6
JEANIE
Salt Spring Island
december 5, 1972
the morning after Pat’s mysterious late-night phone call, I’m standing in the hall outside my room. Pat’s behind on laundry, so I’m wearing my work uniform—coveralls shellacked with multiple colors of paint, and a faded blue sweatshirt—despite this being the very first day of Jeanie’s “month-long rest.” Yesterday, I completed a pointless landscape, one that took me hundreds of hours and what felt like too many pints of blood to finish. Bone tired, I’m entitled to a break, and Christmas is the perfect excuse to unwind, read, and stay the hell away from my studio.
The floor creaks under my bare feet as I listen to the steady mouse patter of rain on the roof and the sound of Pat down in the kitchen, wrestling an innocent pot in the sink with a Brillo pad. She’d hovered right here after last night’s phone call and paused long enough to zombie-whisper a terrible thing at me.
I don’t think you’d want anyone poking around, would you? Not after what you did.
Insurmountable guilt floods my body, guilt for the mistakes I’ve made, some I’m not even aware I committed except for Pat’s insistence that I did. I glance down the hallway. Her bedroom door is closed, as always—Pat’s a stickler for privacy. That charred wax smell permeates the air again, drifting up my nostrils. Angry, I tiptoe toward her door, which seems to quiver with mystery. I’m not sure what I’m planning to do—maybe yank the wick out of the offending candle so I can strangle her with it. I smile to myself. Imagine.
I place my hand on her doorknob and turn it ever so carefully. Locked. Just like mine had been last night. How long has she been locking our doors? How long has she been keeping me in my room at night and out of hers during the day?
“What are you doing up there?”
I jump and bolt to the top of the stairs. Pat stands at the bottom, glaring up at me. Something else accompanies her usual contempt for my very being. Suspicion.
When I don’t answer, she rolls her eyes. “You need to take your meds.” She gallops back to the kitchen, and I descend like a reluctant debutante to a ball, following the enticing aroma of percolating coffee. As I pass the hall table, I notice the drawer is ajar. “What were you looking for last night?” I mutter. “You little nightmare.” I stop and peer into the open drawer. Among her scribbled grocery lists, a creamy-white embossed envelope floats like a glamorous castaway, marred by Pat’s clumsy attempts to tear it open. No fancy letter opener for her. Nudging the drawer open further, I see the envelope is addressed to me and squint at the stamp and return address: it was sent over a month ago from an Octavius Karbuz Gallery in Brussels. Why would a European art gallery be contacting me? I reach for it, my fingers itching to peek at the elegant words written in calligraphy that I glimpse within. But Pat might appear in the doorway any minute, wondering where I am, so I leave it where it is. For now.
“what’s this orange pill?” I ask Pat, trying to sound upbeat, despite her daring to open my mail. “It’s positively lurid.” A giant fern hangs in the interior of the skylight above the kitchen table and I examine the round glow-in-the-dark pill in the flat morning haze that sifts through its fronds. An ominous looking SKF T76 is stamped in black lettering on one side of the medication. I don’t think I’ve noticed it before.
“Just take it,” Pat huffs, without turning from the sink.
I’m sitting at the table in front of a rapidly cooling bowl of porridge, listening to Tuna whiffle in his sleep in the dog bed near the back door. Dear, sweet chocolate lab, he’s curled up in the same position I left him in last night. The kitchen that Aunt Suze built never fails to lift my spirits, even if Pat is standing in it. My aunt designed it years ago to cheer herself up, unaware she’d be dead not long after. She’d chosen the bright yellow Formica counters out of an eccentric’s aesthetic rather than any real knowledge of design. Floor to ceiling oak cabinets frame a still serviceable—though dated—fridge and stove. When the kitchen window is open in the summer, one can hear the pleasant trickle of the waterfall. It’s one of my favorite things about this house.
I study Pat’s uniform. She used to wear what the locals do on this island: flannel shirts and baggy blue jeans. But lately she’s shown up in classy threads she must have procured in Vancouver—trés chic flared slacks and blouses worn several sizes too small. Does she have a boyfriend in the city? Her dark hair is still in curlers. Thank God she’s grown out her pixie cut to a shoulder-length style she’ll later wrestle into a side sweep, spraying the flirty bits within an inch of their lives into a helmet she considers the height of glamour.
“But what’s the pill for?” I ask, knowing the question will send her over the edge. She doesn’t care to have her actions challenged by her lowly prisoner. Pat doles out my medications three times a day from a weekly pill minder. The cocktail is loaded with opiates to block my pain from peripheral nerve injuries, pills that put me to sleep, and pills to get me going in the morning. The bottles are kept in her room, and I wish I’d had the wisdom to seek them out, just to figure out which one does what before she decided to lock her door.
When she doesn’t answer, I take a deep breath. Enough is enough. The envelope addressed to me and opened by Pat was the last straw. “You can’t lock me in at night,” I say to her back. “I need my independence.”
She freezes at the sink, pot in hand. “I thought you were awake last night. Surely you know why I lock your door.”
“You’re afraid I’ll sneak into your room? Really Pat? If I wanted to kill you, I’d have done it already.” She stands so still I know I’ve succeeded in annoying her. But she refuses to look at me, so I take the opportunity to palm the orange pill and slip it into my pocket, my one small act of rebellion. I get to work swallowing the rest of the tablets with a swig of juice, then gaze at my breakfast. Existential sigh into my oatmeal. Gruel is what happens when you’re too afraid of people to go into town for groceries and let a bridge troll do it for you. “An egg would be lovely,” I venture. “Could I get some coffee?”
She finally spins around to look at me. “Get it yourself.”
