The Empty Room (20 page)

“The receptionist at your office?”

“Yeah, I introduced you back in July at Le Select Bistro.”

Colleen and Lori had gone out to celebrate Lori’s birthday. Jake and this
Taquanda
had been at a window table. She was late twenties,
maybe, hair in dreadlocks down her back. Beautiful. The girl was beautiful. The girl was a child. She probably didn’t know who Jimi Hendrix was; she probably didn’t know who The Beatles were.

Her phone buzzed on the coffee table. It danced across the wood.

“You gonna get that?” Jake asked.

She picked it up.
Spring Lake Place
. “Fuck. It’s my mother. She took a fall today.”

“She all right?”

“Yeah, I’m sure she is.”

The phone buzzed again.

“You should answer it.”

She didn’t want to. But what if this was the call. Jake would be here. He’d help her. “Hello?”

“Ms. Kerrigan?”

“Yes.”

“This is Spring Lake Place. I’m calling about your mother.”

“Is she okay?”

“We called you earlier today, and were hoping to hear back from you.”

“Is she okay?”

“It was quite a bad fall. Worse than we initially thought. You know she refuses to use a walker and we can’t watch her all the time.”

Colleen hugged herself. “What’s happening?”

“The hospital says she may have hit her head in the fall, either that or she’s had another transient ischemic attack. She’s not conscious
at the moment. They’re suggesting you should go there. There’s a geriatrician assigned to the case. Her name is Dr. Joyce Chan. Do you have a pen? I’ll give you the hospital’s number.”

And here it is, she thought. This is it. My mother. A cake her mother had baked her for her seventh birthday popped into her head. It was in the shape of a lion, with chocolate icing on the mane and black licorice for the legs, gumdrops for paws … it had taken her mother two whole days to make it.

Jake watched her, his brow furrowed, as she took down the information.

“We will, of course, be monitoring the situation,” said the woman.

“We really hope everything’s okay.”

Who the hell are
we
? Colleen wondered as she ended the call.

“My mother’s fallen. She’s not conscious.”

Jake took her hand. “I’m really sorry.”

She looked at him. She felt cold and as though she were watching a great roiling storm coming at her, all green and black clouds and distant thunder. It wasn’t here yet, but it was approaching fast. This was far more upsetting than she had thought it would be. She thought she’d feel only relief when Deirdre finally died, if that was what was happening now, but Colleen didn’t feel that. She wanted to weep for the tiny life her mother had, a life in which she was never happy and gave scant happiness to others.

“Oh my God,” she said.

“You going down there?”

Colleen picked up her wine and drained the glass. “I think she’s
dying this time. Will you come with me? You will, right?”

Jake reached over and took the wineglass out of her hand. He put it on the coffee table, but kept holding her hand. She longed to lean into him, to have him put his arms around her and hold her tight. Maybe this would bring them together again; that wasn’t such a mad thought, was it? That would serve everybody right, especially her mother, who had called Jake trash on more than one occasion. (Hell, she’d called him the N word once.) Of course he saw other women, but now he was in his mid-fifties, he’d be ready at last to settle down, and who knew him better, who loved him more than she did?

“She’s had a good life,” Jake said, patting her hand.

“She’s had a fucking miserable life, and you know it. She never could get out of her own way.” She squeezed his hand. “I guess we should go. Thank God you’re here.”

“Babe, I can’t go with you.”

“You can’t go with me.”

“I’m trying to tell you, about me and Taquanda.”

Colleen looked down at their hands entwined, flesh against flesh. His skin was the colour of lightly creamed coffee. Hers was oatmealish. She had a large liver spot on the back of her right hand, and her veins were ropy. She pulled her hands from his and shoved them between her knees.

“I don’t want to hear about you and Taquanda.”

“She’s not comfortable with you and me being so … you know.”

“Since when do you let some girl tell you what to do?”

“I’m getting married, Colleen.”

And there it was, plopping out of his mouth like a toad, a fat, fleshy, slimy toad, the kind of un-ensorcelled toad that never turned into a handsome prince.

“Get out,” she said.

Jake sucked his teeth. “She’s a last chance for me and I have to take it. I wanted to show you respect by coming and telling you myself. It’s not like we’re together, Colleen.” He spread his palms. “Come on, we haven’t been together in a very long time.”

