A Funny Kind of Paradise Read online

  * * *

  The day that I came here is a bit of a blur. I don’t remember having a stroke at all, and even now, I barely remember being at the General Hospital; Chris tells me I was there for four months. Did they hope I’d get better? Were they waiting for a long-term bed for me? The most frustrating thing about my situation is the loss of my voice and my inability to ask questions. (The loss of my arm comes a close second.) I am almost completely stuck with what people choose to tell me and what I overhear.

  My memory of the day I moved here came back to me gradually. The trip in the Medi-Van, the hoist from the stretcher to my new bed (“Ready, set, lift!”). There was a seemingly endless stream of new faces. The occupational therapist had me try to pull myself up using the bar set in the wall in the bathroom, but it was a humiliating failure. My right arm is totally useless and my left, too weak. I should have gone to the gym more, I guess, but it didn’t fit well with my sixty-hour work week. The OT told me I’d be a “lift-only transfer” with a “size medium regular sling,” in case you wanted to know.

  Then the RN checked my skin for rashes and wounds and red patches that might lead to sores. Someone else had a go at putting a numeric figure on the amount of horsepower left in my brain. I could see Chris, looking uncomfortable and sad, talking sotto voce to the RN by the door.

  I thought, “What’s happening to me?” Then suddenly, all the poking and prodding and questions were over and there I was, alone in my corner on my bed for the first time, staring out the window at the September leaves.

  “Y’all right, Mom?”

  Chris slouched over, his hands deep in his pockets, as if by reaching out or spreading out or opening up, he’d contaminate himself.

  I tapped the sleeve of his grey coat and pointed out the window at the chestnut tree. Chris leaned over a bit to have a look.

  “At least you’ve got a view.”

  * * *

  I remember the first time we met, Anna. It was shortly after Karl left me; I was having trouble getting my head around that, which wasn’t surprising, since he left without warning like a shot from a well-oiled gun, taking everything he wanted in his car and emptying our joint account on his way out of town. He had the decency to call me from somewhere on the Oregon coast that night to say he wouldn’t be back and not to look for him. I didn’t. I wasn’t so much pining for lost love as reeling at how tenuous his commitment to us actually was, how devoid of honour he’d really been. I regretted that I hadn’t thrown the grifter onto the street myself.

  Fortunately I’d been canny enough to keep a significant amount in a private account; I’d saved well working for Jackson Douglas Accounting before Chris came along. I hadn’t planned on getting pregnant with Chris, though, and once that happened, of course they let me go. Grudgingly I have to credit Karl for his help when I started my own business. He had a lot of charm and he knew a lot of people. Most of my original clients came through his influence one way or another. But start-up is always a precarious thing, and there isn’t a huge profit margin in small-business accounting. Karl left when he found out I was pregnant again. I think he had hoped I would make a lot more money than I did. What a fool I was.

  The woman who was looking after Chris got bronchitis and closed the daycare, so I had him at home. Angelina was heavy in my belly; I felt as swollen and limp as overcooked macaroni. We’d been eating canned soup for days. I couldn’t face another night of saltines washed down with tea. I strapped Chris into the stroller and headed downtown, ankles aching but grateful to be breathing fresh air. The sign in your diner window (simply Anna’s, in cherry neon) called to me like Jesus, and I remember hearing your front door tinkle for the first time as we herded ourselves in. Chris was an angel, he really was, but even an angel at two is a force to contend with, so I ordered french fries from a teenaged waitress in your trademark red-checked apron. When she put them on the table, Chris and I both sighed with relief.

  Nothing before or since has ever tasted as good as those lovely golden fries, lightly salted, with their soft white starchy pillows bursting through their crispy skins.

  And there you were, with your coffee pot steaming, your bib apron tied around your waist, the eye-catching scar over your upper lip, the reminder of a childhood surgery for cleft palate.

  “What a beautiful boy,” you said, and I noticed your accent, different from Karl’s but certainly Germanic. Chris looked up with those serious, innocent blue eyes, and said, “Thank you.”

