her wheels squeaked on the hot pavement and she swung around the Caddie’s big-ass tail and pulled to the outside lane. The pickup grumbled up alongside her on the inside and slowed to keep pace. The windows were tinted black. The truck’s engine whined a challenge and it squealed ahead. The town was filled with idiots.

  Up ahead, a tall, skeletal man stepped off the curb into her lane. Despite the sweltering heat, he was wearing a bomber jacket and jeans. The truck accelerated and swerved into her lane, swiping past the man. A head appeared out the passenger window and screamed obscenities. The man stepped back onto the curb as the truck and a gob of spit sheared past.

  She checked her rear-view mirror and stopped to let him cross. He didn’t look up. He tapped the edge of the curb twice with his toe and stepped into the street. She held on tight to the gearshift and forced herself to watch his awkward, stilting gait. His eyes were fixed on the pavement, following an imaginary line. With one hand he clutched the sagging waistband of his oversized jeans. Tattered cuffs ground against the pavement under the crumpled backs of filthy, laceless sneakers. The soles flopped against bare heels. He looked in worse shape than most of the treat ’em and street ’ems who wandered in and out of emerg.

  In her side mirror, she glimpsed a car speeding up the inside lane. The man’s head was down and he was about step past her fender. Look up, she willed. Anger biled under her tongue, he was going to get hit. She leaned on the horn. The sound pierced him mid-step. He froze as though seeing the pinpoint of a sharpshooter’s mark on his chest. It reminded Kate of the moment after a bullet strikes but before a body crumples. The car wailed past. In the stillness after, Van Morrison moaned.

  The man looked at her. His face was gaunt and his hair was long and matted. Nausea balled in her stomach, but she didn’t look away. There wasn’t any recognition in his eyes. He scuttled across the street. Taking a half step back before stepping over the curb, he tapped it twice with his toe. She watched his thin back as he retreated down the sidewalk in a stuttering half walk, half run.

  Drive.

  Zeus shifted in his crate to face her. Her fingers loosened their chokehold on the steering wheel.

  Drive.

  One foot released the clutch, the other accelerated, and she lost sight of her brother.

  * * *

  —

  The narrow gravel driveway was choked with alder brambles and the bowers hung heavy with summer’s weight. Kate glanced up to the dappling of light and leaf brushing over her windshield. A tire dipped into a pothole and briars scratched the mirrors. The overgrown lane opened onto her mother’s front yard. Parking under the shade of a crimson maple, she kept the vehicle running in neutral and redirected the vents to deflect the coldness back to Zeus.

  The cut on her palm throbbed and the bandage’s edge had lifted. She could smell the previous night on her scrubs. This was a mistake. She should have gone home. There was no need to check now. Her brother wasn’t there. She needed to sleep. She rolled down her window and the warm smell of trees spilled in. Birdsong fluttered from the boughs. Living in the city, she had forgotten that sound. She picked at the bandage sticky with adhesive and peeled it off fast. The pain was sharp and deep. She ran her thumb along the thin scab, straight as a knife blade.

  Tucked at the rear of the property, the small farmhouse looked as tired and sad as the town that had built up around it. Through the splay of untamed forsythia and honeysuckle hedges, she could see the neighbours’ vinyl-clad houses butting against the property lines. The narrow lot was the last remnant of what had once been farmland, long ago paved over by a labyrinth of streets named after clear-cut trees.

  Her mother’s property was considered an eyesore and she’d been served with numerous citations to tidy the yard, which she self-righteously ignored. When the neglected wild of trees and bush finally obscured the view from the street, the neighbours stopped complaining. They were certain the next owner would raze the house and the trees.

  The house had always been white, but the peeling layers of leaded paint had dulled to a gloaming grey. It was scarred by subpar renovations, a sagging porch, and moss-eaten roof. A corner had been scraped bare to its weathered cedar shakes, another of her father’s many abandoned projects. He’d had dreams of fixing things, but only succeeded at tearing them apart. After he left with the family station wagon and the racetrack’s best beer maid, handiwork wasn’t high among her mother’s priorities.

  She looked to the mound of tires, gutted motors, and cement blocks overrun with tall grass and wildflowers—a monument to the rusting remains of her father. She was another of his abandoned projects. Her brother said he remembered what he looked like, but he’d been only four. His descriptions resembled characters from the books he was reading and popular TV shows of that time. One winter, he convinced her their father was the skipper on a famous island with a banker and a movie star and once they were found, he’d come home again. But the show was cancelled before they were found.

  She squeezed her hand closed. The pain held solid and barbed. Zeus rustled in his crate. She should let him out for a run. Around the porch, a patch of grass mowed to within an inch of its life had burned brown with thirst, but the rest of the yard was knee-high wild. There would be ticks. A monarch butterfly careened over the hood and windshield. A childish part of her heart reacted with the disappointment of being found.

  Her mother said butterflies were sent by faeries to determine whether it was safe to come out and play. They only appeared when people were away. Their gowns were spun from spider webs and jewelled with dewdrops and ladybugs. They always sang their words and wrote their stories on the bellies of clouds, and they were experts at hiding.