Where was her last chance? After all the years he’d called her, kept her tied to him, falling back into her bed whenever he felt like it. He used to sit in his car across the street for hours, staring up at her window; he had admitted that. This cord had always bound them, frayed at times, nibbled at by other people here and there, but it had always held.

She stared at him. There was something else. Just there, in that guilty sheen on his upper lip. His eyes flicked away from hers and then back and then away again. She understood, in one slash of truth.

“She’s pregnant.”

Jake cocked his head. He smiled in a hangdog way.

“I said get out. Get out now.”

“You could be happy for me.”

“Happy for you? I could slap you. It would feel good to hurt you.” She hadn’t meant to say that. She realized she was on her feet.

Jake stood up as well. “You are some piece of work,” he said. “I
know you’ve got trouble, but half of it’s your own fault and ain’t nobody can help you but you.”

Tears scalded the back of her eyes. “You do this now, with my mother fucking dying? After I lose my job? You choose today? You selfish shit.”

Jake picked up his coat and shrugged into it. “You know what? There wasn’t ever going to be a good time to tell you”—he walked to the door and opened it—”because every day is some new tragedy with you. Every day is some new drama. Get your shit together, Colleen, or you’re going to end up like your mother.”

A wordless, guttural sound escaped Colleen’s mouth. She pushed Jake out the door and kicked it shut. It slammed so hard the air concussed and it seemed the walls shook. She leaned against the door and pressed her fists to her mouth. If she started screaming now, she’d never stop.

Lori, she’d call Lori. Lori would listen to her and come with her. Lori wouldn’t let her face this alone. She called her friend’s number, but it went through to voice mail. She hung up and called again. Again to voice mail. Her head whirled. Jake. Deirdre. Jake. Deirdre. Their faces flashed in front of her like a strobe light. Voice mail. Voice mail. Voice mail.

She was all alone and her mother was dying.

She dialled the number of a taxi company and gave them her address, telling them it was an emergency, and could they send someone as quickly as possible, please, she’d be waiting in the
lobby. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a fair-sized glass of vodka. She drank it right down. It hit her belly like a grenade, sending shrapnel straight to her brain. She didn’t have time to find another salad dressing bottle, and that probably wasn’t a good idea anyway, but still, she regretted having to leave the vodka on the counter. She had no idea how she was going to face what was coming at her next.

YOU SEE WHAT THEY ARE

C
olleen worked in the English Department when Jake lived with her. It was a different neighbourhood back then. Lots more little shops, family run and a little scruffy. On Yonge Street a few corner stores still eked out a living, and two of them were owned by Poles, who lived in the Roncesvalles area but kept shops here for unknown reasons and had something of a rivalry going. Jake and she liked the one owned by Mr. Żeleński, who had a little sign that read
Mówlmy Po Polsku
—We Speak Polish—in his window, although since there were very few Poles in the neighbourhood, Colleen wondered why he bothered.

It was mid-summer, when the asphalt was soft underfoot and everything felt gritty and sticky. Jake and Colleen had lunch and a few beers at a little Chinese place they liked and on the way back to the apartment decided to stop into Mr. Żeleński’s and pick up what she needed for dinner that night.

Mr. Żeleński sat behind the low counter reading
Wiadomośri
, the Polish newspaper. He was a little wrinkle of a man, wearing a woollen vest over his white shirt, even on the hottest days. His fingers were stained yellow from the omnipresent cigarette that dangled from them. Thin and quick of both movement and mind,
Mr. Żeleński was a devout socialist and kept a stack of books next to his mammoth, ancient beast of a cash register—silver, weighing in at over a hundred pounds, with old-fashioned push buttons and a bell that rang for every sale. The books were political in nature—well-thumbed editions of Trotsky’s
My Life, The Permanent Revolution
and
Political Profiles; Pedagogy of the Oppressed
by Paulo Freire;
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists
by Robert Tressell; Upton Sinclair’s
The Jungle
. Mr. Żeleński enjoyed nothing more than a political argument, and Colleen was sure he kept the books there as a provocation. She liked him for it.

