A Year Less a Day Read online

  “Let it go,” screams Ruth, racing to grab the lamp. Too late. The coloured glass lampshade explodes on the floor and the remnants of the lamp fly across the room to slam into Trina’s back.

  “Oh, shit!” exclaims Ruth.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll pay,” shouts Trina heroically, clearly enjoying the tug-of-war with the dog, and now, with the lamp’s standard jammed across the doorway, the cord stops streaming and she begins reining in the reluctant animal.

  “Don’t you dare bring him back in here,” barks Ruth as she stomps back to the kitchen, “And you fucking well will pay for the lamp.”

  Ruth is still in the kitchen, bawling into her apron, when Trina returns to the café and starts picking glass shards out of the carpet. “I put him in my husband’s car,” she tells Cindy triumphantly.

  “Is he safe on his own?” queries Cindy.

  “He’s found my husband’s lunch,” laughs Trina, “Sushi and a low-fat strawberry yogurt.”

  “Trina!” exclaims Cindy, but Trina cuts her off as her face suddenly falls.

  “Oh, Christ. I’ve left the kids’ guinea pig in the oven.”

  “What?”

  “Tell you later,” yells Trina as she heads for the door and collides with Tom. “Sorry, Tom,” she calls in her wake. “Family crisis—baked guinea pig.”

  Tom shakes his head and laughs to Cindy. “What the hell has she done this time?”

  “Apart from wrecking ...” starts Cindy as she drops glass fragments into a dustpan.

  “Hang on,” says Tom, grabbing the morning paper. “Need the little boys’ room first.”

  “Oh, crap,” calls Cindy. “We’re not even open yet.”

  Ruth’s appetite for a fry up has vanished in the kafuffle, but it is no longer Jordan’s condition that bothers her. One nagging voice has been supplanted by another—a voice of reason.

  “You can’t afford to eat the profits any longer,” she tells herself, and settles for a couple of carrots and a cup of tea while she cooks for the customers.

  By eight-thirty the breakfast rush is winding down and Ruth has laboured upstairs and checked on Jordan four times. He wakes on the final occasion.

  “Would you like some breakfast, dear?” Ruth coos.

  Jordan pushes aside the blanket and struggles out of the chair. “What’s the time? I should be cooking.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ve coped,” Ruth says, and bursts into tears with the instant realization that she’s going to be coping for the rest of her life. That, short of a miracle, her life is heading for a wreck as fast as her husband’s, but unlike him, she’s the one who’s going to have to deal with the bloody aftermath. “We’d better tell your mother,” Ruth snivels as she reaches for the phone.

  “She’ll say it’s God’s punishment because we don’t go to church anymore,” says Jordan.

  “And that’s my fault?” shoots back Ruth, knowing well that her mother-in-law will blame her.

  “He always used to go,” she’ll spit, “before he met you.”

  “Maybe we should start going again,” says Jordan.

  “Oh, that’s brilliant,” Ruth scoffs. “God gives you cancer, then you want to go to church and beg him to cure it.” Sanctimonious cow. Bet you’d be the first on your knees if you got it. “I’m sorry,” she pleads. “Don’t take any notice of me. Of course we’ll go to church if you want. We’ll do anything you want. Tell me what you want, Jordan. Anything. From now on, anything you want.”

  “I don’t want my mother to know,” says Jordan coolly.

  “Ruth!” Cindy yells up the stairs, “Are you doin’ the crappy breakfasts or not?”

  “We’ll discuss it later,” Ruth calls to Jordan, and she uses her apron to dab her eyes as she heads down the stairs.

  Trina is back and is frustrating the crossword gang. Matt, Dot, and Maureen have wrestled the relevant page of the Vancouver Sun from Tom, and they studiously worry at each clue in succession.

  Trina is like a butterfly as she flits ahead and robs the others of the easiest clues. “Trina! That doesn’t fit,” yells Maureen as Trina races across the page with “TANJIT,” and collides with the “E” of “NUISANCE.”

  “You always do that,” moans Matt, sotto voce. “You’ve ruined it now.”

  “Oops. Sorry,” chuckles Trina insincerely. “It’s not my day. I nearly cooked the kids’ guinea pig.”