The coffee pot is on the stove. I’ve grown used to being in the same room with a live flame that licks at the percolator, as if at the feet of a witch’s pyre, but going anywhere near it? I swallow and try to slow my racing heart. “You know very well I can’t.”
Pat has a gorilla scratch between her curlers, then surreptitiously smells her fingers before responding. “But you need your independence. Independent girls get their own coffee.”
“I can’t,” I repeat, my voice louder than I want it to be. It’s difficult to admit just how right she is. And how much I need her. Surely there are kind and helpful caregivers out there. I fantasize what it would be like to advertise for such a person.
Caregiver wanted by thirty-one-year-old woman living on small Gulf island in the Pacific, accessible only by dodgy ferry service. Free food, Irish whiskey, and dog hugs.
I imagine interviewing potential candidates without Pat’s knowledge. Maybe when she’s hunting and gathering in town, or in Vancouver buying my art supplies.
“I’d be happy to pour your coffee,” the potential caregiver might say, “but…erm, why?”
“I can’t go anywhere near the range—or heat of any kind,” I’d say sheepishly.
My imaginary caregiver would be puzzled. “But heat comes out of the furnace ducts,” she reminds me. “In the winter?”
“There’s no furnace. It’s a temperate rainforest—I just bundle up in sweaters and toques. It’s fun.” I’d laugh to make my point.
“But surely it must get cold. How do you heat the place?”
I’d tell her about the wood stove, which she’d light on those few days in winter when the temperature dips below freezing. My imaginary caregiver would frown. “Only when I’m in the studio, so I can’t see it or smell it,” I’d continue. “And you must put out the fire before I come back into the house. Oh—did I mention absolutely no candles? Don’t even think about them. Which reminds me—you’re not a smoker, are you?” Well, of course she’d be—everyone smokes. “None of that in the house,” I’d say. “Or anywhere near the house. Or near my studio.”
“Where would I smoke then?” She’d be confused, and I’d even feel a little sorry for her.
“Out the back door,” I’d say firmly. “The compost heap provides a surprisingly effective windbreak.”
Then, before I could tell her I take tepid showers and can’t fathom a bath, my imaginary potential caregiver would go up in a puff of smoke. I snap from my daydream, sighing with frustration. I’m hopelessly stuck with Pat.
The truth is, only she knows what really happened that awful night, and my role in it. I can’t remember—maybe I don’t want to—and sometimes it feels as though only Pat can protect me from the truth, which is a shameful scar of its own, a wound that’s very different from the ones I wear on the surface of who I am. My biggest fear is that I’m guilty of some unspeakable crime. That this lonely life, painting pictures hardly anyone wants to buy, is all I deserve.
“I’ll be seeing Dr. Reisman,” Pat says turning back to the sink, “when I’m in Vancouver next week.”
Right, I’d forgotten she was seeing my old doctor, now in private practice as a general practitioner. I’ll be left alone, which has its pros and cons. I can roam freely with no one to lock me in at night, yet Pat’s absence will simply make me think of Kay, whom I miss more than life itself.
I wouldn’t have met these two nurses if Gynecology hadn’t been the only ward where a private, sterile room could be outfitted with my massive Stryker frame. When I was discharged from the hospital, I’d been a nineteen-year-old girl all alone in the world, heir to my Aunt Suze’s beautiful house on Salt Spring and a generous monthly disability cheque. I needed live-in care. But Kay, my favorite nurse, joined the World Health Organization, so it was Pat who jumped at the chance to be my caregiver. I would never have chosen Pat as a friend, much less a roommate, but I had no choice. We’ve struggled to make things work, and after thirteen years, the massive differences in our personalities are reduced to small battles we fight daily. Who better to understand your fateful past than the person who nursed you through it? Even if that person liked to remind you of her sacrifice every goddamn day.
Kay and I have stayed in touch over the years she’s been nursing in the Congo. In her last letter, she said she was returning to Canada for a break, so I wrote back and urged her to come to Salt Spring and take on my care. It’s a big ask, I know that, but I trust Kay. We forged a bond that went beyond friendship. She gets me, and I need a loving presence in my life. Bad. But months have passed with no reply from my beloved nurse.
“I set up a new canvas,” Pat announces, drying her hands on a tea towel.
“Thanks,” I say, sure she’ll miss the sarcasm. “I’ll get to it in January.”
“You have to finish it by Christmas.”
I drop my spoon. “Christmas? I’m taking December off.” I need to read and be left alone, to feel so quiet and inward it might almost seem like I’ve ceased to exist. But I feel panicked that Pat dares threaten this dream of mine.
“You have to keep painting.” Pat slams the offending pot into the other sink.
“Why?” I’m trying to keep my voice measured even though I feel like screaming.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky with this next one.” Pat grabs the broom and begins her daily attack on the blue-glazed Mexican tile floor.
I’m tired of painting canvases that so often don’t sell. Yet what can I do but doggedly paint as if my life depends on it? Because it does. We only get so much per month from disability cheques and Aunt Suze’s estate, and as Pat’s employer, I’m responsible to supplement that somehow. But I don’t care. “I refuse to paint out of guilt and vague, misplaced hope that this next one might sell,” I say stubbornly.
Pat turns to face me. “Do you think you’re some famous artist? You’re mid-level,” she says, her eyes narrow, “your work derivative of other painters who’ve gone on to the highest pinnacles of success. You’ll try again, and you’ll like it. We’re in the poorhouse as it is.”
A surge of desperation lights my rage and I push away from the table, almost upsetting my chair, and make a dramatic exit, Pat’s threat echoing after me.