“Ah, beautiful people,” he said as they stepped in, squinting through the haze of cigarette smoke. “How is my favourite couple?”

He moved from behind the counter and shook Jake’s hand. He barely came up to Jake’s shoulder, but almost everyone looked small next to Jake. He was boxing then and his muscles bulged and rippled under his Electric Ladyland T-shirt.

Mr. Żeleński had taken a shine to them the first time they walked in together. They had stopped in for milk (dangerously near its sell-by date, but Colleen hadn’t the heart to put it back) and when they went to pay he came from behind his desk and said, to Jake’s initial alarm, “A mixed couple, so nice! I like you very much. Come often. I, too, am a mixed couple. My wife, she is Catholic, yes, and me, I am a Jew.” He reached up and slapped Jake’s shoulder in a friendly way. “Her family hid me from the pig Germans, may they have stones and not children, in the barn. I slept inside a dead cow for a week. Ack, the smell. She fed me anyway. What could I do when the
war was over except marry her, eh?” As he grinned his face crinkled like that of an apple doll. He pinched Colleen’s cheek. “You think this one would do the same for you, my friend?” he asked Jake.

Jake smiled, looking as much perplexed as amused. “She better, man.”

“Of course I would.” Colleen punched Jake in the shoulder. He pretended to be wounded.

“Excellent.” The old man clapped his hands. “Then we are all friends together.”

And so they had begun dropping in on him at least once a week, to pick up some small thing or another—usually something with a long shelf life.

Today Colleen needed spices, some rosemary and thyme. Mr. Żeleński stayed at the front, talking to Jake about U.S. president Ronald Reagan. Colleen half listened to the conversation as she scanned the rows of small dusty spice bottles.

“This is a friendly fascist,” he said. “He wants families in need of public help to first dispose of household goods in excess of a thousand dollars … If there is an authoritarian regime in the American future, Reagan is to blame. He is a capitalist vampire.” He pronounced it vam-PEER, and Colleen smiled, imagining the dark Carpathian Mountains and Bela Lugosi. “America does not want a moral president. It wants a thug in the Oval Office, one that carries the big stick, yes?”

“I don’t know. I have trouble trusting any white man—present company excepted, of course.”

“You must read George Washington Woodbey, a black man. A socialist. A Baptist preacher who saw the light.” Mr. Żeleński chuckled, a phlegmy sort of hiccuping noise.

Colleen came to the counter with rosemary, a can of kidney beans and a package of spaghetti. “I found some rosemary, but not the thyme. Do you have any?”

“Ah, I don’t know, beautiful, just what is on the shelf. But you want, I will order some for you.”

“No, it’s okay, we’ll pick it up someplace else.”

Mr. Żeleński shrugged. They paid and left the store, promising to see him soon. “Come back when you have time for coffee and cake,” he said, as he always did.

As they passed the other Polish store, Colleen said, “Maybe he’s got some.”

Inside, this shop was a little cleaner, a little more modern than Mr. Żeleński’s, with a gleaming counter and a rack of candy bars and glossy magazines. They nodded at the owner, whose name they didn’t know. He never made small talk, never even smiled, but he did nod back, his hands flat-palmed on the counter.

“Spices at the back?” she asked.

“Second aisle.”

They went to the back of the store, Jake carrying the plastic bag with their purchases from Mr. Żeleński’s store. She found the tiny spice shelf and looked, but no thyme. Salt. Pepper. Celery salt. Paprika. That was it.

“Oh, never mind. I’ll pick it up tomorrow. I can do without it.”
They walked back to the front of the store. Colleen raised her hand and said, “Thanks,” and they were just about to walk out.

“Hold it,” the owner said.

They stopped. Another couple stood at the counter, older than Colleen and Jake. The man was buying cigarettes and a bottle of soda.

“Yes?” said Colleen.

“Come back here,” the man said.

Colleen looked questioningly at Jake. His face had gone stony, in that way it did sometimes just before a confrontation. He pulled into himself. Went blank. He stared flatly at the store owner.

“You want me to come back, huh? And you wanna tell me why?”

“I want to look in the bag.”

Jake’s nostrils flared and he pressed his lips together. He held out the bag. “So look.”

“Bring it here,” said the man.