Things Withered (10 page)

Myra’s dad did all the yelling about money when she was growing up. He paid bills, once a month, at their kitchen table in the middle of the action.

He’d open a bill and hold it up, staring at it intently as though getting unheard messages from it.

If it was the electric bill, they were going to get the electric cut off and no one would ever dry their hair again. Then what would they do?

If it was the gas bill, they were all going to freeze.

If it was Myra’s mother’s Sears card bill, and she wasn’t home, then the girls were going to start sharing clothes and buying secondhand. They were growing him out of house and home.

Then what would they do?

His was the only voice on those nights, which were—in spite of how it would seem to an outsider—no more tense than any other night. It was as though that was his night to voice opinions, every other night belonging to the girls and their mother. He didn’t rant and rave like some fathers, he just talked. It was all talk. He was the man, the head of the house, and he paid the bills, and goddamn it if he wasn’t going to have a thing or two to say about it his one night of the month. The rest of the time he was his normal, mostly incompetent, self.

When Myra and David set up house together, Myra came home every other Friday and handed over her cheque to David, who deposited it in the bank. When the bills came in they went on the table in the hallway, in a neat pile. The cheque book was in the little drawer in the table. Myra had to nudge him at first, but then, once a month, he paid the bills.

Their phone had been cut off twice, incurring a huge reconnection fee. The electric bill came so often on pink paper that Myra thought they were printed on pink paper.

Eventually she was joking that they were the only people she knew who had a utility bill from Last Notice.

By the time they were together their second year in the little apartment, Myra was sitting at the kitchen table once a month, paying the bills. After that there were no more cheques paid to Last Notice.

And whenever she saw Lorna, she felt a little smug.

I’m taking care of business here, Lorna.

David’s boss at Manitoba Shipping was a big guy, Raymond. He had a tattoo of a daisy on his right bicep and just after David started there, he called him “Daisy,” like a joke. It wasn’t funny.

Raymond got up close to him and in his face. “What’d you say my name was?” he nearly whispered it. David felt his breath on the top of his head. The guy
loomed
over him.

“Hey,” he said, his mouth going dry. “Just a joke, right?” He held his hands up—no offence—and shrugged. “I mean, you got a daisy on your arm.”

“Not funny.” His breath was eggs and cigarettes.

“
Okay.
”

“What’s my name?”

David swallowed before answering. “Raymond.”

Raymond shook his head, his hair plastered to his scalp with some kind of shiny cream. “No. Not to you. I’m
Mr
. Shotski until further notice. Right?”

“Right.”

“Right,
who
?” Another guy—Barry or Garry, David couldn’t remember, but he met him on the dock first thing—had come up behind Raymond. He stood there quietly, waiting, pretending not to listen, but listening just the same. He was smirking.

David expelled breath and muttered a small
fuck
under his breath. “Mr. Shotski,” David muttered.

Raymond smiled, friendly, nodded. “Alright then. Don’t be an asswipe. We’re clearing out the back section for some TVs coming in. It’s all gotta be cleared by lunch. Barry’ll tell you what to do. You’ll be
lifting
. You think you can handle some
lifting
, Davey?”

David sighed. Nice first day. First
hour.
“Yeah. I’m an ace at lifting,” he said, with a touch of smartass. Raymond smacked him hard on the back.

“Good. Get back there.” And he turned around laughing to face (oh) Barry.

Asswipe,
David muttered, under his breath, as he walked to the back of the warehouse.

About eight months after Myra started getting on his ass about applying at the meat plant, David was starting to think his work at the warehouse had shown enough promise and fortitude that it was time he got an evaluated raise. Of course he’d had to go through Daisy—as Raymond had remained inside the dark places of David’s mind—in order to talk to Mr. Harris, the big boss, but the months had mellowed the big man and the incident of the first day (first
hour
) had never been brought up or repeated. He’d called him Mr. Shotski for about a week when Raymond got disgusted.

“
Raymond
, Dave,” he snarled, as though it were an act of rebellion on David’s part. He didn’t like Dave, or Davey, but preferred the more respectable David, but hadn’t said anything to any of them. The guys in the warehouse seemed to take their lead from Daisy, and so David was Dave, or spitefully Davey, when he dropped something or ran the forklift into the wall.
Nice driving, Davey.

