Inheritance of the Meek

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Inheritance of the Meek

"Could you come over?" she asked. "I'm lonely."

When I did go over, saw her for the first time since early summer when school ended, she was a changed person. She waited for me on a chaise lounge set up on her front porch. She'd always been bigger than me, taller. Her shanks stuck skinny now, out of her house dress, pulled up around her as she reclined. The skin of her upper arms hung in a loose fold whenever she lifted her hands in that old gesture, patting her hair into place. Her face had a skeletal aspect, her nostrils flaring, the skin pulled tight around sunken eyes. Her hair sprung sparsely out of an egg-shell scalp.

"I'm better" she said, taking my hands, smiling. "Only I'm annoyed. I always look forward to the taste of new potatoes in the fall. Now everything tastes like ashes. It's the chemotherapy."

"Tell me what's new", she demanded, settling back. "What is she like, my replacement." I told her what she wanted to hear, that the new librarian didn't have her qualifications, the library no longer ran as smoothly; that everyone asked after her. She nodded satisfaction.

"And you? Still going with Ray Brennan?"
"No. He's taking Linda out now."
"Good. He's a cold fish - you can do better. Did you ever notice his eyes? Dead."

At the school, the staff asked me how she was as time went on. I don't know exactly why I kept going over. I felt sorry for her; felt, I suppose, that I couldn't abandon her. I remembered the times she was kind to me, her concern coming through, around that acerbic tongue of hers. She gave me advice which I rarely took. None of the other staff bothered to go. Everyone was busy. Well, it wasn't my business to tell them how lonely she was. They had their classes draw up get-well cards, all the kids signing them. Clara put them up for display on the mantel in her living room. Later, in the early winter, the vice-principal visited her, but that was to tell her they couldn't wait any longer for her. They planned on advertising for a permanent replacement - and she understood, didn't she? Well, what else could they do? Although she kept talking about coming back it was clear she never would.

"They could wait a little longer" she said to me later. I'm getting stronger every day. They'll never get anyone with a library sciences degree like me again!" It had been a blow to her, she always thought of the job as there, hers, waiting for her.

There was a succession of women from an agency who came in daily to look after her. Clara had money, that was no problem. "She's a German" she confided to me about the first one "and I can't stand them. They're so ... authoritarian. She's always telling me what I should do." She didn't last long and another, quieter woman took her place. I'd squirm, hearing Clara complain loud enough so she could hear, that the toilet bowls weren't being cleaned properly. "Clumsy, aren't you? she said coldly to yet another one. "That happens to be my Coalport" she said, her eyes a frigid blue damnation, when the woman brought a handle-less cup over for her inspection. It had broken while being washed.

After a few months I noticed a definite improvement in Clara. She looked progressively better, gained some weight, her skin less slack. She said she felt better when I remarked on how well she looked - comparatively speaking, but I didn't add that disclaimer when I complimented her. And she'd resumed her weekly hairdresser appointments but complained that they refused to give her the blue rinse, were afraid of using the dye on her. "They're just afraid to handle me", she laughed contemptuously. "Think they'll catch cancer from me or something, without doubt."

And finally, "I'm driving again!" she laughed, a hysterical note of triumph in her voice. "You'll see, it won't be long before I'm fully recovered and then I'll look for a part-time job; maybe the public library."

At Christmas, her mother, a hale-looking seventy-two, came over from Montreal where she still ran her own house, refusing to either move into a senior home or in with one of her children. "I'd like to thank you" she said to me "for coming over so often to spend time with my daughter."

And Clara's daughter Brenda came home from the mid-western American university she was attending. ("She just can't get the same level of education here, in Greek archaeology", Clara had told me.) Brenda was in her early twenties, a few years younger than me. She was a large, clumsy girl with various enthusiasms. She spent most of her time in the kitchen during her stay at home, cooking up exotic dishes, freezing half of them "so Mom can enjoy them later" she told me.

After, Clara said she was glad her mother lived in Montreal, she got on her nerves. "And I'm mad at Brenda. That girl spent too much time in the kitchen. That's not why I'm sending her to university, to become domesticated."

And she told me Brenda had persuaded her to try Transcendental Meditation. "Oh, I know you think I'm crazy" she said, waving hands at me as though to push away my incredulity - this had been a very pragmatic woman who had once talked with scorn about Eastern mysticism. "But she said", she went on, "look Mom, what have you got to lose? And she was right. She arranged for this young man to come over and he talked to me, gave me a mantra. And it works, believe it or not, it helps me to relax."

Her enthusiasm for TM waned though, and it wasn't long before she began complaining again about being lonely, how no one ever came to visit, how she was sorry she'd completely immersed herself in her work after Clark died, and let friendships lapse.

"Well, why not have Brenda come home for a while, spend some time with you?" I ventured. Unspoken was the thought that there wouldn't be much time.

"I won't have it!" she snapped back. "Her education is more important. It's not to be interrupted for anything!"

Her brother would come over once a month to take her into Riverview Hospital for her regular chemotherapy sessions. It was his routine to do that, the only time he saw her. "He's a busy man", she explained. "He's got his own life to lead, his own family to look after, his law practise." The chemotherapy made her so sick, depressed and irritable, she always called to tell me not to come over until the effects were dissipated, when, she said, she could be more companionable. Once, the depression was so acute, they'd had to admit and treat her in the psychiatric ward. She didn't like to talk about it.