  “What?”

  “Well, there was a frost last night.”

  “And?”

  Robyn from the candle shop three doors away races in, close to tears, wanting to stick a hastily created poster in the window.

  “Sure,” says Cindy. “What is it?”

  “Lost dog,” says Robyn, showing Cindy a photocopied picture of a familiar Labrador. “I just let him out for a pee. He usually comes straight back.”

  “Trina,” yells Cindy, “someone here to see you.”

  “Give Jordan a call, Cindy,” demands Matt jovially. “We’re stuck on 5-across.”

  “Only ’cos Trina made such a damn mess,” moans Dot. “What is a Tanjit anyway?”

  “I dunno,” calls Trina as she glances at Robyn’s poster, “But it’s got six letters.” Then she turns to Robyn for support. “It’s only a crossword for chrissake ...”

  “What about my dog?” snivels Robyn.

  “He’s at the pound. I’ll take you. They know me there. I find two or three animals most weeks. You’re really lucky I caught him ... Did you know he’s fond of strawberry yogurt?”

  “Yogurt?”

  “Yeah, and sushi, though he spat up the wasabi on the dashboard.”

  Robyn takes the lead, saying, “Quick. We’ll take my car,” as she hustles Trina out.

  “Jordan’s sleeping-in this morning. Ruth’s doing the cooking,” Cindy calls to Matt once the commotion has died down. But Ruth isn’t cooking. She’s taken cover in the kitchen in the same way she’s been hiding most of her life—using feigned busyness as an avoidance mechanism. Ten minutes later, as she angrily swats at a lump of dough with a rolling pin, she wishes she could disappear altogether when Cindy pokes her head around the door.

  “Ruth. The coffee guy’s here.”

  Ruth’s empty stomach cramps and she stands quivering.

  “What’s the matter with you today?” asks Cindy.

  “The till was short a hundred bucks last night,” Ruth complains, though she knows that’s not the reason her knuckles are blanching as she grips the pin.

  “Yeah, I know,” says Cindy. “I paid Raven. You promised her cash, remember?”

  Ruth’s grip doesn’t relax. “Cindy. Do me a favour, would you? Tell the coffee guy I’m out ...”

  Cindy shakes her head. “Won’t work, Ruth. He already told me, ‘No cash, no coffee.’ He says you haven’t paid in three weeks.”

  “Shit.”

  “I’d help, but ... How much d’ye need?”

  “About five hundred.”

  “What about crappy Tom?”

  Tom is an unremarkable little man in his late fifties who would be slowing down if he had anything to slow down from. His morning rush to the washroom, and the subsequent evacuation, are generally the most energetic motions of his day. In fact, the only other time Cindy has seen him move was the time two doubtful characters in raincoats walked in without the slightest intention of buying coffee and Tom shot out the back like a scorched rabbit.

  “Had an important call from my Zurich office,” he’d explained when Cindy cornered him the following morning.

  Tom has two faces—both smiling: one that loans money to people without asking awkward questions, and the other that invests money for people who don’t ask awkward questions. He lives on the edge, between penury and fantasy, and sees no point in waiting until he has made a fortune before plucking its fruits. His latest “Mercedes” is a twelve-year-old Toyota with peeling paintwork that he hides in a corner of the municipal parking lot. His second car, a “Rolls Royce Corniche,” which “Only comes
out on special occasions,” bears an uncanny resemblance to the banged-up VW Beetle on blocks at the back of his apartment. But his one-room basement apartment is only a front—somewhere in the back of his mind it’s an eight-bedroom mansion.

  One thing is certain: Tom has an office. It’s Ruth and Jordan’s Corner Coffee Shoppe, where he hangs out every morning at the start of the week, then, at lunchtime on Thursdays, he’ll loudly proclaim, “I won’t be in the rest of the weekend,” as if the weekend is already dripping away. “I’m popping over to the island for a bit of a sail.”

  No one scoffs. If anyone knows that Tom never goes further than his sister’s bungalow in North Vancouver they keep it to themselves. As for sailing, the only yachts he’s ever mastered are in the glossy boating magazines that he casually flips open when anyone impressionable is near. “I was thinking of this one,” he’ll say of a sleek fifty- footer. “What do you think?” he’ll ask with a sigh of boredom.