  As a child, Kate practised walking barefoot on the gravel so she could sneak up on them. She never succeeded. They left evidence behind, though—a half-eaten strawberry on a rose-petal plate, a dandelion necklace on the windowsill, an acorn bridge spanning a puddle, or a letter under a rock addressed in tiny print to The Giant Girl. She was eight when Sally Mosher told her faeries weren’t real and that she had seen her mother stringing buttercups in the trees. But by then, Kate already knew. She didn’t tell her mother. Soon after, the faeries moved away and she chose to believe they were living happily ever after.

  Kate leaned forward to watch a squirrel run up the trunk of a towering pine, but lost sight of it in the broken limbs severed by the last hurricane. The same winds had toppled the crown of the ancient oak where the faerie queen lived. Her mother had cried. The rotting stump, pocked by woodpeckers, still guarded the house. Boat builders and furniture makers made multiple offers for the virgin wood. Instead, her mother piled its broken pieces in the back lot, even though they didn’t have a working fireplace and were always in need of money. She talked about hiring an artist to carve the stump, but when Kate offered to arrange it, she refused. Ruth said she didn’t know what it was supposed to be, other than a tree.

  She forced herself to look at the upstairs window shielded with blankets. It had been three years since she’d been inside the house. After another pleading call for help. Another nauseating drive bleeding shame and fear and hope all the way to the front door. Only to be told again, It’s okay, it’s better now, would she like some tea? She couldn’t play pretend anymore. She wanted doctors and hospitals—what her training told
her could work. Her mother wanted love to be enough. Kate had begged and threatened and cajoled and finally played the only bargaining chip she had left—her. She wouldn’t come back if they didn’t get help. She’s pretty certain she cried. Her mother said, “How can you be so cruel? He’s my son.”

  Now they talked on the phone once a week about trivial, safe things—the weather, supper, flea market finds, crime reports, and only near the holidays would she be asked if she was coming over, and Kate would ask if he was back on his meds, and the conversation would veer to celebrity divorces and botched plastic surgeries—other people’s tragedies that made her mother feel better. She picked at the scab. Blood welled in the crease of her palm.

  Her brother hadn’t recognized her. And she hadn’t called his name. Her throat knotted. She swallowed the bitter pill of her training—some can’t be saved—but her heart spat out the words. Zeus growled softly.

  A woman was walking up the driveway. She had the stained knees and broad sun hat of a gardener and the gait of someone who took pride in knowing her neighbours’ business. Kate balled her hand into a fist to stanch the wound.

  “Kate?” It was Mrs. Carson who hated dogs and kids and led the charge filing complaints. Kate didn’t have the energy to smile back. “I haven’t seen you in ages.” She rested her gloved hand on the open window.

  “Yea, it’s been a while.” Not since she was a teenager and Kate lit her garbage cans on fire after Mrs. Carson threatened to poison her dog when it peed on her manicured lawn. Her mother called her Mrs. Catpiss.

  “I’m so sorry about your mother.” She didn’t bother to explain how she’d heard.

  “She’ll be fine.” Kate didn’t offer any more. She would probably have to trade off if Mrs. Carson came to emerg on her shift.

  “Oh, that’s good.” The words fell hollow between them. “We thought she might be thinking of selling.” She eyed the house as though calculating the cost of demolition. It was probably lowering her property value. Her eyes narrowed and she trod on gravel words: “And your brother, how is he?”

  Kate thought of all the times Mrs. Carson watched from the curb and never once approached her weeping mother.

  “Good.” Neither blinked. “I’ll tell him you said hi and you’d love for him to stop by for visit.” Grinding the gears, she backed out of the driveway. Zeus’s claws scrabbled and he braced himself with a sit.

  * * *

  —

  The clock mocked her with another lost minute. It was already past ten in the morning and she couldn’t sleep. In less than eight hours, she would be back at the hospital. She rolled over and Zeus snuggled against her belly. Her bedroom smelled stale with dirty laundry and floors that needed vacuuming. The cheap fan oscillating noisily at the foot of the bed was in the wrong position and the weak drafts barely reached her. She was too tired to get up and adjust it and, more importantly, she didn’t want to wake Zeus. He was dreaming.

  She stared at the slash of light under her too-short blackout blinds, recycled from her last flat. Sirens bleated in the distance. Car tires hummed past the window. In the small park next door, a kid was bouncing a ball off a netless hoop. It didn’t sound like he was making any baskets.

  Maybe if she got under the covers, she could trick her brain to sleep. But she was already too hot in a T-shirt and panties. She should take a shower, but worried it would wake her more. She should eat something, but she couldn’t decide whether she was hungry for breakfast or supper. If she didn’t sleep soon, she might as well get up. She could get groceries, pay the light bill, put on a load of wash, hang some pictures to offset the hooks heavy with leashes, ball caps, and survival gear, or finally decide on a colour to paint the room other than landlord white.

  She closed her eyes and pushed back images of her brother’s boned fingers clutching his waistband. She tried to recall her mother’s last phone call. I love you, Ruth said. Love ya, too. She didn’t think she had said I, and there might have been a pause before replying.

