And then the glass was broken, my hand was inside, I grasped hold of the door handle and turned it. To my relief, the house let me in.

  • 15 •

  Dave

  I put the beard grooming kit in the Honda’s trunk and went home. Scott was on the couch, his leg raised and resting on the back of it. He was reading a book.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “How’s the leg?”

  “Better every minute!”

  “What can I get you?” I asked.

  He looked at me and I tried to read the expression in his eyes. Some level of uncertainty and fear invaded me. What can I get you. Simple question, right? It wasn’t until he tried to smile that I saw something was going on.

  “I guess you can get me something to drink,” he said.

  I moved toward the kitchen. “You got it. Water or tea?”

  “How about a beer? It’s been a week.” His voice was casual.

  I hesitated with my hand on the fridge handle. Scott didn’t drink anymore, said it was a bad use of money. He’d never been a drinker.

  Then I realized: the reins were loosening. Scott was easing up on the austerity program.

  The question ‘why’ was bowled over by the next one, ‘who cares why?’

  My heart galloped in my chest. “We can do a beer. Absolutely.” I spun on my heel and grabbed my car keys from the hook by the door.

  “Get everything you want, too,” he said from the couch.

  I hit the highway like a bank robber. The short drive to Everything Wine was even shorter. This store was a thousand square feet of wine, beer, liquor — it should have been called Everything Period. I’d seen it open a few years after they had razed the forest to build the Market Crossing complex.

  I tried to keep it reasonable, but still ended up making two trips back to the car with my haul. It was a bulwark against the future, in case Scott changed his mind.

  • 16 •

  Maeve

  I slipped in the door and pressed myself against the wall, listening inside and outside at the same time. The dog’s barking died down and the voice receded. A wind had kicked up and now that I wasn’t focused on breaking the window, I could hear the branches of the big tree tossing back and forth. One of the sisters was in the yard, and she’d been making noise to cover the sound of my breaking glass.

  The sisters were on my side.

  Inside, there were small non-sounds: the breathing of mice, the scrabble of cockroaches, the drip of a tap.

  The drip of a tap.

  My eyes got used to the dark and I started to make out what was wall and what doorway. The blinds over one window were open, and a streetlight sent faint striped beams into the room. I had entered straight into the kitchen of the basement suite. The tap was dripping not ten feet away.

  The tenants had left a wooden chair near the cupboards. I would go through them tomorrow for food. Now was no time to make a home; the wrecking ball might be scheduled any day, or the renovators. I needed to do what I had come in here for: clean myself up, get some sleep, and then tomorrow start over and find a new place to live.

  • 17 •

  Dave

  Later I blamed the alcohol. But then I had to admit that we’d hardly drunk that night. The presence of alcohol had nothing to do with it. Deep sores had been festering underneath our apparent acceptance of each other. We’d gotten ourselves into a situation.

  It started even before we took a drink, when Scott said, “You know, I think we need to see a financial advisor.”

  In the kitchen, I just about fell off the stepping stool I was standing on to put the extra booze in a high cupboard.

  “Why?” I called back. “I mean, I’m not against it, but you seem to be doing a pretty good job.” Scott was already like a financial advisor. He read books on the stuff. Underneath all the friendly loudness, he was very smart. I’d never questioned his spreadsheets because he so clearly knew his stuff.

  I got out glasses and poured myself a glass of Shiraz and a beer for him then carried both drinks into the living room.

  “Cheers,” I said, handing him the glass of beer. I brought my wine up for the toast. “Here’s to letting down our hair.”

  “Cheers.” We made eye contact, but I was the only one smiling.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He took a deep swallow. “What’s wrong with what?”

  “With you. You’re acting strange.”

  Scott looked down. “Well, I don’t know quite how to tell you something.”

  This wasn’t like our usual conversations. Scott didn’t have secrets, as far as I knew. I sat down. “Scott, tell me what’s the matter. Is it your leg?”

  He shook his head. “No, my leg’s fine. But I think we need to talk about why you’ve been lying to me about how much money you made this year.”

  I froze with the glass halfway to my mouth. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh.” He leaned forward. “Dave. What’s going on? I saw your financials. Why would you tell me you’re tapped out?” He looked hurt and confused.

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  He put his hand out and I gave him mine. “You have to try.”

  So I tried. I told him that after I hit burnout, I didn’t want to throw my money in with his and buy a house. I didn’t want to get into a mortgage at sixty-two and pinch pennies for the rest of my life. I might not ever see retirement. I had to do things while I was still healthy — travel, take time off between projects, enjoy life. I couldn’t do that under the yoke of extreme frugalism.

  When I was done explaining, he sat back for a minute. I could see him trying to imagine things from my point of view.

  “I think I understand where you’re coming from,” he said finally. “We don’t want the same things.”

  There was a note in his voice I hadn’t expected: resignation.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, maybe for the first time in our relationship. I’d never had to ask before, not Scott.

  He ran a trembling hand over his face. “I’m thinking I need to lie down.”