So that morning he went in early, hoping to catch Daisy before he hit the dock.

He hadn’t said anything to Myra about it, but she was still on her kick to get him to apply at the meat plant and make a little more money. Money was one of those things that sat between them like a big, grey elephant they never talked about, and what he’d come up with was: he really just didn’t want to work with Myra. He would not have been able—even to himself—to articulate the reasons why, but knew instinctively that if he worked with her, even within entire rooms of her, somehow his level of esteem would drop for one of them. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a good worker, in fact he worked hard when he had to, and didn’t bitch or whine about it either, and also in fact, enjoyed his work. He did what he was told and was, after an acclimatization period, able to identify additional, unassigned aspects of the job, and perform those tasks with an equal degree of competence (this was from his three-month evaluation report; the one he did not get a raise from).

That wasn’t it. It was something indefinable that had to do with her basic femaleness that he equally did not apply to his upbringing in the hands of a super-mom, but usually when he thought about working with Myra, there was an unbidden but definitive image of her breasts in the mix that made him feel small, horny and unable.

So he hadn’t mentioned his plan to ask the big boss for a raise. He sure as shit didn’t want to go home, where she would be paying bills at the kitchen table while making supper and doing laundry—all at the same time—and tell her he didn’t get it.

Daisy was at the big desk set near the double doors at the back of the warehouse, where everything came in and was recorded. It was sort of Daisy’s nest. Scattered around the floor at his feet were dozens of little wrappers. He bought bite-sized Hershey and Dairy Milk bars by the box. Lately he had been into Riesens and their little gold wrappers sometimes caught the big overhead lights and sparkled.

“Hey Raymond,” David said, and realized that he was going to first have to make his case to Daisy. The thought made his mouth dry.

Daisy said, “What the hell are doing here so early? Catch a ride with the milkman?” This made him laugh and so David laughed too.

“Heh heh, yeah,” he said. “I actually wanted to talk to you.” Daisy looked up, and looked him over, probably frisking for the reason, thinking of the things he might call—
asswipe
—him if he was quitting.

“So what is it?”

David’s face reddened, “Well,” he began. “I’ve been here eight months now. I got a good eval from Mr. Harris. I’m on full-shift days now, and I’m thinking I might like to talk to him about a raise.” His face burned. Daisy kept a beady eye on him through the short speech.

He grunted and looked back down and marked something on a sheet, looking up briefly as though the answer was written on the pile of stereos in their boxes just inside the loading dock.

“So?” he finally said.

“So, do I just go knock on his door, or what?”

Daisy dropped his pen in an authoritative manner and leaned back in his chair. “First of all,” he said, holding out a finger and pointing to it with his other hand, “things aren’t that great around here. Bob’s—Mr. Harris to you, right?—got the tax bastards so far up his ass that he’s sneezing toupees. Second of all—” and here he put out another finger and pointed to it. Visual aids. “—you haven’t even been here a year. Raises come at the end of the first year.”

His face nearly bleeding humiliation, David said, “I didn’t get my three-month eval raise.”

Daisy raised his eyebrows and grunted again. “Oh yeah?” He licked his lips. “Time’s have been rough around here.” But he sounded unsure. “No eval raise?”

David shook his head.

“You been here six months?”

“Eight months,” David said.

Daisy shrugged, “I dunno,” he said. He pointed to the front of the warehouse. “Mr. Harris is in his office. Go now,” he said. David nodded, utterly servile in his gratitude and terrified it showed. Right then he felt like he loved Daisy. Even enough to call him Daisy, like in an affectionate way.

“Great, thanks,” he said. And started to walk back there. Daisy called him back. Pointed the pen tip at him.

“Look,” he said, seriously, all eyebrows and beard. “You be
respectful
, you got it? Things have been rough around here.” He jabbed the pen at him.

David bobbed his head like a dog in the back of a station wagon.

“All right. Good luck,
Davey
,” he snickered.

