A Funny Kind of Paradise Read online

  “Do you know what we’re talking about?” she asked.

  I shook my head. The other two aides left the room but the blond girl went to one of the lockers and began quickly selecting an assortment of clothes.

  “I’m Lily,” she said. Now, with fewer distractions, I had a chance to study her face. It was a valentine, like Angelina’s, and the willowy figure was similar too, but where Angelina, fierce or joyful, always had a wildness, Lily’s expression was calm and gentle and her eyes were clear-skies-forever blue.

  “That was quite a struggle, wasn’t it? You don’t want to be doing that every day.”

  Inadvertently I touched my sore arm.

  “Oh,” she said quickly, “did we hurt you? I’m so sorry. But Francesca, that’s what I want to talk to you about. It doesn’t have to be that hard to get you dressed.”

  She reached into Mary’s closet and pulled out a shirt: a simple, tailored dress shirt with standard cuffs and collar just like the one I was wearing, but in a pale blue paisley pattern.

  “From the front, it’s just a shirt, but here’s our little secret: see how it’s split up the back so that we can easily get it around your shoulders to slip that second arm in? Now look at these pants. They’re cut so that we can tuck one side under, and then the other, and voila, you’re dressed.”

  She was watching my face for clues. I didn’t like it, but I could see what she was getting at; in spite of myself, I nodded my head.

  “Now, your knit tops will be fine, Francesca, because the fabric has some give…especially if the girls remember to put your bum arm in first…” (and here Lily smiled). “But these kinds of things, these tailored shirts…Is this your style, Francesca? Is this the kind of thing you prefer to wear? These are very hard to get on and the buttons take a lot of time.

  “But if you let me cut a slit up back, about to the shoulder blades—here—I can reinforce the top with a bit of seam binding so that it doesn’t tear further. Then I can slip your weak arm in, and bring the shirt around your shoulders, and you can help me with your left arm. See? You’re dressed!”

  She had the blue shirt on, or almost on, right over my other shirt. I could see what she meant. The fabric had no give. Without a slit down the back, my dress shirt was a straitjacket. My chest was tight and I was afraid to breathe. Lily didn’t look away.

  “That’s not all, Francesca,” Lily said gently. “We can get you into regular slacks, but we have to roll you back and forth to get them up. I know that makes you nauseous. If you need the toilet, you have to go back on the bed and the pants have to come down, and then you have to get up again with the lift to get on the commode. By the time we’ve done all that, even supposing we answer your bell promptly, you’ll have lost the feeling.” Again Lily gave me a searing look. “This is a hard truth, I know.” She put her soft hand on my arm, as if to steady the blow.

  “But if I split the slacks in the back, like I showed you, we can tuck them in around your hips, and from the front, it looks like you have regular clothes on.”

  I let my face go then; clearly they didn’t expect me to walk again, if they wanted to split my pants. My heart caved in; the whole foundation of my life, crumbling into the abyss.

  “The thing is,” Lily said softly, “it’s hard on you, but it’s hard on us too. The reality is that one of two things is going to happen. Either the girls won’t put those clothes on you, because it’s too much work. Or one of them is going to come in and split them with a pair of scissors. Francesca, it’s far better to let me take them and alter them properly.”

  I felt a tear making its way down my cheek and I swiped at it angrily. Lily glided to the side table, taking up the box of Kleenex in one hand and my brush in the other. She set the box in my lap and walked behind me, out of view.

  “Let’s see what we can do with this hair, Francesca. You look a little wild.” I let the tears fall.

  “It’s not just the clothes, is it?” said Lily, reading my mind. “It’s everything, isn’t it? Being here, not being home, losing your mobility, not having any privacy…It’s so hard, isn’t it?” Brush, brush, brush.

  Lily leaned in and whispered in my ear so privately I almost thought I imagined it. “Hold on, Francesca,” she said. “There are angels everywhere. Hold on. You’ll be okay.”