Toward the middle of January she started smoking again, would tap the cigarettes nervously, dropping ashes everywhere. She was more bad-tempered than ever, asked me to call the agency for her, to send over a replacement.

"I drove the car into a stop sign today" she laughed nervously. "Somehow I couldn't control the damn thing and it just skidded."

"Maybe you shouldn't be driving ... ?
"It's the one pleasure I have left" she said, shortly. "My only independence."

I had visions of accidents, of a child being hit by her car. But soon she began to almost visibly weaken, would stay in a semi-reclining position all throughout my visits and it became impossible for her to get out and about, even as little as she had done.

"You look pale", she observed in early February and I felt a mild surprise; she was usually so preoccupied with herself she hardly noticed me as an entity; rather I was a sounding board, or so it seemed to me.

"I've just gotten over the flu" I told her.
"Well you should take better care" she said, then casually "and I guess you forgot to mention it to me, but I see from the newspaper announcements that Ray and Linda are married."
"Yes. I forgot to tell you."
"They'll be good for each other" she said, watching me. "They can feed on each other's egos."
"Yes."

By the time the snow started melting and the days began getting longer, she was weaker yet, and her clothes hung like bad jokes on her spare frame. As I entered the house I heard her snap at the new woman "in my house we don't cook turnips with the stew!"

"Good for nothing", she grumbled as I settled across from her. "Like taking money under false pretences - they haven't a brain in their heads, and that's why they're doing menial work."

Another month and she was experiencing trouble with her bowels. Her doctor had put her on a liquid diet and she was taking pills to help. But nothing did help and she was in constant distress and her weight loss became more rapid. Sitting across from her, talking, I could hear her stomach rumbling and sloshing; rudely, nauseatingly.

"I'll be going in for an exploratory" she said. "They'll check, maybe it won't be necessary to go all the way, operate."

Walking down the hospital corridor on her floor, my nostrils recoiled from the antiseptic odours covering that of impending death. I had to resist an urge to turn around, run away, leave the hospital. But I turned the corner of her door and there she was, a wan smudge on the hospital bed. Smiling, looking more skeletal than ever; her arms, lying neatly at her sides, mere sticks, while her bloated belly under the grey hospital blanket looked hideously pregnant.

"It didn't work" she whispered, beckoning me closer, motioning me to a chair beside the bed.

Beside her bed, on a little table, stood a pot of daffodils, bright and insouciant. I'd sent them, hoping to brighten her up. She didn't mention them, didn't thank me and I thought how gauche I had been to send them. How could the promise of spring gladden her now? Instead, she complained bitterly about the noise in the corridor outside her room. "Too close to the nursing station" she rasped. "Bad enough I can't sleep at night, but I have to hear them going all night too, damn 'phone and all!"

Finally, as I turned to go, she asked me to call around to the agency again, she'd want another woman when she got out. "And I've been thinking about selling the house. What I need is a little apartment, central to the downtown area" she said. "I'll have to get rid of some of my things, I guess. Won't be enough room for everything in an apartment."

I told her I'd call some antique shops, find out if they were interested in going over, giving her an appraisal value for her things. She had some fine furniture, good pine Canadiana.

"Tomorrow they may operate" she said, the last words I heard her say. But they didn't after all, I discovered later. They had decided it was too risky.

Her brother cabled Brenda and the girl came home. She telephoned me the next Saturday afternoon, asked if she could come over to my apartment. "It's boring, sitting there" she said. "She can't really talk now, she's going pretty fast. But when I'm there, sitting with her, she knows it. There's a strength that goes out from me to her. It comforts her." I recalled Clara telling me once that there was a special understanding between her and Brenda. "We're close-knit" she'd said.

Brenda sat and talked, drinking my Darjeeling tea, telling me about the trip she'd taken last summer arranged by her university and the Greek government, to Mycaenae. She said how wonderful it had been, the experience; hoped she could look forward to a similar experience the coming season. She went on to explain to me the differences between the Minoans and the Mycaeneans, how Santorini had probably been responsible for wiping out the Minoan culture.

A few days later, just as I was getting ready to dismiss my last class for the day, the principal made an announcement over the speaker system that Clara had died, asking for a moment of mourning for the school's former librarian. "Our much-loved Mrs. Bayntree" was how he described her. Some of the students looked about with blank faces for explanation, couldn't seem to place the name.

In the staff lounge, gathering my things together to leave, there was idle chatter about Clara, how it was a pity, wasn't it? and she'd be missed.

Toward the end of the week the principal asked me if I'd like time off to attend the funeral. He was going, he said, as were some of the department heads. No, I said I wouldn't go. The social ritual of interring a body does not appeal to me. I didn't tell him that though, I just said no. He gave me a peculiar look. I was told later that he'd mentioned to somehow how heartless I was. Well, yes.

Two weeks later Brenda popped in for a minute, leaving me two shopping bags full of her mother's library sciences books, to dispose of. "I don't know what to do with them", she apologized. "I thought maybe you could give them as a gift to the local library, or something."

She was in a hurry, she said, wanted to call a few dealers in to have them appraise her mother's collection of Mary Gregory glassware. The furniture had already been taken on consignment. "My uncle's been made executor", she said on the run. "He'll look toward selling the house. I'll be leaving in a few days."

I said goodbye, she said goodbye, and thanks.

I felt a little disappointed. Clara knew how much I liked the glassware. I thought she'd leave me a piece, as a memento.

c. 1980 Rita Rosenfeld