  I helped him into bed and went back to the living room, refilled my glass of wine, and sat staring into space. I was planning to stay up late and get drunk, but the wine tasted like ashes in my mouth. I went to sleep on the couch, hoping that by morning things would be clearer.

  • 18 •

  Maeve

  The next morning, I woke up stiff on the kitchen floor. My face hurt like the Dickens. I put a hand up and felt it puffy and scored with deep cuts. Last night, in the dark, I’d torn off a strip of my damned pencil skirt, held it under cold running water, and dabbed at my wounds until my eyes streamed with the pain. I’d even taken the risk of opening the freezer to look for ice, afraid a light would come on. But someone had unplugged the fridge.

  Now, in the early-morning light, I got up off the floor. I found the bathroom and used the toilet, careful not to flush in case it made enough noise to alert neighbours to my presence. Nobody was in this basement suite, but there was still a chance someone was living upstairs, legally or not.

  Afterward, I went to the mirror and, in the light that came through its etched panes, finally looked at my face.

  Staring back at me was a face so torn-up and hideously disfigured that I gasped and turned away. My throat filled with sobs. I was ruined. My face was gone. I could never be invisible again. It was amazing that nobody had interfered with me yesterday down by the river.

  Breathe, the sisters said outside.

  Once my breathing regulated, I turned back to the mirror and inspected each cut and gash. Last night’s hasty cleaning might have done more harm than good. I’d missed a lot of dirt.

  The bathroom tap worked, so I splashed some water on the cuts and looked again. Some wounds were shallower than others. There were really only two that worried me, one on my jawline and one below my left eye. There’s always one side of the body that gets hurt, and for me it’s my left. Broken shin, concussion, broken arm, twisted ankle, everything happened on the left. Those two wounds were deep enough to need stitches and they’d leave scars, I could tell already.

  I could have gone to emergency and been treated for free, but they would have wanted my name and address and all kinds of information I didn’t have and had no desire to get. Once they know your numbers, they control your life.

  The mirrored medicine cabinet was empty, but there was toilet paper in the holder, and I found a bottle of cleaning fluid under the sink. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. I squinted at the instructions for use. Then I spotted in a bold font, ‘avoid contact with skin’ so I put it back.

  In the basement suite’s kitchen, I went through the cupboards. Nothing there but cockroaches and old ketchup packages. But in the fridge was an open box of baking soda. Whoever lived here had done their best to have a sweet-smelling fridge.

  I took the box to the bathroom, stoppered the sink, and poured a good amount of baking soda into it, then dripped water on it, stirring with my finger until it formed a thin, gruellike consistency.

  Then I took a couple of fingerfuls at a time and spread the paste over the wounds, gently patting the toilet paper to hold it in place until the paste dried.

  It was soothing, but I had no idea if it would help or hinder healing.

  • 19 •

  Dave

  Scott was still asleep the next morning when I went out to wait for the delivery truck. He was usually up at dawn and in his truck off to work, but not today. His sleep was genuine. I rooted around quietly for my old work pants and pulled on my gardening gloves. I’d told him about the dirt. I hoped we could patch things up.

  My cell phone pinged — the driver looking for instructions. I called him and talked him through getting to the laneway. Within a few minutes, the truck was roaring and lumbering, its warning signal beeping as it backed down the lane toward me, raising a cloud of dust in every direction. I backed into the blackberry canes, taking the wheelbarrow with me. Should have turned around and put the wheelbarrow first — I could feel thorns tangling in my hair and scratching my arms and neck.

  I waved and the driver rumbled to a halt, stuck his head out the window and said, “Dump it here?”

  “Yep,” I hollered back over his engine noise. I didn’t want cars driving over the dirt I’d paid for. We were right at the opening to the narrow path that led to my secret garden. The plan was to take the soil down there one wheelbarrow at a time.

  “OK.” He maneuvered around the T-shaped lane until his tailgate faced the wasteland, then raised it. The engine wheezed as the truck bed rose away from the cab, its load of soil coming out gently at first, then flowing out like black lava. I watched with my mouth hanging open as it slid to the laneway surface.

  Five yards was a lot of soil.

  The last half a yard stuck to the bottom of the truck box, and because of Gordy’s garage building there wasn’t room for the driver to pull forward and bump it off. So I climbed the dirt pile and got in position with my shovel at the ready. I hit out with the shovel, but I couldn’t get high enough up. My reach wasn’t long enough.

  “Let me help,” someone shouted, and I turned to see a frightful face that I belatedly recognized as the woman in the tweed suit. Something had torn up her skin. She took my shovel and reached into the truck, scraping the rest of the soil down toward us. When she was done, she handed me back the shovel.

  I gave the driver the thumbs up and the truck bed righted itself. I waved and he rumbled off.

  When I turned to thank the woman, she was gone.

  I pulled on my gloves and flexed my fingers, trying not to think about how long this would take. The soil was rich and dense, dark and heavy, not too moist and not too dry. The good earth, the earth of a thousand worms. It grounded me, joke intended.