  I watched you fall in love right there. I saw your face melt, the smile soften, the eyes widen. You let your breath go. I didn’t know what made Chris’s hold on you so strong, at the time, but it was easy to see that he’d stolen your heart.

  “Well!” I thought, calm and crafty with my recent infusion of salt and saturated fat. “How can I use this?”

  I’ve never been the type to cozy up to strangers, but some survival instinct must have kicked in, nudging me to behave in a way quite foreign to my nature. From that time on, I made a point of coming to the diner, and gradually, we started to talk.

  * * *

  I wonder what would have happened, Anna, if Rhonda hadn’t broken her leg like a stupid donkey. She had her son Michael in the same daycare as Chris. She was such an indecisive, waffling person, not my type at all, but she was always fretting about needing money so I hoped I could tempt her to help me. When Karl left, I asked her if she could keep Chris when I went into labour. It wasn’t a great match—Chris didn’t like Michael. Rhonda hadn’t been able to stop him from biting.

  “Bite him back,” I told her firmly.

  She was shocked.

  “Oh, I could never!” she said, biting her own lower lip hard and sucking in.

  “Couldn’t you possibly?” I begged when she phoned to tell me how she fractured her tibia in three places. “He’s such an easy child. He’s no trouble, really.”

  “Well…” she wavered.

  In the background I heard a angry male voice thundering, “Give me that phone!” Then a loud, rough voice in my ear.

  “She broke her leg. She can’t keep your son. Find someone else!” Click.

  I’d have laughed if I hadn’t been so desperate. I should have realized that when you have kids, cultivating backup babysitting is a total necessity; I’d counted on Karl for that.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said grimly as Chris ran his plastic truck around the edge of the high chair at the diner later that evening. He was still a bit too little for crayons and colouring-paper placemats.

  “I can take him,” you said. “But you will have to let me stay at your place. He’ll feel more at home there.”

  Honestly, I hadn’t been fishing and my shock must have been written all over my face.

  “What about the diner?”

  “I have a good opener right now. Chris will go to daycare, yes? He’s there until six?”

  “Six at the latest. Five is better.”

  “Five then. I’ll bring him here. Close, feed him and take him home. It will work.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “We will make a deal. You could help me with my taxes, couldn’t you?”

  “Of course. If that’s what you want.”

  “We had better practise,” you said. “He should get used to me. And you must see that you can trust me.”

  Anna, it never occurred to me not to trust you. I was very surprised when you brought it up.

  I wasn’t thinking about you, Anna. I was thinking about myself. So were you, really. It was Chris you loved, right from the start. His blond hair, his blue eyes, just like yours. That thoughtful, steady nature. He could have been your son. It was as though Chris was the exact shape of the hole in your heart. He fit there as perfectly as a lid on a jar.

  * * *

  We can hear the tray trolley being pushed down the hallway. When she’s try
ing to convince her mother to eat, Janet’s daughter says we’re lucky…we have an in-house kitchen where the meals are prepared, as opposed to trucked-in premade trays of cardboard airplane food. I’ve heard people say the food is not bad. Of course I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember my gastrotube going in, but I do remember choking, the feeling of drowning, of being unable to swallow, and all the meaning and emotion connected to food (memory, comfort, necessity, obligation, a way to show love) collapsing in one great wave of fear, the fear of being unable to catch my breath.

  The girls bring the trays in and start feeding the ladies that “need assistance”…that is the polite phrase for someone who can’t feed herself. Oh, and by the way, those aren’t bibs—bibs are for babies. Some of the staff call them “clothing protectors,” but it’s an awkward phrase. Molly refuses to call them that. She doesn’t say “bib” but she won’t say “clothing protector.” She compromises with “napkin,” which I find amusing.

  And this is my favourite part of the day; this is when live improv theatre comes into my very own room. I get to listen. Molly, the newbie and Michiko, a young woman with an intimidating dragon tattoo snaking up her arm and bleached blond spiky hair, are twittering like birds.

