Eleanor Rigby (2 page)

It was decades past the point where Mother chided me for my lack of friends. She said, “Empress is a lovely dog.”

“Really?” Empress, from my experience, was a shrill, yappy, neurotic varmint.

“You should get a dog, Elizabeth.”

“I’m allergic, Mother.”

“What about a hypoallergenic breed, a poodle?”

“The hypoallergenic thing is a folk tale.”

“It is?”

“It is. You can minimize reactions, but that’s all. And it’s not the fur that’s the issue. It’s the dander, saliva and urine on top of the fur.”

“Pardon me for trying to help you out.”

“I looked into pets long ago, Mother. Trust me.”

Our arrival at the clinic put a quick end to that conversation. It was an eight-storey building from the sixties—one of those buildings I’ve driven by a thousand times and never noticed, sort of like the architectural version of myself. Inside, it was cool and smelled of sanitation products. The print on the elevator’s
DOOR CLOSE
button was almost worn off. I pointed it out to Mother and said, “I bet there are a few psychiatrists in this building.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Look at the button.”

“So?”

“In the elevator industry, a
DOOR CLOSE
button is called a pacifier button. They’re installed simply to give the illusion of control to your elevator ride. They’re almost never hooked up to a real switch.”

“I still think you should get a dog.”

I have to admit that I love hospitals, clinics and medical environments. You enter them, you sit in a chair and suddenly all the burden of having to remain alive just floats away—that endless brain-churning buzzing and second-guessing and non-stop short-term planning that accompanies the typical lonely life.

I’d never met the day’s exodontist before, a hearty Australian who rustled up jokes and cheer even for my sad little face under its laughing gas mask.

“So where’d you go to school then, Lizzie?”

“Liz. Here in North Van—Carson Graham for high school.”

“Ho ho! And after that?”

“Oh God. BCIT. Accounting.”

“Marvellous. Lots of partying there?”

“What?” The anaesthetist clamped the mask harder onto my face.

“You know. Letting loose. Getting down.”

“My life is not a beer commercial …”

That’s when I went under. A second later I opened my eyes and the room was empty save for a nurse putting away the last of a set of tools. My mouth felt packed with sand. I smiled because it had been such a great thing to be conked out like that—one moment you’re dealing with an Australian comedian, the next you’re …
gone.
One more reason to no longer fear death.

In the car on the way home, my conversation with Mother consisted mostly of her sighing and me mumbling like a faraway radio station. She dropped me off outside my condo, and before she raced off to Petcetera she said, “Really think about a dog now, Elizabeth.”

“Let it
go
, Muddah.”

It was a hot dry day. August. The building’s entryway smelled of sun-roasted cedar-bark chips and underwatered junipers. Inside, it was cool, smelling instead of the lobby’s decaying nylon rug. Once inside my place, three floors up, I had the eerie sensation that I was watching a movie version of a still room. There was nothing in it that moved or denoted time’s passage—no plants or clocks—and I felt guilty to be wasting all of that invisible film, ashamed that my condo was so boring. But then again, the right kind of boring can be peaceful, and peace was my new perspective on the world. Just go with the flow.

My head throbbed and I went into my bedroom and laid it down on a cool pillow. The pillow warmed up, I turned it over to the cool side and then I fell asleep. When I woke up it was past sunset, but in the sky up above the mountain there was still some light and colour. I cursed because an afternoon nap always leads to an endless night. I touched my face: both sides swollen like the mumps. I fell back onto the mattress and my tongue explored the two new salty, bloody socket holes and their thorny stitches.

*    *    *

The Liz Dunns of this world tend to get married, and then twenty-three months after their wedding and the birth of their first child they establish sensible, lower-maintenance hairdos that last them forever. Liz Dunns take classes in croissant baking, and would rather chew on soccer balls than deny their children muesli. They own one sex toy, plus one cowboy fantasy that accompanies its use. No, not a cowboy—more like a guy who builds decks—expensive designer decks with built-in multi-faucet spas—a guy who would take hours, if necessary, to help such a Liz find the right colour of grout for the guest-room tile reno.

