Mrs. Shimoda sat at the dining room
table performing her monthly Saturday morning ritual of going through
her purse, purging it of loose change, bills of sale, old tissues,
slips of paper with appointment reminders, crumpled grocery lists
like shadows of every list made and every one to come, pink post-it
notes with numbers for fashion patterns desired and notions required,
individually wrapped candies from restaurant visits with her son, ATM
bank receipts as thin and smooth as India paper, and the inevitable
dross of dusty lint in the seams of interior pockets. Hesitating, she
withdrew a small strip of cloth in a pale shade of purple, one she
had brought to the fabric store to seek out the right buttons for the
blouse she'd been making; she rubbed it between her right thumb and
forefinger, and recalled the Sunday afternoon she wore it to her
grandson's birthday party, an afternoon overflowing with moments of
gratitude and pleasure, moments of lucid smiles and gentle laughter
no camera could possibly capture. She placed it on the table beside
the loose change, and in doing so, shuffled a few coins off the edge
with her sleeve. She heard them fall and noticed one rolling in a
long arc towards the corner cabinet like a rogue car wheel after an
accident. With a sigh, she made her way over and bent down on her
knees to look underneath, and as she reached in to sweep the ten cent
coin out, she saw the rough side of a jigsaw puzzle piece nestled
behind one of the front legs. Picking it up, she recognized the
shape. She turned it over to the shiny side glazed like a porcelain
bathroom fixture, and there was the hand of the geisha holding the
parasol, the missing symmetrical jigsaw piece reaching out to embrace
and complete the image with the other 999 interlocking fragments she
no longer had. Her son had returned the puzzle to the shop seeking a
refund. She could hear his laconic explanation, 'defective' he would
have said, 'missing a piece'. She looked down at this now redundant
fragment in the palm of her hand thinking of a compass, a delicate
hand holding the shaft of the bamboo oil-paper parasol, the thumb
pointing North.
She couldn't conceive how it found its
way under the corner cabinet.
Back at her seat, she began to return
items into her purse: wallet, keys, pens, a vintage compact with an
image of pale flowers which reminded her of an Aubusson carpet, lip
gloss, a notebook, a package of tissues, a comb, a folded blue nylon
tote bag in its pouch which mimicked her dark blue and white
embroidered omamori (a
gift from her daughter-in-law as a charm for her travel safety, one
she hoped would bring green lights, never red), a tape measure,
miniature scissors for coupon cutting, spare reading glasses, a nail
file, and a few adhesive bandages for small cuts. Picking up the
jigsaw piece, she thought, for the briefest of moments, of placing it
in the bottom of her purse, but quickly dismissed it as an idea
induced by a mischievous spirit. She would dig a hole in the earth at
the base of her small bamboo shrub in her back garden, and bury it
deep enough to avoid the reach of squirrels. Best place for it she
thought. She looked out the dining room window and was reassured that
such a task was still possible. The snowfall had been minimal over
the last week. The ground was still friable. Tomorrow, she thought.
She would bury it tomorrow. Her morning shopping lay ahead.
Halfway down the hill on her way
towards the Atwater Market in search of a nice piece of fish for her
dinner that evening, she recognized a car coming up the hill, the
driver looking tired and expressionless, her hands grabbing the
steering wheel at the eleven and one position as if it at a ship's
wheel and lost at sea. Mrs. Shimoda smiled and nodded her head, but
Amelia didn't see her. Poor girl, she thought, preoccupied with
Duncan's business closure. Amelia had told her all about it and had
jokingly reassured her that they wouldn't be bringing the weight
of a bookshop home. She had been reassured, though the thought
of lying on her bed beneath a dangerous weight of books on the floor
above had given her a singular nightmare one evening. She'd dreamt of
waking up in her room with books pouring from the ceiling like sand
into the bottom of an hour-glass, an unstoppable influx of print, and
there she was clambering up the growing pyramid of books only to slip
down to the bottom perimeter where the door of her room had been
wedged shut. She had awoken, the sheets in disarray, the ceiling
intact, mumbling the word hashigo, hashigo, hashigo.