  Surprised, taken aback, my breath burst out.

  “So,” said Lily. Her normal voice was almost ringing by contrast, and I started. “Let’s try a couple of pairs of pants, okay, Francesca? And maybe this shirt and this one. Let’s do that much for starters, alright? Once you see how much easier this is, we’ll talk about the next step. What do you say? Are you willing to give it a shot?”

  Well, I nodded. What else could I do?

  That’s how I met Lily.

  * * *

  Lily brought my clothes back two days later, impeccably sewn. She was working my group, covering Blaire’s holidays, so she washed me up before putting them on.

  “Is that your daughter, Francesca?” she asked, moving Angelina’s picture as she pushed the over-the-bed table out of the way.

  I nodded.

  “She’s so beautiful. Was she a good child?”

  Who would think of asking that? I shook my head, no. Changed my mind and nodded.

  Lily sighed. “It happens. I have a six-year-old. Thank God she’s in school now. It was so hard when I had to pay for full-time daycare.”

  She flipped me on my side to wash, and started talking to my back, quietly.

  “I thought I was going to be such a great mom, unlike my own mother. But as it turns out, babies aren’t dolls, and I’m not sure I do any better as a parent. My mother is a nurse, but she isn’t much of a motherly type. She’s either working or partying. I used to watch her dressing up to go out. She always wanted to find that one special guy. Instead we had a garden full of them. I guess she’s still looking. I used to blame her, but I don’t anymore. I want that too. But at least I don’t make Sierra part of the search party.”

  Lily gave a slight shiver.

  “Waking up on weekends and there’s a big hairy, naked stranger coming out of the bathroom like a Sasquatch. That’s an unpleasant experience for a child.”

  I rolled back and looked into Lily’s face; she was far away.

  She noticed me looking at her and smiled. “I have a date tonight. I hired a babysitter. I feel guilty leaving Sierra, but I don’t want to introduce her until I’m sure this is the one.

  “But look at you, Francesca! Isn’t this good? You didn’t even notice me getting you dressed, did you? And it was easy for me too. Now I’ll get you up, and you’re all put together. What do you think?”

  Her eyes were shining and I felt the full force of her attention and affection, and I couldn’t help but smile back at her.

  * * *

  Anna, do you remember Rachel? You were such a capable manager, such a firm and practical boss, but every now and then your heart would get in the way of your common sense and you’d turn around and hire a lost lamb like Rachel. She was such a good waitress. Her hair pulled back and pinned up exposed her face, a hopeful flower. Her apron was always clean, the bow at the back jaunty and cheerful and her figure was light and pleasing, tucking in at the waist. The buttons over her breasts stopped just respectably short of straining. Her legs were long and shapely. Men had to look and women were jealous, but she had a knack for making every customer feel special, and her memory! Your name, the names of your kids and your friends, what you liked to eat, what you took in your coffee and what you said about your day the last time she saw you. She had all that down pat. We all loved her, even baby Angie, and Chris was sure he was going to marry her when he grew up. But what a time she gave you, calling in sick and showing up late, and that boyfriend with the habit, to say nothing of the mother with the mental health problems coming by the diner and demanding free coffee at t
he top of her lungs. Rachel poured her sweet love out like sunshine over everyone, but her personal life was always an encroaching mess.

  Lily comes from the same pattern, Anna, for better or worse. As far as I’m concerned, the warmth outweighs the weakness, and I love her fiercely, although I don’t get to see her very often, because she’s a casual.

  It isn’t just Lily’s uncanny knack of guessing what I’m thinking that makes her so special to me—it’s the fact that she confides in me. She lets me in to her life, she brings me close, she makes me feel like she needs me. There’s a terrible irony here, fit for the unbearable optimist who declares that there’s a silver lining in every cloud: the gift in being unable to speak means Lily’s secrets are safe with me. Her words fall into a bottomless well. There is no retrieval, no risk of damning indiscretion leaking out at just the wrong time. Lily tells me anything.

