hot water in the shower. I feel the cool white tile, then my forehead, receiving water on my head like a blessing. It reminds me of my last confession, so many years ago. I’d fallen in love. Jean-Marc. Montreal was such a romantic city. But I also remembered the teenage confusion, rejection. The priest had listened, but I felt as though he were laughing at me, grinning behind the curtain. I vowed to never let myself expose such naked feelings again. I let go of the tile. “Je m’excuse,” I whisper, feeling as ashamed as a child. “I am too old for a hangover.” I let the words hang in the steam, swirling to encircle me. I wobble out of the shower and wrap myself in a pale yellow towel, unable to dry my own back. Too old.
I find my robe and slippers, make coffee, and sit down at the dining table to watch the fog dissipate, along with my headache. The tide begins to change, the waves agitated like worries. Charles. Nikky. Geoff. Parkinson’s. Losing control. Losing authority. Losing. Drinking. Medications. Charles. Too old.
I shuffle to my bedroom to get dressed. I put my ear up against the wallpaper above my nightstand. I can hear a clock radio tuned to the CBC. Charles. If I knock on the wall, Charles will hear me. I sit on the bed and decide that I have nothing to wear. Geoff. I notice fine dust collecting on my old cedar trunk. Nikky. I get down on my hands and knees, push the trunk open. Wool. Knitting needles. I’d forgotten my idea. I finger the skeins, feeling their textures for the first time after so many years. The yarn is something tangible. Useful. I have what looks like enough charcoal grey yarn to make a sweater for Nikky. It will match his eyes. And I can cast off the final rows with black, his favourite colour, for contrast. I select a pair of size-eight needles from my orange plastic needle holder, nestle the wool in my arms, and return to the living room. I sit down in my big chair and begin to knit the first sleeve, counting the stitches aloud as I cast them on. Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq … Without a few steadying drinks in me, each stitch is a struggle. After a few rows my fingers began to ache. Progress will be slow, but I have time. I can keep busy, filling long afternoons with the rhythmic conflation of knit and purl, sips of tea, and a kaleidoscope of memories. I’m quite certain Nikky’s sweater will be ready for him by the time he returns.
I glance at the clock. Somehow it’s already five minutes to ten. I set my knitting down and head to the elevator. I’m shaking. My medicine isn’t working. But when the elevator doors open, I see Charles already waiting for me at the lobby door.
“Good morning, Charles.” He holds the door open for me and I step through it, popping my umbrella open.
“Good morning, Hélène,” he says, unfurling his.
We walk at our usual slow pace through the mist. I catch Charles looking at me and return his gaze, lobbing it back like a badminton shuttlecock. I was good at that game in my day.
“Feeling all right?” he inquires.
“Oh yes,” I say, thinking of my new knitting project. “Just fine. And yourself?”
“Well, thanks.”
We step to the side to allow a jogger and his big brown dog to dash past. I feel Charles looking at me. He stands still. So do I. He reaches his hand toward my face and touches my cheek so softly the sensation gets caught in a gust of wind and twirls all around me. For a moment the weather holds me steady.
“Hélène,” he says.
I want to touch his hand, but he’ll feel me shaking.
“I don’t want to be like other old people,” I say.
Charles lets his hand fall to his side.
“We don’t complain, though,” he says. “Like other old people and their incessant blather about their aches and pains.”
I nod. We start walking again.
“You helped me, Hélène,” Charles says. “I can help you.”
There’s a soft authority in his voice. A calm confidence that reminds me of how I used to take small children’s hands in mine and lead their hesitant, trembling bodies to their classrooms.
At the park Charles takes a folded sheet of plastic out of his pocket and spreads it out to cover the wet bench. He sits down and bangs his cane on the carpet of grass at his feet. I walk over to look at the circles. The plastic flowers are fading. The wood of the picture frames weathering. The Mason message jar has already been knocked over and the Tonka trucks are covered in dirt, disturbed by a cat or a raccoon. I step back and count. Un, deux, trois. There will be more.
“Hélène,” Charles says when I perch on the bench beside him. “When my wife and I had a house we hired the neighbour kids to mow the lawn and trim the hedges. And after Meredith passed away I moved into the condo and hired someone to look after the cleaning.”
Charles takes his handkerchief out of his pocket and dabs the sea mist from his forehead.
“I’m not a nature person. I’m a numbers man, so I might not know how to do this, and you’re an elegant French lady, so I can’t expect you to dig in the dirt.”
“Certainly not,” I concur.
“But I believe somebody has to start looking after these memorials.” He rests a warm hand on the top of my thigh. “I think we should do it.”
I look at Charles. His glasses are covered in mist.
“Everything is deteriorating, Hélène,” he says with a thud of his cane.
“It’s inevitable.” I remember how dashing Charles used to look in his suit. He was a man you’d notice walking into a bank or restaurant. It must have been difficult for him to retire, become invisible. I know. When an elementary school vice-principal walks into a room, people look up in attention. When they see a silver-haired woman with shaky hands, they think, “I hope she doesn’t fall down our stairs.”
“Let’s make it anonymous,” I say.
“Our secret?”
“Of course.”
The only thing I wish right now is that Nikky could be by my side, too. I think of him as we walk back. Nikky and Charles. My two good men.
In the elevator I dig around in my pocket for keys.
“Would you like to come to my place for B&B today, Hélène?” Charles asks, taking my arm and guiding me onto our floor and toward his door. “For a change of scenery?”
It’s my first time in Charles’s place. I admire his large bookcases stacked full of hardcovers. His antique globe. Three wooden ship models. The floor plan is identical to mine.
“Now,” says Charles, fumbling in the kitchen, “I don’t have anything fancy. I drained my liquor cabinet of its sugary temptations. But I can make you a cup of tea with honey and lemon.”
“That sounds lovely.” I try not to notice the long row of medications on the counter behind him. I sit down at his fine oak dining table and place my hands under my knees to prevent them from shaking.
Nik does his best painting after midnight. That’s when his three roommates sprawl out on the second-hand sofa. Ilana and Kendall begin fooling with each other’s long, stringy hair. Aaron watches them and paws at Ilana, his girlfriend, while he tells all the same stories — the semi-fictional ones that begin, “one night when I was totally high” or “one night after I took shrooms.” That’s the part of the evening when everything used to happen. But the girls are a shadow presence. Interlopers. Distractions. And Aaron is absorbed in their games. Now Nik goes into his room, locks the door behind him, and paints Jennifer.
The girls didn’t bother Nik as much when Jennifer was still around. Jennifer used to be a regular at the Rumble Shack. She was a revolutionary. A force. She was the one who named the apartment, which reels and sways because of its rail-side proximity to the SkyTrain. She was a dance and choreography major: rapid and restless. He could draw by the light of her eyes.
She was the only girlfriend Nik ever let call him Nikky, like his family does.