Читать книгу At Your Service - Priscila Uppal - Страница 6

In memory of Beryl Ann

Rodney managed to tie his laces and button his coat by himself and only needed to be told twice. He clung to Elsie, his cheeks flushed with confusion, not understanding where we were going, only that Mom was dead. And he rushed around the kitchen and living room, unable to sit still for a moment, repeating the news to everyone he met: Mom’s dead. Mom’s dead. With all the funeral preparations, none of us had the strength to scold him. What he said was true after all; Mom died in the night. Her heart stopped. She was blue.

The weather, for November, was unseasonably kind. Many of the leaves on your elms, drained of summer’s oppressive green, were clinging admirably to their arms. The garden’s withering stalks bent over as if waving or curtseying to an elegant arrival. We dressed the children in winter boots and mittens, but it wasn’t really cold enough for them to catch a chill. The temperature had dropped ten full degrees. The mailman’s coat was unbuttoned when he brought us a few of your bills and a notice from the dentist about an overdue cleaning. The blinds were half-closed to fend off the force of the sun. The frost sprinkled on the grass in the morning did not stay long.

Michael and I were in the city when they took you. We couldn’t get out in time as we had to wait to catch a ride with friends, Michael afraid to handle the car on the highway by himself, and me without a valid licence. No need for one in the city, I know I kept telling you. Steven and your mom took care of you, or at least oversaw how you were handled. Your mom spoke to the police while Steven kept the children occupied in the other room with the television. That is all I have been told about the scene, except that it was Samantha who made the phone call and ran next door for help. And that she had been the one to find you in the early morning, thinking you had fallen asleep in the living room while working, the TV on mute. Samantha showed Steven where you had the emergency numbers posted, right by the phone. She kept pointing to them as if she couldn’t comprehend how they could have let her down, how it was her mom was gone when she’d called the numbers like she was supposed to. Maybe she was even worried someone would blame her for having done something wrong. She found you, turned over on your side, your arms like folded wings, your face pushed into the sofa cushion. The children circled around us like lost animals, rubbing against our legs and jumping onto our backs, taking snacks from our hands. At one point Lenny scratched Steven, his hands tight around his neck like a corkscrew. The children told us about the policemen, how they wouldn’t let anyone touch you, how they said they were taking you to hospital. Steven told us Samantha was crying I want to take her, I do, and the boys were scared. Corey wouldn’t watch when they took you away. Rodney told one of the officers that you were wearing the wrong shoes to go outside. Your mom followed the ambulance to the highway. The children slept, oddly enough, like rocks, wrung out like stiff, dry rags. We stayed up all night in your kitchen, every night for that long week in those beige kitchen chairs, whispering.

Michael and I arrived in darkness that first night. Everyone else was already there, except Laura, who as you know had the farthest to come. Her plane was scheduled to arrive the next morning if all went according to plan. It did. As soon as I shuffled through the foyer, the house greeted me with the smell of tea as it did on every occasion when we were all together. I had mentioned once to your mom that the teapot was constantly steeping in your house and she seemed amused by the observation. It is something, I suppose, only an outsider would notice.

The teacups were filled, distributed quickly and efficiently clockwise at the table, in pattern with the past. Michael drank from one of your favourite mugs, the blue mug with the azaleas along the rim that you are holding in a photograph we have from a Christmas morning. When he is alone in the office, Michael takes out this photo and fingers it like a piece of old fabric from a treasured blanket. I know because he frequently forgets to put it back inside the envelopes that Laura sends us periodically when she has finished sorting through the doubles and triples she always orders at the photo-finishing shop. I walk in to borrow a stapler or write an appointment into his calendar and there you are, two-dimensional, matte, on the edge of the desk, your eyes fixed affectionately on me. Michael drank his tea slowly when we arrived, I remember, an oddity for him, as you know how he sometimes gulps too quickly and burns his tongue. I rubbed his thigh, my left hand underneath the table. He clutched my right. I stared at the clock you bought at the flea market along with a purple hat and a snow sled for the children. The arm moved jaggedly. It was alarmed. The house would stir until daybreak.

The children were tucked in bed. Michael and I had missed putting them to bed, and we were anxious to see their faces, to read them, though we couldn’t even read our own. I kept turning to Michael as if I’d spot a code, a clear indication of where his grief was contained, and I would be able to mend it like a sock or replace it like a bulb, but my shock had not even budged yet. The children, we said, and it echoed across the kitchen from all of our lips like tender secrets. The children. Do you remember when you were getting ready for your first night out after the split and you told me how weird it felt to tell people you’d just met that you were separated? I said I hated the word because it made someone sound incomplete. “Well, I’m certainly not together,” you replied, your head tilted back, chin punched out as you fumbled with the eyelash curler.