David had only been inside the warehouse office twice, once when he was hired, and then again for his three-month evaluation. The office was really no more than a small separate room with a bathroom beside it. He’d been to the bathroom, but had tried to avoid mostly. Since only men worked in the warehouse, cleaning the bathroom was an afterthought at best, and you could smell it. They kept the door closed. David used it on an emergency basis, usually holding it until lunch when they all trooped across the road to the doughnut place.

The office door had a textured glass window, with ancient lettering on it saying simply “office,” although most of the gold on the tops of the “f’s” was scratched off.

He stood outside the door and got a sudden attack of the sweats. What the hell was he going to say?

Mr. Harris, I’m David Hoffman, from the back? Mind if I talk to you for a minute?

Or
Mr. Harris, I’m David Hoffman and I wanted to talk to you about my three-month evaluation raise. . . .

The first time he ever applied for a job, his mother had given him a pep talk the night before. She said the key was confidence.
Be confident in your ability to do good work for your employer, and be confident that they will benefit from your presence.

What would
Lorna
say?

He smiled a little.
Mr. Harris, my son—a very good man and a hard worker—has not yet received his three-month evaluation raise. Don’t you think it’s high time—
He could hardly walk in and start demanding high times.

Mr. Harris, I’m David Hoffman
(shake hands).
I’d like to talk to you about my three-month evaluation, sir. I haven’t yet received—
no—
my paycheque hasn’t yet shown
—no—
I would like to talk to you, sir, about my performance. I feel I’ve
—that was it. When he got a positive response, or any response, he would bring up the raise.

He was pretty sure that’s what
Myra
would do. The skin under his arms was damp and cool. He was sweating. David looked around him and when he saw no one, he gave himself a surreptitious sniff. It wasn’t bad. Anyway, it was probably good to smell a little bad, like he’d already shifted a load to the back.

David took a breath and knocked on the glass window. It shuddered in the frame. There was an answering squeak from inside, like a rolling chair on the floor, and he put his hand on the knob and turned, pushing the door open not much more than a crack. He stuck his head inside. (
Mr. Harris, I’m David Hoffman and I would like to talk to you, sir, about my performance here at—
)

“Mr. Harris? I’m—”

He stared at an empty chair. The squeak sounded again, coming from above and he looked up naturally, to the source of the sound and saw a pair of shoeless feet swinging in a short arc, above the floor. Each swing in either direction produced a
skreek
.

He beheld Mr. Harris hanging; above the back of his head, a thick yellow nylon rope extended to the ceiling. His face was grotesquely swollen, his eyes open and bulging out. His face was purple, lips pursed.

Mr. Harris?

David screamed and slammed the door shut. He screamed a second time, losing it completely. He yelled, “Daisy!
Daisy!
Mr. Harris is—” and then he couldn’t finish. Mr. Harris’s face stuck in his mind’s eye and he leaned over on the spot and barfed. Lucky for him, he’d eaten no breakfast.

When Daisy showed up, he pulled David’s hand off the knob, finger by finger.

Myra came and picked him up about an hour after the paramedics had come and gone, taking Mr. Harris with them. Daisy—who had yet to say anything to David about being called the D word—was pale and grim through the whole episode.

“Holy fuck,” was what Daisy said about the whole thing.

Myra took over right away, just as she had when Beddy died. She said, “We can pick up the truck later, or tomorrow if you want. We’ll just get you home. You feeling any better?”

David’s stomach was tight and the inside of his mouth tasted like shoes. He felt shaky, but not bad. If he could get the picture of Harris’s head out of his mind, he would be much better. But there it was, every time he looked, Harris’s head, Harris’s head, Harris’s head, and it was kind of like having a sore tooth or a stick in his hand, where he had to keep poking at the thing, getting some kind of morbid pleasure in horrifying himself.

“Did he leave a note?” Myra asked as they drove across town to their apartment. He didn’t ask her about the meat plant, if they were pissed off that she left, or if they would dock her pay. “Did Daisy say anything?” Myra thought Raymond’s name was Daisy, because that was the only thing David called him when he spoke of work at home. He couldn’t remember if she’d even spoken to Daisy. All he remembered was seeing her standing, silhouetted in the doorway, the light from outside wrapping itself around her body and glowing at the edges, like an angel.