Your weekly irregular dose of fabulous1 fiction
Week #4 - Training Wheels
Sunday, 30 Dec 2007 14:22
Here is FFF #4. I guess if you had to pick what this one is about, it would be grief or mourning? I enjoyed writing this and like my main character. I wrestled with verb tenses, though, and have resolved to never again write a flashback scene! Never!
Training Wheels
Gilbert Beaulieu is fifty-seven years old and has the early stages of arthritis in his right hip which causes him to limp a little some days. Not too long ago, while scrubbing out a pot in which he'd overcooked some Campbell's chicken noodle soup, he'd noticed his first liver spot on the back of his hand. Gilbert is currently waiting for the number ten bus to take him downtown and is wearing one of his wife's dresses, as well as her overcoat. Under his recently purchased wig (online, along with two others in order to get free shipping) his own hair is thinning and mostly grey. He is a bundle of nerves, jangling the requisite change in one hand while fighting the urge to adjust the wig. It's a little bit itchy and he's concerned it isn't sitting correctly. He glances at his watch, annoyed that the bus is already a few minutes late. He realizes he's still wearing is own watch, an inexpensive Timex sports watch. It is not at all the sort of watch Emily used to wear. Hers are tiny things; thin leather straps and faces so small he'd have to squint to tell the time. But that wasn't the point of them. When they were at parties and she wanted to know the time, she'd ask Gilbert even if she was wearing a watch of her own.
The bus finally arrives and when he steps on, the driver greets him with a friendly good morning. Gilbert is about to answer when he stops himself. He isn't sure what to do with his voice. Should he try to imitate Emily? No, that's silly. Maybe just try to pitch his voice up? The bus driver is looking at him so he just drops his handful of change into the bin, nods and gives the driver a thin, nervous smile.
He takes a seat near the front so that he doesn't have to see if anyone is staring and takes out Emily's compact to check his makeup. He thinks he's done a reasonable job of it. His lipstick matches his dress and his blush is subtle, but brings some nice colour to his face. He's not wearing any mascara; after a few nights of practice he still hadn't been about to get it right. He'd put it on too thickly and Emily had always told their daughter that women with thick mascara looked like whores. He'd been reading a lot of Internet sites on makeup, but most of them seemed to assume you already knew what you were doing and were just looking to refine your techniques. The sites that might have taught the very basics seemed to be targeted at either young girls or transvestites and he wasn't either. Visiting those web pages made him feel like a bit of a pervert. All in all, he'd developed a new appreciation for the things women suffer through to look nice in public. He was going to apologize for all the times she'd kept him waiting while she was getting ready. And he'd bring extra flowers the next time he visited her grave.
The bus won't take long to get downtown and he spends the time reflecting on how things came to this. Why he was sitting on a bus, dressed up in his dead wife's things and going to meet a group of her friends for coffee.
Emily died two months ago after a very brief fight with pancreatic cancer. It swept through her like a sudden fall blizzard. One day she'd complained of feeling ill and so Gilbert had picked up some Tylenol and a couple of cans of soup. She'd thrown up everything he tried to feed her and the next day he'd stayed home from work to tend to her. When she complained of worsening pain, he drove her to their family doctor. Two days later she was sent in for emergency surgery and two days after that was gone. The funeral service had been small. Maureen, their daughter, had flown in from Ottawa but was in the middle of a busy project at work and could only stay a few days. A handful of acquaintances had come as well. In the last few years since her retirement, Emily hadn't really bothered keeping in touch with coworkers and clients. She'd been in advertising and all the parties she had dragged Gilbert to had been for the sake of her career. Once she was done, she used to say that all she wanted was some quiet time and to putter in her garden. She'd also started a number of knitting projects, in the hope that grandchildren would be coming. Maureen scoffed at any such notions. Gilbert hasn't been back to work since his wife's death and thinks he will most likely take early retirement.
One afternoon, a few days after the funeral, he had been sitting in Emily's office in their St. Boniface house. He'd been on the computer, downloading the required insurance forms to send to Parsimonious Assurance, his insurance company, when he decided to pop open the email program. This wasn't an invasion of Emily's privacy. He didn't have an email address of his own (she was the computer guru in the family) and the odd time he had to send something, he would use her account. There were only a few new messages, most of which looked as though they were newsletters and advertisements. Emily liked to post on gardening newsgroups and had recently started to play canasta online with a few women. One email had the subject "Re: your barley soup". He clicked on it.
Hi Emily,
When we were playing cards the other evening, you mentioned you had to take a quick break to run off and stir your soup. Do you think I could get your recipe? I like barley soup but haven't found a recipe of my own that I really love.
Thanks!