  She focused on what else could be done. She could disinfect the cut. She could turn off her pager. She could set another alarm. She could visit her mother. She could find her brother. She could buy some fruit. She could…

  Her breath fell into slumbered pace with Zeus.

  8

  911. What is your emergency?

  Tamara tasted the metallic sourness of panic. She couldn’t decipher what the woman was screaming. In the background, dogs shrilled hysterically.

  What is your emergency? Her mouth was sticky and dry. She struggled to control the fear rising in her throat. Where are you? The woman’s guttural howls were coming from somewhere too deep for humans to know. She activated a trace to unlock the location of the private call. Her fingers fumbled over the keys. Tell me what’s happening. The monitors flickered, text garbled, and her screens flashed dead, blinding her to the scene. Screams pierced her headset and she gasped awake.

  Her chest was slick with sweat. Sheets tangled her feet, and the silk scarf bundling her hair had slipped off. She looked to her clock: 2:35. Day or night? The windows bled light around the tight edges of the blackout shades. It was day. She loosened the scarf’s chokehold from her neck and a torrent of braids dropped to her shoulders and slapped her back. She let herself breathe.

  * * *

  —

  Slowly, she depressed the plunger on the French press and inhaled the coffee’s rich bloom. She poured with equal care, then added one sugar and a frothy head of warmed milk. A perfect cup. She rinsed the spoon, wiped the stray grounds from the counter, and curled up on the far end of the couch.

  The room was soft with cushions and throws. Diffuse light filtered through the white sheers and gleamed over her hardwood floors. The countertops and tables were clear of mail, newspapers, and smudges. Everything was in its place. She sipped her coffee and it made her happy.

  Flicking past the news channels, she paused on the weather station. It was forty degrees, another record-breaking high with five more days of sun in the forecast. The program cut to a rapid-fire headline of the world’s wildfires, tornadoes, droughts, and grief. She switched it off.

  The shouts of children playing seeped through her closed windows. She presumed they were her elderly neighbours’ grandchildren. Through the sheers, she sometimes watched them take out their garbage, mow their lawn, and haul in groceries. It was a white neighbourhood. People kept to themselves, which suited her fine. They smiled and nodded hello to each other, but there was no expectation of conversation.

  Tucked away from the city’s extremes of the south end’s privilege, the midtown’s bars, and the north end’s poor, her area was a pocket of postwar homes whose owners took pride in keeping them looking the same. Hers was an unassuming one-and-a-half-storey on an unassuming street that rarely saw traffic or emergencies. The real estate ad touted it as a fixer-upper with one previous owner, location, location, location. If she walked down the steep hill, she could see the harbour and bridge and the first hints of the community where she grew up. But she didn’t do that. Just the thought of going outside made her shoulders tense. The world was a dangerous place. The air conditioner purred its comfort. She drank three-quarters of her coffee and set it aside.

  The floorboards were cool beneath her bare feet as she watered the spider plants and hibiscus. She plucked off the dead leaves, pulled the pots farther from the window to mitigate the blanching sun, and clocked each a quarter turn to keep their stalks upright. They were healthy and strong, and the hibiscus blooms were trumpeting. Tomorrow she would mist their leaves.

  She sat at the piano and gently lifted the fallboard. Running her long fingers across the keys, she checked her fingertips for dust. The hundred-year-old upright had been her grandmother’s. It was plain. The beech wood bore no embellishments. She preferred the straight, simple lines that concealed the true beauty within—the bronzed harp and strings gilding the spruce soundboard, the piano’s heart. Sometimes, she played with the front panel open so
she could watch the hammers strike the strings.

  It had cost a small fortune to refinish and tune, and she had been advised that it wasn’t worth it. But she knew the piano’s low, sweet resonance. As a child, she would lie on her belly under the bench and listen to her Granny Nan’s husky alto filling the world above her, Touch me, Lord Jesus, while she watched her cracked, thick heels and the soles of her feet on the foot pedals, step-step to the holy hallelujah choir, Guide me, Jehovah, through this vale of sorrow. She would press her ear to the floor, hugging the vibrations lifting from the boards. Touch me, Lord Jesus, with Thy hand of mercy…

  She laid her hands on the keyboard. The ivories were cool against her warm skin. She sat tall with her fingers arched, wrists straight, so unlike her grandmother’s hands with their bent wrists and thick, arthritic fingers seemingly plucking music from the keys. She brought her hands back to her lap, cupped them palms up, and waited for the lightness to enter her muscles. Her arms rose and her fingers arched, bowing to the keys.

  The opening measure of Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” lifted. She leaned into the slow ripple of notes. As the melody and harmonies mingled in their slightly irregular wash, her eyes closed and she moved within its gentle ebb. She was barely aware of her neck craning forward or her head rocking slightly so her ears could follow the notes flowing from her hands, reverberating back to her through the heart of the wood.

  If she could have seen herself, she would have seen the fluidity of her arms rising and dipping to the keys, elegantly summoning the sounds to the surface. Softly, so softly, she caressed the notes, pouring them towards her chest. Her shoulders lowered into the swells. Her breath slowed, deepening between the crests, the music washing her away…