CHAPTER TWO—I WENT NOWHERE
It was Elaine and Gloria, never Gloria and Elaine. Her family
moved into the upper duplex my parents owned when she was seven years old. We
shared the same birthday, October 29, but I was exactly one year younger, and
she never let me forget it. Everyone who didn’t know better assumed we were
sisters. She had two of those; I had none.
We were both scrawny little creatures with fine light brown hair
that we deplored as being the most humdrum colour of all. She had pretty green
eyes; mine were a less glamorous hazel, though Elaine insisted they were merely
light brown.
Elaine had more gumption than I did. I was a shy, clingy little
thing with a defiant spirit seemingly trapped underneath my ribcage. Because of
the age difference, Elaine avoided me, first at the elementary school we both
attended—Westhaven, and then at Royal Crest High.
I watched from the sidelines as she bloomed into a comely teenager,
wasp-waisted, lanky, long, shiny hair highlighted beach-blonde. In contrast, my
awkward stage spanned four seemingly endless years. My pert nose grew big and
lumpy, my body thickened and I was assaulted by cystic acne that was as painful
as it was hideous. I still have scars from those infected pustules, but
blemished skin on a 67-year-old goes pretty much unnoticed.
We went to different universities, both in Montreal, and I
rarely saw her anymore. We no longer visited each other’s homes, and even
though she was living above my nose, I lost track of her. She married young,
moved first to Toronto, then New York, then London, then Los Angeles. From time
to time her mother, Sarah, showed me updated photos: Elaine with a reasonably presentable
but balding husband, Elaine with identical twin baby girls, Elaine on vacation
in a black and white polka-dotted bikini, looking sun-kissed, lovely and lithe.
In 1983, Elaine’s father died. Two of the three daughters were scattered
to the winds by then, and didn’t attend his funeral, which my parents found
shocking and indefensible. The middle daughter, Ruth, the dutiful daughter
managed the funeral arrangements and invited her mother to move in with her
family in Westmount. My parents never tried renting out the upstairs after it
was vacated. Over the years, they were often approached by people who knew
people who knew that the flat was unoccupied, but my parents would smile and
say they preferred it that way.
I went nowhere. I became an elementary school teacher at
Westhaven, my first alma mater, and
worked my entire career there. It was located just a few blocks from where I
lived. I took two years off to care for my mother when she sickened from cancer
and I did the same for my father shortly thereafter. After he died, I was alone
in their house, which had become my house and I also decided against renting
the upper duplex. I didn’t have the temperament to oversee the myriad details
that comprise the duties of a landlady.
It was a bitterly cold Sunday in mid-April,1997. I was cleaning
the upper duplex, a mind-numbing task I performed once a month. One might think
it would be easier to clean empty rooms than ones filled with furniture and
other objects, but I didn’t find this to be the case at all. There were no
visual distractions, and that made the washing of counters, baseboards, tiles
and linoleum surfaces dreary indeed.
I was running the bathwater, making a paste of Old Dutch
cleanser in order to scour the tub when I heard the doorbell ring. The upper
duplex, unlike the lower one, had a pleasantly musical door chime. I came close
to ignoring it, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I buzzed open the
front door downstairs. A rangy woman stood in the doorway.
“Hey stranger. It’s been like what, a million years?”
I recognized the husky voice immediately. It had been so
attractively distinctive when she was a girl. Now it made her sound old and
hard.
“Elaine!” I shrieked, gripping the bannister as I awkwardly
tripped down several curving steps to meet her more or less halfway. The long,
winding stairwell reeked of nicotine.
Our embrace was bony. Both of us were thin middle-aged women
although I wanted to believe that time had been kinder to me than it had been
to her.
It didn’t surprise me in the least that once again we resembled siblings.
We both wore our hair long, were dressed in muted medieval colours and our eyes
were rimmed with inky liner.
As soon as we entered my flat, Elaine exclaimed, “Why, it hasn’t
changed at all! Have you been living here all this time?”
I admitted that I had been. By this time we were in the kitchen,
where the light was crisp and bright. I noticed that Elaine looked somewhat
downtrodden. Her long olive-green skirt was muddied at the hem; her sensible
lace-up shoes were scuffed and nicked. Much of the prettiness had been leached
out of her narrow face.
She sat down unsteadily, holding on to the table-top as she did
so. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
Actually, I did. Mind. I did, but I was uneasy saying so.
Instead, I mumbled, “If you absolutely must…. I’ll get something you can use as
an ashtray.” She had already fished a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of her
deep skirt pocket. I fetched a teacup saucer, and she ran her yellowed fingers
over its porcelain rosebuds.
“Your parents?” Elaine had liked them and appreciated their
subdued, restrained ways. She had often told me so when we were children.
“Both dead. Cancer. My mother’s was lung, my father’s
pancreatic. Would you like something to drink? Rosehips tea? Coffee? A glass of
white wine?”
“When? When did they die?”
“What does it matter?” I thought but didn’t ask. Instead I
answered dutifully, robotically. “Mother died in 1992, Dad in 1994. What about
your mother? And tell me about your sisters, and your daughters. How old are
they now? Your daughters, I mean. Not your sisters or your mother.”
Elaine laughed. It sounded like the bark of a small dog. “A
glass of wine would be lovely. Will you have one as well?” I nodded repeatedly
as I stood up.
“My girls are seventeen years old. They live with their father
in New York. My mother has Alzheimer’s. She’s been a patient at Spinoza
Geriatric Hospital for the last couple of years. My sister Ruth is her
designated caregiver. Lucky Ruth. She’s the only one of us still living in
Montreal, so she got the position by default.”
I surprised myself by asking, “Your cigarette looks very
appealing. Can I bum one?”
“Be my guest.” She slid the rumpled pack and miniature lighter
toward me.
I couldn’t help thinking, “What a charming picture we must make!
Two old broads smoking cigarettes and drinking wine in broad daylight.”
“So listen, Gloria.” Elaine’s eyes looked at me nervously. I
sensed what was coming. “Can I crash here for a few weeks, until I get on my
feet? I’m staying with an ex-boyfriend, but his welcome for me is wearing thin.
Truth be told, it wasn’t thick to begin with.”
The request had a certain charm. My own company wasn’t all that
entertaining. My personality struck me as being mechanically melancholic. My
little rituals, quirks if you will, bored me senseless. So I was tempted to say
“Yes. Yes of course. You can stay here as long as you like.” But that unspoken
assent was instantly waylaid by a better, bolder, brighter idea, which sprung
out of my mouth like a newborn snake. “The upper duplex is empty, has been for
years. You could stay there, rent-free for as long as you like. It’s very
sparsely furnished, though. You’ll have to buy a shitload of stuff and split
the Hydro and Gaz Métro bills with me.”
I’ve always been a cautious, many would even say
fearful person, but it seemed like the perfect offer to be making at the time,
and I never had cause to regret it.