  It’s like a light switch, flicking on and off, two completely different Lilys: the tidy, elegant little nurse with an astounding gift for empathy, and the vulnerable child, whose hurts and fears and insecurities loom like monsters. One second she’s reading my mind, and the next, she’s emptying hers.

  I cherish it. Even though I know it’s unprofessional of her to share. She’s my Lily.

  * * *

  I hadn’t even known Angelina was in the house until she came down the stairs, holding a big garbage bag by its twisted top.

  “I’m taking my stuff, Ma.”

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Jordan and I found a place.”

  “What are you talking about? Who’s Jordan? A place to live? Is that a girl or a boy? You don’t need a place. You live here!”

  “Mom, that isn’t working.”

  Her gentle words caught me off guard. Angelina was always ready to catch my anger and pitch it, fastball, back at me.

  I sat down at the kitchen table with a thump.

  Angelina put the bag down on the floor, crossed over to me and, big girl that she was, crawled onto my lap.

  It had been so long since she let me hold her, let me love her. My darling Angelina. My baby. Just turned sixteen. She put her arms around my neck and her face against mine, like a child. Her skin smelled faintly of alcohol, but her hair smelled like Angelina and I buried my nose in it. And while my arms were strong around her and my thumb traced circles on her right shoulder blade, everything inside me from my tailbone on the chair to the lump in my throat was tight and brittle, like an old rubber band that has hardened around a package of letters over the years.

  I wanted to hold on forever. Angelina’s shoulders started to shake, and I heard her catch her breath. When I loosened my arms to look into her face, she pushed herself away, catching me by surprise, hurting me. Snatching up the grey sweatshirt that had spilled onto the floor in one hand, she grabbed the bulging garbage bag in the other and ran out the door without saying goodbye.

  * * *

  For the first few weeks after Angelina moved out, I felt like I’d been cut out of her life completely. The only news I had of her I got from Chris, who counselled me to give her space. It was he who helped her find second-hand furniture, and borrowed the minivan to deliver it to her cheap downtown apartment. I let him take the little table from the patio and some chairs. Pots, extra dishes, cutlery. I pretended I didn’t notice when he took staples from the cupboard: half the salt, half the sugar, half the coffee, cans of tuna and jars of jam, cleaning supplies. But I wouldn’t let him take Angelina’s bed from her room.

  “That’s for Angelina! When she comes home.”

  “If she comes home, I can move it back again, Mom.”

  But I wouldn’t change my mind.

  Chris told me Ang found a full-time cashiering job.

  “What about her education?” I fretted.

  “Honestly, Mom, what was the point of her sitting there in school? She didn’t learn anything.”

  “What kind of a job will she ever have without even a high school education? She’ll be working for minimum wage for the rest of her life.”

  “Let her figure that out for herself. Mom, she’s doing better than she has for a long time. She goes to work; she wasn’t going to class. It’s not like she’s twelve. She can do this.”

  It was my busiest season, tax time. One of my clients had lost a whole stack of his expense receipts. I’d completely finished another client’s file when I received a frantic call from her; she’d allowed her personal and professional expenses to mingle for her last quarter. My most lucrative client had recently hired a manager so rude and condescending that I was seriously debating dropping them. Although I wasn’t reconciled to Angelina’s departure, there was a certain relief in having her out of the house. No more pacing the floor at three in the morning, waiting for her to come home and worrying about what condition she’d be in when she finally stumbled up the stairs. No more arguments punctuated with yelling and tears. In fact, there was no bad news from her at all and, in spite of my professional pressures, I was surprised to find I was sleeping through the night for the first time in years.

  When Ang finally invited me to her place, I treated the occasion with pomp. I made my mother’s recipe for amaretti cookies the day before (they’re best when they have time to ripen). I bought flowers and a housewarming present. It was a Saturday morning and Chris drove me downtown.