  If you bring a chair right over, you can put Alice right beside you—you might be able to keep her sitting long enough to eat a few bites. Here, look. I hold her hand and that keeps her. If I sit like this, I’ve still got a hand free for feeding Nana here.

  Is that porridge?

  Yup.

  That’s an awful lot of sugar.

  Well, they say sweet is the last taste to go.

  Really.

  Oh yeah. Your taste buds become less sensitive as you age. That’s why you get these people just piling on the salt and sugar. They’re desperately looking for some flavour.

  Hmm. That’s probably why you can’t get kids to eat Brussels sprouts. Their taste buds are still super sensitive and the flavour is too strong for them.

  Ew, you can’t get me to eat Brussels sprouts. They’re just gross.

  No, but you know what I mean. Lots of little kids don’t like strong-tasting foods. They like sweet and salty.

  Yeah, maybe. Things don’t taste the same as you age. No wonder you get these old guys saying “Chicken just doesn’t taste like it used to back in the day”!

  Chicken doesn’t taste like it used to back in the day! It tastes like Styrofoam.

  And that’s why you’re a vegan? How would you know!

  The new girl has stirred that whole heaping spoonful of brown sugar into Nana’s porridge. I watch her do it and my stomach turns.

  I remember making porridge—cheaper than cereal—when the kids were young. Sifting large-flake oatmeal through my fingers into the salty boiling water, throwing in chopped dates or raisins. And scooping it into steaming bowls, with milk and a splash of thick cream. I’d sprinkle a little brown sugar on top, demerara, so that crystals would melt on the hot oatmeal, little bursts of sweetness. Nothing akin to this bland slop, stirred smooth to prevent choking, that the new girl is spooning into Nana’s trap. Nana still opens her mouth, a fish in an aquarium, at the touch of the spoon against her lip. That instinct is still there.

  * * *

  Anna, we were two single women without extended family, struggling to make do. We needed each other and our friendship was very practical for a long time. Almost from the beginning, you had the keys to my house. I knew you were decent and reliable. In that way I trusted you, and you trusted me. Although we were both overextended, somehow we were able to help each other. Many times I rolled up my sleeves and washed dishes for you when staff from the diner quit without notice, coming in to heaping sinks after the restaurant was closed, letting Chris play in the booths out front while Angelina slept in her portable playpen. When she woke up, we’d put Chris in there too and he’d play with her. We made a good team, Anna.

  Still, it was a long time before we trusted each other enough to show who we really were. You were a deeply private, reserved person. You tossed out nibbles of information like raisins thrown into the batter of a cake, little pieces, never the whole story. The truth is, you didn’t like to be asked about your past. Even I, with my lack of tact, instinctively knew that and usually respected it.

  I knew you had come to Canada from the Netherlands with your husband and that he was dead. When I asked you how he died, you told me it was a logging accident.

  “But he had good insurance, and he forgot to change his beneficiary,” you said, standing up. “Thank you, God, I bought this diner. More coffee?”

  And you walked away.

  * * *

  You played the local radio station, Ocean 98.5 in the background at the diner. I listened to it too, on occasion, as I had my coffee and got the kids ready for their day. One morning they were giving a gift certificate for a new fancy French restaurant to the twenty-fourth caller. Normally I didn’t waste my time on radio promotions; I’d heard people complain on the show about how long they’d been trying to get through while the radio hosts urged them to “keep trying,” and I thought to myself that I had better things to do. That day, I dialed in on a whim and won on my first try. In the diner, you heard me on the radio, and called me at home right away with your congratulations. “Anna,” I said, “we are going out on the town!”

  “Oh,” you faltered, “I didn’t mean you should take me!”

  “Who else should I take?” I retorted.

  The cost of the wine pairings that I wanted us to have exceeded the gift certificate but it was well worth it. We both relaxed, thoroughly enjoying the moment, letting our guards down, talking more intimately than we ever had before.