The sidewalks were more slippery than
she'd expected, the patches of ice and city-spread sand were
distributed along the concrete path like frozen ponds and hazards of
a golf course. Carefully she made her way down the hill. She decided
she would take a taxi back from the market, and she wondered with
anticipation if she'd be fortunate to come across Olivier. Such a
pleasant smile and so polite. So helpful opening doors and helping
her with packages. She was usually disinclined to participate in
small talk, but with Olivier it was different. He asked how she was,
talked about the weather, asked after her family, discussed his, all
with his Haitian-accented English which charmed her into amiable and
relaxed responses as she breathed in the sandalwood aroma of his car,
making her feel as if she was sitting on a sofa in his living room.
She had to admit, she accentuated her elderly qualities when around
him, stooping slightly, walking a little slower, sighing with a touch
of dramatic nuance. It was all give and take, authentic and studied,
like life itself she thought.
*
Isabelle Cloutier closed her
eyes and listened to the coffee machine. The inhalation and
exhalation of water and air sounded like a Jacques Cousteau
underwater adventure, the clicks, the bubbling, the drips and
splashes of the dark tinted liquid leading to the heightened finale
as the machine coughed and burbled, an expiration akin to the scuba
diver taking the mouth piece from between their lips and releasing
the oxygen into the water.
Breathing in the aroma of
the fresh-brewed coffee, she felt as weightless as her imaginary
diver rising to the surface of morning.
Pouring herself a cup, she
walked over to her bistro table by the window where a sun-catcher in
the shape of a snowy owl cast an opaque reflection upon her. She
turned her tablet on and clicked on her Twitter account with its made
up name and Twitter handle, AtheneNoctua. Her profile image, a
small owl, looked back at her as she entered her password. Each Tweeter's distinctive profile picture acted as an immediate sign post to their content, a diverse news feed for her interests. Her eyes
quickly scanned the tweets, skimming the surfaces, reading the first words and passing on:
A question of . . .
Scientists find . .
Do you have . . .
Watch this . . .
A look at . . .
Is the . . .
When asked to . . .
How crime will . . .
Who was responsible . . .
Your voice will . . .
Around in circles . . .
So excited . . .
Looking for a . . .
I can't be the only . . .
Nothing's more . . .
What does it say . . .
RIP . . .
Good morning . . .
Excited about all . . .
In a cab with . . .
Scientists have made . . .
Sad news . . .
Oh joy . . .
If the weather continues . . .
Still buzzing from . . .
I've decided i don't . . .
The top 20% of . . .
On this day . . .
Are Saturn's rings . . .
Between her hangover and her work week
exhaustion, her concentration was as passive as a cat lying in the
sun. She logged out of Twitter and checked her personal email.
Messages and updates from a science magazine, online shoe sale,
Clearly Contacts, travel opportunities, and one from Sotheby's
with a catalogue of an upcoming sale of nineteenth century art.
She knew her energy was low as she logged out of her account without
looking at the catalogue, usually such a pleasurable weekend pastime
as she searched for possible depictions of owls in paintings or
sculpture she might conceivably afford.
Looking down into the back yard, she
noticed her empty garbage can on its side, possibly knocked over by
the wind, its dark opening like a tunnel entrance. This triggered the
memory of a dream. She'd been walking into a tunnel, about twenty
feet in circumference, and after a long trek in, the tunnel had begun to
narrow, gradually at first, and then dramatically so, until thirty
feet ahead of her, her flash light had revealed a convergence of the
circle into a point like the inside of a steeple. Turning around, all had
been dark. She couldn't see the light of the entrance, and she
thought the tunnel must have curved. It was then she'd awoken wrapped
and tangled in her sheets feeling frantic and trapped. She rubbed the
sleep from her eyes and wondered if it was symbolic of her evening
spent with her girlfriend Carol at the book launch she'd dragged her
to. 'You might meet someone new,' she'd said, 'someone literary,
artsy.' She sipped her coffee recalling the evening spent drinking
cheap red wine while a University of Montreal professor read from his
latest book of poetry surrounded by hipsters with facial hair, plaid
shirts, small fedoras, tattoos, dark rimmed glasses, and sloppy jeans
and running shoes. The young women had worn outfits with shear
panels, visible zippers, tall leather boots, and looked like they
lived off cigarettes and carrot juice. And everyone had been so
bloody young, and seemingly more concerned with the activity around smart
phones and selfies than the obscure meanings of the poet's offeringss. What
had Carol been thinking? But they'd had fun afterwards at the trendy
Baldwin Barmacie on Laurier, where they talked, releasing all the stress and demands of their respective jobs while confirming
each other's woes in soft voices and undertones. She smiled thinking
of Carol's wordplay concerning the young men and women at the
reading: Between the sad men and the Mad Men, you have the plaid
men. Between the tattoos and the Jimmy Choos, you have the whose
who's.