I am a traitor to my name: I’m not cheerful or domestic. I’m drab, crabby and friendless. I fill my days fighting a constant battle to keep my dignity. Loneliness is my curse—our species’ curse—it’s the gun that shoots the bullets that make us dance on a saloon floor and humiliate ourselves in front of strangers.

Where does loneliness come from? I’d hazard a guess that the crapshoot that is family has more than a little to do with it—father’s a drunk; mother’s an agoraphobic; single child; middle child; firstborn; mother’s a nag; father’s a golf cheat … I mean, what’s your own nature/nurture crap-shoot? You’re here. You’re reading these words. Is this a coincidence? Maybe you think fate is only for others. Maybe you’re ashamed to be reading about loneliness—maybe someone will catch you and then they’ll know your secret stain. And then maybe you’re not even very sure what loneliness is—that’s common. We cripple our children for life by not telling them what loneliness is, all of its shades and tones and implications. When it clubs us on the head, usually just after we leave home, we’re blindsided. We have no idea what hit us. We think we’re diseased, schizoid, bipolar, monstrous and lacking in dietary chromium. It takes us until thirty to figure out what it was that sucked the joy from our youth, that made our brains shriek and burn on the inside, even while our exteriors made us seem as confident and bronzed as Qantas pilots. Loneliness.

*    *    *

The message on my answering machine the next morning was from The Dwarf To Whom I Report. His name is Liam.

I hope your surgery went okay, Liz. You didn’t miss too much here at the office. I’m having Donna courier you over a few files for you to pick away at over the next week while you recover. Sorry I missed you. Call any time.

What? I didn’t miss anything? Heaven forbid anything even quasi-dramatic might occur in the cubicle farm of Landover Communication Systems …

Liz, there was a fire …

Liz, we all got naked at lunch hour and interfered with each other …

Liz, those voices in my head? They’re real.

Well, the thing about Liam is that he actually
enjoys
his work. This is inconceivable to me. On a few occasions I’ve tried to mimic his cheer, but no go. To me a job is a job is a job, and before you know it,
poof!
it’s all over and they’re throwing your ashes off Lions Gate Bridge.

Liam feels many things I don’t, for example a sense of mission as well as indifference to the emotional lives of others, including me. This is possibly to be expected, as I’m plain, unsalvageably plain. When I was born, the doctor took one look as he held me, bloodied and squalling, and asked the nurse if there was anything good on TV that night. My parents looked at me, said, “Well, whatever,” and then discussed what colour to reupholster the living-room sofa. I’m only half joking.

People look at me and forget I’m here. To be honest, I don’t even have to try to make myself invisible, it just happens. But evidently I’m not invisible enough to Liam, especially if he thought I might like to “pick away at a few files” while I get over these teeth.

*    *    *

One of my big problems is time sickness. When I feel lonely, I assume that the mood will never pass—that I’ll feel lonely and bad for the rest of my life, which means that I’ve wrecked both the present and the future. And if I look back on my past, I wreck that too, by concentrating on all the things I did wrong. The brutal thing about time sickness is that naming it is no cure.

I look at the philodendron on the kitchen windowsill, the only thing in my condo that ever changes. I found it at a bus stop twelve years ago and I’ve kept it going ever since. I like it because up close its leaves are pretty, and also because it makes me think of time in a way that doesn’t totally depress me.

If I could go back in time two decades and give just one piece of advice to a younger me, it would be, “Don’t worry so damn much.” But because young people never believe old people, I’d most likely ignore my own advice.

If there’s a future Liz Dunn out there in, say,
2034
, may I respectfully ask you to time travel back to right now and give me the advice I need? I promise you, I’ll listen, and I’ll give you a piece of my philodendron to take back with you so you can grow your own plant there.

*    *    *

I ended up sleeping until the next afternoon—surgery can really take a whack out of you. My
verklempt-o-thon
was well in progress when my older sister Leslie dropped by, intruding upon one of the most wrenching of my
verklempt-o-thon’s
moments, the end of
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
when the family realizes they’re doomed to the gas chambers. I was slightly looped on Percocets, and my eyes were hound-dog red.

“You look like hell, Liz. Like you have mumps.”