  But getting the first full wheelbarrow of dirt down the path to the garden was no joke. I kept getting stuck and had to fight my way around the wheelbarrow to beat back the blackberry canes and brambles. Over tree stumps, through dense bushes, the path was no more than a whisper in spots. Why hadn’t I cleared more elbow room when I ordered the dirt?

  Getting that first load to the garden took an hour. I dumped it on the far side and hustled back to the path, hoping the dirt was still there, that some chancer hadn’t seen it and loaded up the back of his truck. Anything in a Vancouver laneway is fair game. But the path was wide enough now to clear both sides of the wheelbarrow and I made it back up quickly to find the dirt still there, undisturbed. The reason for that was apparent: the woman was standing over it.

  “I’m watching it for you,” she said. “It looks important.”

  Her tight bun was in place, but otherwise she looked completely different. Deep scratches gouged her forehead and cheeks. The skin around them was puffy and swollen, maybe heading for infection. She wore stretchy black pants and a brown T-shirt that used say something. She still had the lavender Crocs.

  “Thank you for all the help,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  She touched her face. “It’s bad, isn’t it? Had a fight with a raccoon.”

  My eyebrows shot up. She said, “I was sleeping and it woke me up. We had a fight.”

  “It got in your house?”

  Her eyes flickered. “I fell asleep in the park.”

  Raccoons can be aggressive and they don’t get easily scared, but I’d never seen one fight a human before. “Wow. There’s a ... was it rabid?”

  “I sure hope not.” She smiled, but her eyes looked troubled and fatigued. “I’m out of mercurochrome.”

  I hadn’t heard of mercurochrome in years. We were probably about the same age. Earlier she’d seemed younger, but now I saw the wrinkles on her neck. Her hands were leathered, the knuckles large and spots on the back from exposure to the sun.

  “You’re looking a little frazzled yourself,” she said, indicating my hair. “Moving the dirt’s hard work. There’s a — a” She stepped close and picked something out of my hair, then showed it to me. “Some kind of beetle.”

  I shuddered.

  “I could help you with that,” she said. “If you have another shovel.”

  “That’s OK,” I said. Then I remembered that Scott might wake up soon. We had to talk. “Or actually, I could use the help. I’ll be happy to pay you.”

  “Ten bucks,” she said immediately.

  She was undercharging. Ten bucks to cut my work in half? She could use the money; anyone could see that. She could use a lot more than ten bucks. “I’ll give you fifty if we get through it fast,” I said.

  There was a larger shovel in the garden, but the small one worked well for me. “I’ll go get the other shovel. I might have some spare gloves, too.”

  By the time I came up with the shovel and Scott’s gloves from the garden shed, she was waiting in the shade near the pile of dirt.

  I dropped the wheelbarrow handles with a grunt and bent over, hands on my knees, panting. The heat was bearing down; I could feel it penetrating my hair and turning my scalp pink. I pulled the bottle of sunscreen out of my pocket and squirted some on my face, then offered it to her.

  She took it, read the label, then put some on her fingertips. “Maybe it’ll help the cuts,” she said, rubbing it gingerly into her forehead. “Ouch.” She handed it back without finishing. “That’s okay. Give me the other shovel.”

  I gave her the shovel then handed her my water. A few years ago we might have shared the water, but not since the pandemic. “You take this one, I haven’t touched it yet. I have another one.” I didn’t have another one handy, but I didn’t want her to feel like a leper. Some people never seem to think about germs even after a major societal interruption like the pandemic. For all I knew, she could be one of those.

  “I thank you.” She took a healthy swallow and then set the bottle down in the shade.

  “This dirt wants to go in the wheelbarrow.” She stuck the big shovel down deep and heaved it up, loaded with soil. “Let’s put our backs into it.”

  Just like that, we became a team, synchronized like we’d known each other all our lives. We worked hard for the next hour. I wielded each full wheelbarrow away down the garden path and brought it back up empty. She’d bend to it immediately, like a machine, and fill it with more dirt.

  When it was over, I pulled out my wallet, glad I’d thought to bring it. Glad I had cash. Those gouges on her face worried me. “You just saved my life,” I said, handing her two twenties and a ten.

  She looked down at the money, then put her hand out and let me press the bills into it.

  “I thank you,” she said. We smiled at each other. I felt something new, or rather something old that I hadn’t experienced in years. Like being a kid and making a new friend, the first tentative steps, the realization that you like this person, that there’s something about the two of you that clicks, and then the plunging in, rearranging your lives in a way to bring in this thing you want more of.

  “My name’s Dave,” I said.

  “Hello Dave.”

  I waited for her to give me her name in return, but she closed her palm over the money and said, “Well, time to go,” almost like she was talking to herself.

  “What’s your name?”

  She looked up, smiling. “Maeve. They rhyme.” She turned to walk away.

  “Maybe buy some mercurochrome for those scratches,” I called after her. “Or Polysporin! It’s an ointment!”

  She raised a hand and kept walking away up the dusty lane.

  • 20 •

  Maeve

  I hadn’t made money from working in such a long time that it felt special. On the way up the lane, I took out my bun and let my hair drape over my face. When I got to the store I’d ask for a mask, and I’d wear that outside until the cuts were healed.

 

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