  “I think you need some new shoes first,” would be an appropriate response, though no one ever says so.

  Ruth’s request for a five hundred dollar loan brings only a moment’s thought, then Tom beams, “No problem at all, Ruth. Happy to help out.”

  Ruth catches her breath as Tom pulls a monster roll of fifties from his pocket. “Walking-around money,” he says poker-faced as he tantalizingly peels off the first bill. Then he pauses. “Hold on, Ruth . . .”

  He’s changed his mind, thinks Ruth, and she visualizes the customers departing as the percolators run dry.

  “Why don’t I give you hundreds,” continues Tom as if he has no idea of the torment. “Would that be all right with you?”

  “Hundreds. Yes, of course,” replies Ruth brightening, thinking fives, tens, twenties, who cares? “Hundreds will be fine if that’s better for you.”

  “OK. Back in a moment,” says Tom, quickly squirreling the roll back into his pocket, and he dashes out of the café before she can discover that his stash is a wad of carefully clipped newspapers ringed with a few photocopied fifties.

  “Well?” questions the coffee guy with his hand out.

  “He’s ... He’s just popped over to the bank for me,” stalls Ruth, reddening, though her mind races as she tediously counts every bill from the till and adds it to the small bundle from her pocket.

  “How much do I owe?” she inquires for the third time, seemingly confused, then starts counting all over again.

  “Would you like a coffee?” she asks the delivery man with it half counted, then loses count as he scowls his frustration.

  “Look, I’m in a bit of a hurry, lady.”

  “Sorry ... Lost count,” she says starting at the beginning, knowing that the end offers no salvation.

  He’s caught on and counts with her now, “Twenty, forty, sixty ...”

  Ruth stops. “Does that include today’s delivery?” she asks innocently, but she’s overstretching.

  “Yes,” he hisses. “That includes today.”

  “That’s not fair ...” she starts, then backs off and takes a deep breath. “OK,” she says, ready to confess, when Tom returns and slides five new hundred dollar bills into her hand.

  “I promise to pay you at the end of the week,” enthuses Ruth as soon as the delivery man has gone, but Tom is unconcerned.

  “No rush, dear—pocket change. You just take your time. Six months if you want. You and Jordan aren’t planning on running away, are you?”

  Ruth runs, tears streaming over her cheeks, and slams herself into the washroom where she sits staring deeply into the mirror, wishing she could liberate herself from reality as easily as Alice. But the mirror is cold-hearted and reflects the truth.

  “Who’d wanna look at a fat lump like you,” she had often mused to the mirror as a teenager, before consoling herself with a box of Oreos and a good cry over a chick flick, while her peers were out screwing in the back of the family Ford. But, by then, she’d had years of practice in vanishing, especially at school where her baby fat had been solidified by the misery of being the universal punching bag. Weakened and slowed by her lumpiness and hampered by poor vision—once her glasses had been snatched she was easy prey—her only defense was inconspicuousness. Not easy for someone her size.

  “You’re early, Phil,” says Cindy as Phillipa dashes in trailing her coat and shaking the rain out of her hair.

  “Shh. Where’s Ruth? She wanted me in at nine, but what with the kids an’ my mother, then I heard the news and had to check the lottery.”

  “Did you win?”

  “Nah. Some lucky sod has though. Five mil’ and it’s someone around here, according to the radio.”

  “More chance of getting hit by a crappy bus ...” starts Cindy, but Raven appears from nowhere and cuts her off.

  “Not today, Cindy. Today I’d put my money on the lottery. Would you let Ruth know I won’t be in for a few weeks?” she adds breezily. “Something unexpected has come up.”

  “Fine crappy psychic you are,” mutters Cindy, but Raven has already taken off.

  “Ruth’s blubbering in the washroom,” Cindy tells Phillipa, “God knows what’s going on. It’s like a bloody madhouse in here today, and look at the crappy fuckin’ weather.”

  “You want crappy, move to Newfoundland,” says Phillipa.