In the living room, sitting in her
comfortable high back corner chair, she curled her legs up and
wrapped a crochet throw around her shoulders and stared at the
painting entitled Phantom of the North, a Great Grey Owl in
flight, its piercing yellow eyes and hooked yellow beak facing her as
if she was the prey, the enormous head and its heart-shaped face with
semi-circular feather arrangements in curving lines of super-symmetry
and its extraordinary outstretched wings showing off its banded
feathers ready to wrap her in an embrace before the talons found
their mark.
After a long, seemingly dreamless
period of moody darkness—imageless dreams sightless people are said
to experience—she thought of the abundance of evocative dreams
she'd had this past week. A dream with owls was not uncommon with
her but this one had been unusual. She'd awoken on Thursday morning
to recall one of finding an owl in a barn-like modern house; she'd
looked up to see it in the peak of the rafters, and she'd opened a
door and called to it as if to a cat. As it swooped towards her,
she'd prostrated herself on the floor facing a glass-fronted China
cabinet which reflected the owl's flight over her, a baby owl she
could see. Then fear had entered as she'd sensed a large mother owl
swoop down and join the owlet. Realizing the owls were still inside
the building, she had opened a further door and followed the same
procedure only to find herself in a large screened in porch and she
had to reenact the process once more. Finally, the owls had been
released and she was standing in the sun, a sense of great
contentment and freedom overcoming her. If it signified a revelation
in her life, she had yet to see how.
A small stack of envelopes and flyers,
Friday's mail, lay on the table by the door. She got up and brought
them back to her chair and sorted through them. An envelope with
Edward Seymour's distinctive script caught her eye. No stamp.
Hand-delivered. She opened it and found a card with an image of a
Dutch interior. Her eyes first lighted upon the dog in the foreground
beside the leaning broom, then the grey-striped cat with its arched
tail in the middle distance, then the parrot in the opened cage above, then the white piece of paper, an
envelope, on the bottom stair to the right, and only then did her
eyes wander down the black and white tile floor to the the depths of
the painting and notice a framed picture in a room to the right, but
quickly concluded it was a mirror and the reflection of a
black-hatted man with his back to her facing a young woman in blue to
his right. It was such a richly detailed interior, it pulled her in, instilling a desire to be there,
petting the dog, cuddling the cat, calling up to the parrot, and
reaching down for the letter and opening it to read its contents.
Isabelle turned the card over and read that the painting was called,
View of a Corridor by Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1662, Oil on
Canvas, Collection of Dryham Park, National Trust. Within, she read
Edward's short note.
Dear Isabelle,
I was rummaging about in desk
drawers and found some old cards I bought when on vacation in England
in the mid-eighties, my foray into the Cotswolds and environs, all
Chipping this and Chipping that. Such lovely stone buildings in that
area of the world. Such golden warmth. I remember visiting Stanway
House and from there, making my way south west exploring Cheltenham,
Gloucester, Bristol, Bath and all interesting sights along and around
the way, including Dryham Park which has, I seem to remember, an
astonishing collection of Dutch art. You must make a trip my dear.
Well worth the time. The cage door is ajar. The cage door is ajar.
I just wanted to let you know that
our Thérèse Laflamme visited me unannounced this week, and her
memory of the David Ashemore case had returned to her. Something
about reading a friend's work of fiction in progress had triggered
her recall. I just wanted to warn you in case I had possibly
mentioned your name to my niece who is now friends with Thérèse,
and who could possibly mention your name and your enquiry on my
behalf. My old brain. I can't be sure if I mentioned it to her or
not. In any case, I told Thérèse to get on with her life. If there
were wrong doings involved in Ashemore's death, time will work it out.
It is out of our hands now.
I can't guarantee anything. A strong
willed young woman like Thérèse is a force of nature.
Anyway, my dear, we must get
together over the coming holidays. If you're alone for Christmas
dinner, consider yourself invited. Please let me know.
All my love,
Edward
She held the card
wondering if she was indeed called upon, would she take up the cause? Or
would she take that vacation?
© ralph patrick mackay
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