  There were four dark flights of stairs covered with worn brown carpet to climb. Chris stopped me at the top, outside of Angelina’s door.

  “If you criticize her, this won’t go well, Mom.”

  I was puffing from exertion, or I would have retorted. I pulled an indignant face, but while I caught my breath, Chris reached out and put a finger to my lips.

  “Hush,” he said.

  I belted him as best I could with my arms full of gifts.

  Angelina opened the door.

  My first apartment when I moved here from Ontario was slummier, but that wasn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking, “I worked my ass off to have you live like this?”

  “Angelina, come home,” I blurted. Horrified, I clapped my hand over my mouth, whacking myself with the box full of amaretti.

  There was a moment of silence while Ang and Chris registered the regret and pain on my face. Then Angelina laughed.

  “Aw, Mom, did you hurt yourself? This is my home, do you like it?” she asked, twirling once with her arms spread wide and her hair flying.

  It was like stepping back from the curb as a bus thunders by. In my head, I heard the words she’d yelled at me so many times before: Don’t come to my room and tell me I’m wrong! Who asked you? It’s my life! You always put me down. I don’t care!

  There was an empty twenty-sixer on the counter by the sink and a lingering smell of smoke and mould, but I could also smell bathroom cleaner and I took that as a good sign. The place looked clean enough. Stark but tidy. The bedroom door was tightly closed, and if Jordan was in there, she didn’t come out while we were visiting. Chris saw me taking it all in and pinched my arm hard; I held my tongue.

  “I made amaretti for you,” I said, setting down my packages on the patio table. “I hope I didn’t break them to bits. Here are some new towels. Do you need them?”

  “Very la-di-da. Thank you, Mom.”

  All in all the visit could have gone much worse. Angelina wouldn’t talk about school, or the future, or her plans. “Just let me do this right now,” she said. We didn’t stay long. Ang had to go to work.

  Chris was practically panting with relief. He bounded down the stairs like a ten-year-old and turned at the bottom while I took my time, hand on the rail, careful not to catch my heels on the fraying carpet.

  “Let’s have coffee at the diner, eh, Mom? It’s a beautiful day!”

  * * *

  A few days after she’d returned my altered clothes, Lily brought Sierra in on her day off
. Without her scrubs, Lily looked like the black-sheep twin of her work self. The waifish face of a pouty lipped model peeked out from under her loose hair. She wore a short dress made of many fabrics of different textures sewn together. I know that sounds terrible, but it wasn’t—it was beautiful and quite remarkable. The bodice was form-fitting and the skirt flared a little, and Lily has beautiful legs. She wore snappy sandals with a little too much heel. Except for the child clinging to her hand, she looked sexy, striking; Sierra could easily have been Lily’s younger sister.

  Sierra kept her face planted in Lily’s side, and when Lily scooped her up into her arms (hitching the hem of the skirt just that much higher on her thigh), Sierra buried her nose in Lily’s hair. Then I remembered what we have become so accustomed to that we don’t notice it anymore—the smell of an extended care hospital.

  Suddenly I saw my room as Sierra must have seen it: the institutional quality and colour of the paint, the grim efficiency of the metal over-the-bed tables, the bedside drawers devoid of beauty or charm. Above all, the smell of urine, old bodies and industrial-strength cleaner. Still, it is my home, and I’m conscious of an unexpected sensation of comfort.

  Lily had come to return a vegan cookbook she borrowed from Michiko.

  I’m sorry I took so long with this.

  You didn’t need to make a special trip.

  No, I didn’t; I needed to talk to payroll.

  What did you think?

  Well, thank you for lending it to me, but Michi, there’s no way I’m ever going to work that hard on my food. I have a new respect for you!

  It’s not so hard. You get in the habit of taking the time.

  Time is exactly what I do not have.

  A disc in my back felt out of alignment and I squirmed in my chair. Lily’s clear, sweet voice seemed incongruous with the come-hither outfit.