  “I might just do that, Phil,” replies Cindy as Trina rushes in and shivers in front of the fire while a puddle grows around her feet.

  “Robyn is mad at me ’cuz I saved her dog’s life,” Trina explains to the crossword gang. “I sometimes wonder why I do favours for people.”

  “Why?” asks Maureen.

  “He might have got run over.”

  “No. Why is she mad at you?”

  Trina’s tears turn to a giggle. “It cost her fifty bucks to get him out of the pound, another thirty for a rabies shot, twenty-five for a licence—which she should have had anyway, and then she got a ticket for another two hundred for letting him loose on the street in the first place.”

  “Oh, shit ...” mutters Maureen, but Trina isn’t finished. “She wouldn’t bring me back from the pound. I had to walk. Now I’m late for work.”

  “You’d better get going then,” says Matt with his arms folded over the nearly completed puzzle, then he remembers the guinea pig.

  “He’s fine now,” calls Trina over her shoulder. “I shoved him in the freezer for a couple of minutes to cool off.”

  The café fills with the mid-morning office crush demanding cappuccinos and lattes faster than man or machine can make them. Ruth is back in the kitchen, warming up the fryers and griddles as she prepares for lunch, when Jordan shuffles in.

  “You shouldn’t be up,” she begins kindly, then she slams a stainless steel spatula onto the metal table. “This is crazy. What’s the point in doing this? What’s the fucking point in doing anything anymore?”

  Jordan recoils at the venom, but Ruth drops her voice and starts to snivel again. “I’m sorry, but we should be together every moment. I shouldn’t be stuck here cooking for a load of ungrateful pigs, and I can’t go out there and pretend nothing’s happened. I want to be upstairs with you ...”

  “Because you are dying,” hangs unspoken, as it will at the end of almost every sentence in Ruth’s immediate future. “We must do this because you are dying. We can’t do that because you are dying. I must say this because ... Don’t say that because ... Take this because ... Don’t cry because ... Don’t shout because, don’t scream, don’t make a fuss, don’t argue, don’t demand, don’t force, don’t yell, don’t tell. Don’t . . . don’t . . . don’t.”

  Ruth’s future is filled with the caregiver’s burden of don’ts as she asks Jordan, “Why don’t we hire a cook so I can be with you all day?”

  “Because I’d get on your nerves and you’d be happy to see me go.”

  “Stop that, Jordan. Please stop. I know we can’t afford it.”

  “That’s why we mustn’t tell my mother—not yet anyway. Once she catches on, she’ll p
robably want her money back.”

  “Tell her she can’t have it,” says Ruth, though she knows the suggestion is going nowhere.

  Jordan’s mother was English, before she emigrated, a grouchy northerner from Newcastle-on-tyne. She’s a Geordie with the dialect, the arms, and the determination of a Sunderland steelworker. If she wants her money, only God might stand in her way.

  “Ruth, I hate to ask ...” Jordan hesitates.

  “What is it, love?” Ruth queries, lightly dusting him with flour as she enfolds him.

  “I’m going to need money for drugs and stuff.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be al right. Just take what you want,” she says, thinking, Tom will have to wait.

  “Then there’ll be other things: travel, special food. How will you manage?”

  “Jordan, I said, ‘Don’t worry.’” She says, then floods into tears as she realizes that the man dying in her arms is more concerned for her future than his own. “You needn’t worry,” she reiterates softly, realizing that truth has become an early casualty.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right,” she carries on, but what is she supposed to say? “Sorry, Jordan, but we simply can’t afford for you to have cancer right now.”

  “I’m sure it will be OK,” she adds, still praying for a misdiagnosis or a spontaneous remission. It could happen, she tries convincing herself, and now, more than ever, wants that to be the case as she comforts him—a man about to be overtaken by mortality who finally seems to care.

  Not that he hadn’t been a good husband, in his own way, for seven years. And if he had found more enjoyment in the pages of Hustler and Playboy she would accept her share of the blame. The bigger she had grown, the more he turned to the stack of magazines by the bed.

  “Look at this,” he’d say, pointing enthusiastically to a couple of stick insects with digitally enhanced pudenda in some impossibly contorted pose. “We should try that.”