Читать книгу Something Remains - Hassan Ghedi Santur - Страница 16

9 how to be where we are

Andrew would rather be at home making Hanna laugh by doing funny faces. It astonishes him how much pleasure can be had by this simple activity. And pleasure is something he is in dire need of right now, considering that his mother is lying in a funeral home being embalmed, powdered, and lip-glossed in a feeble attempt to make her not look as dead as she is. At the moment he is in his taxi parked on Elizabeth Street outside Toronto General Hospital where he often waits to pick up customers. Thanks to his father’s bowling alley freak-out, he had to charge $3,000 on his Visa and now has to work extra hours to pay it off.

He is listening to Joni Mitchell oldies. Joni’s and Nina Simone’s music are all he plays while working. Something about their voices adds a little zip to his days. As he shifts in the fake leather seat of his cab, he thinks about Helli for the first time in weeks. Maybe the orange dusk sky over the city’s office towers reminds him of her. Sunset was her favourite time. Or perhaps the recent events in his life have made him think of her. He can’t help wondering what his life would be like if he hadn’t left Helsinki because of his mother’s illness.

His old life with Helli seems like paradise now. But what he really longs for isn’t so much Helli but her cozy, warm apartment in which they spent most of their free time cooking, reading, and making love. And then there were their weekend getaways to her parents’ lake cottage two hours southeast of Helsinki. Everything he left behind beckons him now. Andrew forces himself to stop his futile pondering and redirects his thoughts back to Hanna. Only she has the power to make him feel he is where he needs to be. Because of her he is still intact. Because of her he is well on his way to mastering the one thing most of people have trouble learning — how to be where they are.

He glances at the car clock. It reads 6:46 p.m. He wonders what his daughter is doing. Knowing her schedule as well as he does, he figures she has just awakened from her nap and is being fed dinner, spitting everything out and driving her mother crazy in the process. He smiles to himself as he pictures the sweet chaos play before him like a silent movie.

Andrew takes his cellphone from the side pocket of his denim cargo pants and speed-dials home but hangs up before making a connection. Since Hanna isn’t going to pick up, it means he would have to speak to his wife and ask her to put the phone near Hanna’s mouth. Normally, he has no objection to talking to his wife, but he can imagine the mood she is in now as she struggles to feed their baby after a long day of teaching kids who are referred to as “special needs.” This is the time of day when he tries his best to stay out of Rosemary’s way. He does the same early in the morning when she gets ready for work. The weekends are usually okay unless something unexpected happens or she returns from one of her biweekly visits to her mother, who lives in London, Ontario.

Just as Andrew puts the phone back into his pocket, a Middle Eastern woman with a mass of unruly curly hair covering much of her face approaches his window. “Can you take me to Islington and Dundas West, please?” she asks, pulling as many curls away from her face as she can.

“Hop in,” Andrew says, starting the engine.

As the woman climbs into the back of the taxi, he sets the meter. The rush-hour traffic is beginning to ease in the downtown core but is still heavy enough to require him to take some creative alternative routes. Most cabbies gladly sit in traffic even though if they tried they could easily think of less-congested avenues to save their customers time and money. But Andrew would hate the nagging guilt that would eat away at him if he knew of a quicker way and didn’t use it. So he takes several smaller streets in the core until he hits Bloor Street West.