Beckie
Gilbert had started to type an apology email to Beckie to let her know about Emily, but before clicking send he paused and thought for a moment. This Beckie person probably didn't know anything about Emily outside of their newgroups and their canasta games. They might not know each other outside of some online interaction. Was knowing that Emily was gone really going to be useful information for her? Did she need to know? She didn't know Emily, not in real life, so-to-speak. Gilbert had deleted what he'd typed, got up from the desk, gone to the kitchen and searched through the shoe box of recipes his wife kept. She'd always meant to transfer them onto the computer but had never found the time. On a slightly yellowing, folded-up piece of paper torn from an old notebook, he found the recipe. It wasn't Emily's handwriting - perhaps his mother-in-law's - although there were some scribbled changes that belonged to her. He took this paper back to the office and wrote Beckie a new email, opening the way he thought his wife might and typed out the recipe with Emily's updates and then he sent it off.
That evening, after supper, he'd gone back onto the computer to see if Beckie had responded. She hadn't, and after playing a few games of solitaire (which was the main thing he'd used the machine for), he opened up the web browser and looked through her bookmarked pages until he found the gardening forum. He didn't really know much about Emily's online life. He clicked the link and was a bit surprised to be greeted by a "Welcome back, Emily!" message. She was still logged into the site. A helpful menu listed for him which threads she had been active in and that had new posts since her last visit. He had gotten up and gone to make himself a pot of coffee. He realized what he'd just discovered: a trove of his wife's messages to various friends. It was like finding a box of old letters under their bed. By the time he'd finished reading through a few weeks of correspondence and the pot of coffee was empty, it was after midnight. It turned out Emily had been something of an authority on plants that compliment each other in the garden. If you planted basil beside your tomatoes, the smell of the basil would keep a number of insect pests away.
The next morning he looked at the newer comments in the forums and saw there were a number of posts that were awaiting answers from Emily. Over breakfast, he decided to answer these ones as he'd answered Beckie's email. It wasn't even particularly difficult. For most of the questions, he could refer to the garden in their backyard. If someone wanted to know what went well with beans, he'd look to see what Emily had planted. Sometimes he had to refer to some of her gardening books or her own notebooks where she'd documented her gardening successes and failures. In a few cases, he resorted to searching the Internet. By lunchtime, he'd caught up on everything that had demanded Emily's attention.
In the afternoon, he found two new emails. One was from Beckie, thanking her for the recipe and the other was from someone named Marianne. "Hi Emily! So good to see you posting again. We were beginning to wonder what had happened to you. Are you going to join us for canasta this evening?" Gilbert wondered if Emily was good at canasta. He knew the rules, but it'd been years since they played. They used to, quite regularly, with friends of theirs who'd since retired and moved to Vancouver. Gilbert had responded to Marianne saying he'd - she'd - been busy but would be happy to play. He had then spent the afternoon reading canasta tips online and practicing on a website where you could play people online. That night, he had been able to hold his own, although a few people suggested jokingly that he had gotten rusty from not playing for a couple of weeks.
And so things had gone for a number of weeks. He'd answer gardening questions and play canasta sometimes. Perhaps because of Emily's previously established authority, no one called him on the odd mistake or two on the gardening forum. And his canasta game was rapidly improving. But one morning he'd turned on his computer, opened his email and found this message from Lucy, one of the gardening girls:
Hi Emily,
A few of us here in Winnipeg from the gardening forum were thinking we should get together for coffee and meet face to face. What do you say? I remember on the message boards you suggested a few times that we meet up.
Lucy
He'd put down his mug of coffee with a shaking hand, spilling a little on the desk. For many minutes, he'd just stared at the computer screen, rubbing the stubble on his chin.
Gilbert had visited Emily the day before his coffee date. He stood over his wife's gravestone on surprisingly hot autumn afternoon. He wore sandals, shorts and a thin blue cotton shirt. He always feels a bit awkward when he visits Emily's grave in anything other than gloomy funeral clothing and that day had felt a vague sense of guilt for not coming when a heavy overcoat was called for, and there should have been a drizzle that needed to be fended off with an umbrella.
"So, you're probably wondering why you get two bouquets of flowers this time."
Gilbert had paused to yank out a couple of dandelions growing near her marker. He had to ease himself up. Not as spry as he used to be.
"It's certainly a good question. The first one is your regular bouquet. Daisies and baby's breath, just like you like. Well, the second one is the same. Although I think it's mostly baby's breath because the florist was running out of nice daisies."
He'd scratched the back of his neck and looked around. A couple had been strolling down a path a ways away, but Gilbert waited until he was positive his voice wasn't going carry to them before he continued.
