A Year Less a Day. James Hawkins
Yes, of course,” replies Ruth brightening, thinking fives, tens, twenties, who cares? “Hundreds will be fine if that’s better for you.”
“OK. Back in a moment,” says Tom, quickly squirreling the roll back into his pocket, and he dashes out of the café before she can discover that his stash is a wad of carefully clipped newspapers ringed with a few photocopied fifties.
“Well?” questions the coffee guy with his hand out.
“He’s ... He’s just popped over to the bank for me,” stalls Ruth, reddening, though her mind races as she tediously counts every bill from the till and adds it to the small bundle from her pocket.
“How much do I owe?” she inquires for the third time, seemingly confused, then starts counting all over again.
“Would you like a coffee?” she asks the delivery man with it half counted, then loses count as he scowls his frustration.
“Look, I’m in a bit of a hurry, lady.”
“Sorry ... Lost count,” she says starting at the beginning, knowing that the end offers no salvation.
He’s caught on and counts with her now, “Twenty, forty, sixty ...”
Ruth stops. “Does that include today’s delivery?” she asks innocently, but she’s overstretching.
“Yes,” he hisses. “That includes today.”
“That’s not fair ...” she starts, then backs off and takes a deep breath. “OK,” she says, ready to confess, when Tom returns and slides five new hundred dollar bills into her hand.
“I promise to pay you at the end of the week,” enthuses Ruth as soon as the delivery man has gone, but Tom is unconcerned.
“No rush, dear—pocket change. You just take your time. Six months if you want. You and Jordan aren’t planning on running away, are you?”
Ruth runs, tears streaming over her cheeks, and slams herself into the washroom where she sits staring deeply into the mirror, wishing she could liberate herself from reality as easily as Alice. But the mirror is cold-hearted and reflects the truth.
“Who’d wanna look at a fat lump like you,” she had often mused to the mirror as a teenager, before consoling herself with a box of Oreos and a good cry over a chick flick, while her peers were out screwing in the back of the family Ford. But, by then, she’d had years of practice in vanishing, especially at school where her baby fat had been solidified by the misery of being the universal punching bag. Weakened and slowed by her lumpiness and hampered by poor vision—once her glasses had been snatched she was easy prey—her only defense was inconspicuousness. Not easy for someone her size.
“You’re early, Phil,” says Cindy as Phillipa dashes in trailing her coat and shaking the rain out of her hair.
“Shh. Where’s Ruth? She wanted me in at nine, but what with the kids an’ my mother, then I heard the news and had to check the lottery.”
“Did you win?”
“Nah. Some lucky sod has though. Five mil’ and it’s someone around here, according to the radio.”
“More chance of getting hit by a crappy bus ...” starts Cindy, but Raven appears from nowhere and cuts her off.
“Not today, Cindy. Today I’d put my money on the lottery. Would you let Ruth know I won’t be in for a few weeks?” she adds breezily. “Something unexpected has come up.”
“Fine crappy psychic you are,” mutters Cindy, but Raven has already taken off.
“Ruth’s blubbering in the washroom,” Cindy tells Phillipa, “God knows what’s going on. It’s like a bloody madhouse in here today, and look at the crappy fuckin’ weather.”
“You want crappy, move to Newfoundland,” says Phillipa.
“I might just do that, Phil,” replies Cindy as Trina rushes in and shivers in front of the fire while a puddle grows around her feet.
“Robyn is mad at me ’cuz I saved her dog’s life,” Trina explains to the crossword gang. “I sometimes wonder why I do favours for people.”
“Why?” asks Maureen.
“He might have got run over.”
“No. Why is she mad at you?”
Trina’s tears turn to a giggle. “It cost her fifty bucks to get him out of the pound, another thirty for a rabies shot, twenty-five for a licence—which she should have had anyway, and then she got a ticket for another two hundred for letting him loose on the street in the first place.”
“Oh, shit ...” mutters Maureen, but Trina isn’t finished. “She wouldn’t bring me back from the pound. I had to walk. Now I’m late for work.”
“You’d better get going then,” says Matt with his arms folded over the nearly completed puzzle, then he remembers the guinea pig.
“He’s fine now,” calls Trina over her shoulder. “I shoved him in the freezer for a couple of minutes to cool off.”
The café fills with the mid-morning office crush demanding cappuccinos and lattes faster than man or machine can make them. Ruth is back in the kitchen, warming up the fryers and griddles as she prepares for lunch, when Jordan shuffles in.
“You shouldn’t be up,” she begins kindly, then she slams a stainless steel spatula onto the metal table. “This is crazy. What’s the point in doing this? What’s the fucking point in doing anything anymore?”
Jordan recoils at the venom, but Ruth drops her voice and starts to snivel again. “I’m sorry, but we should be together every moment. I shouldn’t be stuck here cooking for a load of ungrateful pigs, and I can’t go out there and pretend nothing’s happened. I want to be upstairs with you ...”
“Because you are dying,” hangs unspoken, as it will at the end of almost every sentence in Ruth’s immediate future. “We must do this because you are dying. We can’t do that because you are dying. I must say this because ... Don’t say that because ... Take this because ... Don’t cry because ... Don’t shout because, don’t scream, don’t make a fuss, don’t argue, don’t demand, don’t force, don’t yell, don’t tell. Don’t . . . don’t . . . don’t.”
Ruth’s future is filled with the caregiver’s burden of don’ts as she asks Jordan, “Why don’t we hire a cook so I can be with you all day?”
“Because I’d get on your nerves and you’d be happy to see me go.”
“Stop that, Jordan. Please stop. I know we can’t afford it.”
“That’s why we mustn’t tell my mother—not yet anyway. Once she catches on, she’ll probably want her money back.”
“Tell her she can’t have it,” says Ruth, though she knows the suggestion is going nowhere.
Jordan’s mother was English, before she emigrated, a grouchy northerner from Newcastle-on-tyne. She’s a Geordie with the dialect, the arms, and the determination of a Sunderland steelworker. If she wants her money, only God might stand in her way.
“Ruth, I hate to ask ...” Jordan hesitates.
“What is it, love?” Ruth queries, lightly dusting him with flour as she enfolds him.
“I’m going to need money for drugs and stuff.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be al right. Just take what you want,” she says, thinking, Tom will have to wait.
“Then there’ll be other things: travel, special food. How will you manage?”
“Jordan, I said, ‘Don’t worry.’” She says, then floods into tears as she realizes that the man dying in her arms is more concerned for her