“Thank you, Leslie, but I can’t say the same for you.”

“It’s this jacket—it’s new. What do you think?” Leslie twirled on the carpet. Leslie’s beauty truly makes me a genetic punchline. When we were young, no amount of documentation could convince us we were biological sisters.

“It’s very you.”
Cripes.
Leslie vomits and pieces of undigested
Vanity Fair
articles come up—but she’s never fooled me for a moment with her fashion slave persona. I see through it, which is why she relaxes around me.

“Look at this place, Liz. Open the curtains.”

“No.”

“Okay then, I think I’ll smoke.”

“Sure.” I like cigarette smoke in a room. At least then the room doesn’t look or feel dead.

We lit up, and Leslie surveyed the condo with her real estate agent’s eye for upsellability.
Sparkling Norgate Park fixer-upper / 1bdr /1bth /character kitchen/one owner.
“Did Mother torture you yesterday?”

I paused the video. “She had to cancel lunch with Sylvia.”

“Cancelling lunch with Sylvia? That’s a baddy. Did it inch up the guilt a notch or two?”

“I … Don’t get me started.”

“I’d have driven you if it weren’t for the kids’ recital.”

Leslie kept shrugging her shoulders in a hunched way I’d never before seen. “Leslie, you look fidgety, and what’s with the shoulders?”

“My tits are killing me.”

“Still?”

I thought she’d inhale the whole cigarette in one drag. “Good God, yes.” The exhaled smoke resembled the Challenger explosion. “Oh, to be flat like you, Liz. You’re
so
lucky.”

“Thank you. Can’t you just have the … bags or whatever they are removed?”

“Too late. Mike’s bonded with them.” She cast her eyes toward my kitchen. “Any food around here?”

“Chocolate pudding, some Jell-O—some chicken-with-rice soup.”

She snooped around my kitchen area: butcher block counters and steel appliances—the sole luxurious addition the contractor made to the place. “Liz, you eat like you’re on welfare. There’s not one fresh anything in your whole kitchen.” She opened and closed the fridge door. “And not even one magnet or photo on your fridge. Where’s the Valentine’s Day card Brianna made you? Are you trying to clinically depress your visitors?”

“I don’t have visitors. You. Mother. William.”

“Liz,
everyone
has visitors.”

“Not me.”

She changed tack and removed the Pyrex bowl filled with Jell-O. “I’m going to eat your Jell-O. It’s red. What flavour is it?”

“Red Jell-O is red Jell-O.”

Her gold wrist jewellery clattered as she spooned down the goo I’d been saving for
Terms of Endearment.
She asked me, “Have you seen my bus stop yet?”

“Your
what?”

“I have my own bus stop bench ad now, with a big black-and-white photo of me on it. Just one bench, but it’s a start. It’s a flattering shot, but we took it before I had my work done, so it doesn’t seem like me any more.”

“Where is it?”

“At Capilano Road and Keith, Canada’s longest red light. A captive audience. I just know some little shit with a felt pen’s going to go draw a Hitler moustache on it.”

“Felt markers ought to be illegal.”

“I agree. Kids today are monsters.” She finished my Jell-O and somehow squeaked a drag from what remained of her cigarette. “Have to run.”

“I think there’s still one more spoonful left.”

She was almost out the door. “You look like hell, darling. Three more days at least. Wouldn’t you think?”

“Yes, Leslie. Thank you.”

“See you tomorrow, darling.”

I began to watch
Bambi.
I wasn’t really sure why the video store clerk had recommended it as a sad movie—and it seemed pretty tame. There was a knock on my door, and because there was no intercom buzz I assumed it would be Wallace, the caretaker. It was young Donna from Landover Communication Systems, coltish and seemingly undernourished, standing in my hallway with a stack of folders and envelopes pressed to her chest. Everyone in the office likes Donna because she’s always
up
, always on—but I’m on to her game. She’s like me. She’s a watcher.

“Donna?”

“Hello, Liz.”

I realized how awful I must look. I touched my cheeks. “Swelling’s pretty big.”

She kept the papers clamped to her chest. “Liz, your eyes are all red.”

“Sad movies.”