Red dots splatter the mask hammocking Dr. Hinkley’s chin. In the nitrous haze they look like miniature poppies. His hand is cool on her forehead. “It was a difficult extraction, Mrs. Winter. I’ll write you a script for the pain.”
The floor is gelation underfoot as she wobbles to the elevator.
“Jane? Is that you?” She always knew they would meet again. She hoped it’d be in Morocco, Barcelona maybe. A cashmere suit has replaced his faded Levi’s. She blots drool with her scarf, then veils the cheek wadded with gauze. “It is you. What’s it been? Thirty years?” It seems only last week that they kissed in the library, pulled all-nighters studying anatomy, spent their semester abroad… He says, “You haven’t changed a bit.”
Before she left home this morning her daughter, Emily, said, “Either there’s a skunk sleeping on your head or you need a cut and colour.”
Her youngest, Molly, added, “You look like the Pillsbury Doughgirl in that sweater.”
Jane glances up, slurring, “Dentist.”
“Sorry. Here’s me, fifty-five and not a cavity. So, you still teaching?”
She hoists her satchel crammed with sixth grade papers. The trashy magazine she nicked from the waiting room overhanging like dirty underwear.
“Must be rewarding.”
Many of her students are on Ritalin. She supports Health Canada making it the fifth food group. Dose the entire student body, faculty too. Half of her face smiles. Half sags.
“Did I hear you married Bill Winters?” She nods. “What’s he up to?”
“Environmentalist,” sounds better than ‘waste management’ or ‘unemployed’. Filtered through bloody gauze it sounds like he’s ‘a viral mental lease.’
“Kids?”
Three fingers up.
He retrieves a family photo taken atop the Great Wall of China. “You remember Isabella?”
Yes. The roommate who borrowed things.
He delivers biographical highlights: got tenure, made partner, son, engineer, daughter, med school…
The elevator stops. She exits, wandering the halls of Lucidea Marketing, searching for the stairs to the parking garage.
A rain of rust falls when she closes the door of her 97 Caravan. Wet snow dribbles down the windshield as she creeps along the DVP. Don’t think about pee. DeVelopingPee… Why are there no bushes along this highway?
While waiting for the prescription she collects ice cream, pudding and three bags of Halloween candy, 75% markdown. She scans magazine headlines: Glee Goes Wild. Find Your Life’s Purpose. Lose 12 pounds while sleeping… She asks the pharmacist for a refill on her blue pills, the little white ones too, and adds a box of L’Oreal Couleur Experte, because she’s worth shit.
The front of the house remains half painted. The lumber for the porch has been constructed into a skateboard ramp. Bill hurries to the van. “Why didn’t you call?”
She mumbles around the mouthful of packing. “Thought you had an interview.”
“You weren’t supposed to drive.” He helps her to the house like she’s just given birth. She cradles her purchases knowing he’s going to want I-didn’t-get-the-job consolation sex.
Internal chaos has been tidied, penitently so. The stains on the carpet are always more noticeable when the dog hair is raked up.
Emily has moved back home, with her twins. She yells when they start running, “Slow down. Nana has a sore face.” Christopher is still wearing his tiger costume, two weeks post festivity. Smelling now more trick than treat. Carrie is naked except for a bicycle helmet on her head.
Jane opens the bathroom door. Her son, William, waves the plunger. “Hey, mom. Better use the crapper upstairs.” Mr. Furbil’s cage is empty. She swallows blood and two pills.
The ‘family’ gravitates to the table. Bill buckles the twins into chairs. Zara and her little girl, Miriam, sit down. Emily brought them home from her support group six months ago and Bill offered the pull-out in his office. William and his partner David sit next. They live in the basement so they can afford to go to film school. Then there’s Molly, reading Meditations in an Emergency. Her boyfriend, Mike, drums the skateboard on his lap while clicking his tongue-stud against his teeth. In her head, Jane groups everyone together, picturing them posed atop the drywall stacked in the family room.
Bill asks, “You okay, honey? You look a little pale.”
Mike wanders in from space, “Gotta get a big-ass diamond in that tooth crater, Mrs. W.”
Sighing, Molly looks up. “This family is achingly O’Harian.”
“Precisely why our screenplay is titled Overwintering.” William winks a smile. He has his father’s smile and his hand is a carbon likeness in the way it gentles David’s shoulder.
Tiny Miriam says, “Nana is leaking.”
Jane checks for drool and discovers her cheeks are wet. William helps her up. “Nana’s okay, Miri. Come lie down, Mom. Dave and I’ll clean up.”
Emily peeks into the bedroom, catching Jane sucking down her tenth Aero bar. “You need a little therapy, Mummy.” Emily is studying at Medix College, majoring in massage, with a minor in wingnut. Jane fears a Dung Beetle scrub ahead as Molly and Zara insist her out of bed. In the bathroom, incense wafts, Yanni’s Dare to Dream plays and the computer chair is draped in old towels. They colour Jane’s hair, rub her feet and put salad on her eyes. Emily says, “You have beautiful skin.”
Molly perches on the stained counter. “Star Magazine? Mom, you wound me deeply.”
“I stole it.”
“Righteous. Suuuck shit—listen to this, Kate’s planning a forty million dollar wedding.”
Skinny bitch gets her college prince. Something smells stagnant, like seeping despair… or an unflushed toilet.
Molly’s voice cuts, “What social conscience, your Royal Myness. Astounding fiscal responsibility, Princess Let-them-eat-Kate. In Zimbabwe four bucks worth of antivirals saves a baby.”
Jane calculates how many children she condemned today with her purchases.
Zara says. “If forty million dollars were mine, I would build this house in every village in my country.”
Fussing with her hair and the laughter of the kids playing outside in the new snow, edges Jane toward unconsciousness.
Bill draws the curtains in their draughty room, relocates laundry from the bed to the floor and nuzzles her neck. “Who’s this gorgeous woman in Casa Winter?”
Jane mutters, “This place is a refugee camp.”
“Good for us.” A tower of books collapses as he switches off the light.
“I’ve made a complete wreck of my life.”
“Precisely where treasure hunters find gold.”
“Stop being such a fucking Pollyanna. Emily married a wife-beater. Molly pierced her nipples to protest the oppression of circus bears and your son accessorizes better than your wife.”
“And that’s why Zara sleeps again, even dreams a little. But, I don’t get the Molly thing. Do you?”
“Three ring circus.”
“Geezeus, you think there’s another one.”
“There is. Don’t ask where.” She turns. “If I ever went to Somalia to teach would you come with me?”
“Could you wait until I finish this gig?”
“You got the job?”
His hand is warm on her cheek as he gentles back silky hair. “Six month contract, but it could lead to something come spring.” Her hand slips under his waistband. “No, Sweet Baby Jane, you just rest.”
“It was a difficult extraction. I need a little consolation.”
Published in Wild Words Anthology, 2010