  Ang was a pretty good baby for sleeping, but my neighbour’s daughter was only in grade nine and it was a school night. I ought to have gone home, but still we lingered. I was reluctant to let the evening end. I bought us both a snifter of good cognac. And another. We clinked glasses, leaned back and sipped, and without warning, you went from pleasantly tipsy to drunk.

  You wept as you told me that the last time your husband beat you, he was so violent that you miscarried midterm. “The nurse told me I had a boy,” you sobbed. “I lost my son. I knew, even if I could make another baby, we would never be a safe family. So I left him. I would never go back, never!”

  “Anna, you are young. You’ll meet someone new…”

  “No! It will happen again. I will end up like my mother, no teeth, no pride…”

  I called for the bill and a taxi. To tell the truth I was afraid to leave you alone in your apartment in that condition, so I brought you home and paid the babysitter extra with many apologies while you slumped on my couch.

  “I like you, Francesca,” you said as I threw a blanket over you. “You are a no bullshit person.”

  That’s good, I thought. Someone who likes me for something I like in myself.

  You had a terrible hangover in the morning.

  “This is why I do not drink spirits,” you moaned as you gulped back a handful of tiny pink baby Aspirin with black coffee, the only remedy I had on hand. “Wine is okay, but my family, we cannot handle strong alcohol. I’m so sorry. I know better! Was I terrible? I remember nothing past dessert.”

  I kept your secret to myself, but after that night, I knew why Chris was so special to you. As the years went by and the children got older, I took advantage of your love shamelessly—I would have stepped on the face of an angel to keep my little family from sinking in the mire that seemed to surround us. But it was a fair exchange, because Chris loved you back. You gave him your heart, your time, and a second home in your diner, and he gave you his loyalty. Of the two of us, he loved you best. Oh yes, he did, and we all knew it—and I didn’t mind, I couldn’t mind, because of Angelina.

  * * *

  Molly comes into our room like the strong wind she is. The newbie (I’ve forgotte
n her name) trails behind with an armload of face cloths and towels.

  The thing about Alice is, honey, Alice won’t wait. You’ll want to have her clothes and her pull-ups and every single thing you’re going to need for her care because she sure the hell is not going to sit on the toilet and wait for you to go and get something you forgot…She’s going to get up and go, and if her pants are around her ankles, she’ll trip herself, and if she’s in the middle of what she should be doing on the toilet, she’ll get up anyway as soon as you move away from her, and then you’ll be needing a clean pair of pants. So fetch up her stuff and get it all together first.

  Molly flings open Alice’s locker door and whips out a pair of houndstooth slacks like a martyr of the saints.

  I thought I disappeared these! They’re too big, they slide right down and one of these days she’s gonna break her neck. See, that makes me crazy; we know these pants suck, but you casuals, how would you know, so you get them on her, and they don’t work, and then you have to turn around and get another pair, and meanwhile Alice is following you around in her knickers. I’m gonna hide them in the bottom drawer here. Okay, these are good, and yeah, this matches. Grab her lotion from her side table, will you? Her feet are dry. And there’s a necklace in the drawer there. C’mon, sweetie, let’s go.

  She leads Alice through the door next to my bed into the communal bathroom and sits her on the toilet. Molly washes her there. Sometimes Alice can do her own face and hands with the cloth while Molly puts her pull-ups, pants, socks and shoes on. But sometimes she doesn’t know what to do with the washcloth. I can hear Molly’s cheerful voice hurrying her along.

  Tell her what you’re doing, it keeps her from getting startled. I’m gonna wash your back now, honey. Lift your arms, that’s it. Darn, I forgot her deodorant, okay, too bad. Over the head now, sweetie. Good girl. Stand up, Alice, hold the bar, I’m going to wash your bottom bits; no, honey, leave the towel there, it’ll catch the drip…hold the bar, honey. That’s right, good. Nice and clean…See, Gayla, I always keep gloves in my pocket because once I’ve got her standing at the bar, I don’t want to walk away even to get a glove from the dispenser, because seriously, she won’t stay, and it’s not safe.