"It's like this. I suppose if you are up there, you know what I've been up to. I hope you're at least happy I'm maintaining your garden nicely. All the weeding is hard on my hip. Beckie, one of your friends, suggested I take a yoga class but I think I'm just too old for that sort of thing."
He knelt then, and set down the second bouquet.
"The thing is, Emily, I've really enjoyed getting to know your online friends. And getting to know a side of you I didn't pay proper attention to when you were with me. I'll bet you're up there laughing at me but I don't want to give it up just yet. I'm supposed to go for coffee with them. I mean, you're supposed to go, of course. You were always after me to get out of the house more, to make some friends. Too many quiet hobbies, not enough socializing. So. I'm just borrowing some of yours, I guess you could say. Like training wheels."
Vanessa puts her hand on Gilbert's arm and says, "Emily, you've hardly said a thing this entire time."
"Some people are just a little more shy in the real world," says Lucy. The group laughs.
Gilbert clears his throat a couple of times and responds, "I've a bit of a cold is all. I'm enjoying listening. You don't need to worry about me." He is trying to pitch his voice a bit higher, but doesn't want to be comical about it.
He isn't entirely enjoying it, though. It was a bit stressful at first. He was sure that at any moment someone was going to shout, "A-ha!", then reach over and yank his wig off.
After they'd bought their drinks and after the initial introductions, the talk had very quickly turned towards knitting and Gilbert had been bombarded with a dizzying array of jargon and terminology. He was soon completely lost amongst wools and stitches and dye lots and purling techniques. He caught a break because Emily had apparently never discussed her knitting with them. They didn't seem to expect him to know what they were talking about.
"So, Emily, is your daughter still living in Ottawa?" asks one of the women.
"She is. I think she's probably settled there for good. She always thrived on politics. She's working on Parliament Hill right now in administration. But I think she really wants to work full time for a political party."
"Which one?" asks Lucy.
"Oh, the Liberals."
The conversation spirals off onto the topic of politics which again loses Gilbert. He never paid much attention politics; something else that was Emily's domain. His father had always voted Conservative and so he just followed along. And Trudeau had always seemed too flashy for Gilbert's tastes. But he's thinking about something else, anyway. Maureen had already come up several times in conversation and the others seemed to know bits of trivia about her life. But no one had asked about, or even mentioned Gilbert. It's as though he doesn't exist. Could Emily have never talked about him at all? It doesn't really bother him, though. He's merely curious. And he enjoys discussing Emily and Maureen.
Later on, Gilbert has relaxed a bit and he's relating a story Emily told him from her office.
"And they got caught?" ask Vanessa.
"By one of the janitors who'd come in to vacuum the boardroom."
"And what happened?"
"Well, a few days later the janitor started driving to work in a brand new BMW."
Everyone laughs. Gilbert doesn't, strictly speaking, know if the part about the BMW is true. But when you're dressed up like your wife and having coffee with her friends, embellishing a story a little bit seems like the easiest thing in the world. And he likes stories where the underdog comes out ahead.
Lucy checks the time on her cellphone and says, "Well, it's just about time I get going. My son is going to be dropping off my grandkids this evening."
Vanessa adds, "We should do this again soon."
The women all nod.
"And we even got Emily to come out of her shell a little bit."
More laughter and then they all began packing up their things.
Gilbert gets home, hangs up Emily's overcoat in the hall closet and puts on some coffee. He already drank more than he typically allows himself at the cafe, but coffee at home is soothing in a way coffee shop coffee simply can't be. While the coffee percolates he goes upstairs and changes into cotton sweatpants and a t-shirt.
He takes a cup and the dress he wore into the laundry room irons it before putting the dress away in the closet in his room with the others. He'll have to do something about Emily's shoes; he didn't find them very comfortable.
5 responses to "Week #4 - Training Wheels "
Erinn wrote:
Monday, 31 Dec 2007 00:44
I am pleased with how everything is connected, back to front and inside and out. The soup, the hip, all the little details that meander in and out of the story in the style of cats that are trying to appear disinterested - kudos.ginny! wrote:
Monday, 31 Dec 2007 11:48
Interesting. Good detail level.Anonymous Reader wrote:
Monday, 31 Dec 2007 16:43
lol aww that was sweet!Astrid wrote:
Tuesday, 01 Jan 2008 01:23
I liked it. It was a good-night read on this, the first early morning of the new year.
And it made perfect sense to me. Should I be worried or...?Victoria wrote:
Friday, 11 Jan 2008 13:08
I liked it - a lot - but I will admit that I'm bewildered by the tenses and by what happened when.
Nevertheless, a very sweet, huggably warm story.
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