wrecking ball, that he’ll float among the carpenters, welders, plumbers; that he’ll come to roost somewhere on one of the twenty-seven storeys of Three Ships. What if the developers knew? Would they fold him into their marketing plan? Comes with parking, also ghost.
“I will miss you,” says Rosellen.
She rises – God, her joints are stiff – stretches. The light flickers. The furnace heaves, gutters, kicks into action. It’s old, too. Its days of labour will soon be done. Absurd, this wash of sympathy for the inanimate, but that’s what she feels for the furnace, for the lights, for the stucco, for all the human contrivances that have combined to give her, and so many others, shelter from the storm. In the hallway, there’s a near smash-up with Bonnie and Philip, running for the back door, sprinting for the alley like grab-and-dash pranksters; running with surprising agility, surprising because neither is young, lord, look at them go, as if they don’t feel the weight of those boxes they’re carrying, three each, God knows what’s in them, something from Bonnie’s abundant hoard.
“I tell you, Nicola Harwood, we mustn’t.”
“You are right, Davie Denman, we would be fools to engage in such foolery.”
“But fools we are, and foolery is our game,” they crow, in perfect unison, as though they’ve rehearsed this moment for hours. For years, more likely.
They’re out the door, into the alley. They’re no longer her responsibility. Whatever juvenile scheme they’ve hatched, she need never know. She’s not their mother, has never been anyone’s mother, which causes no pang. All those years of needless egg production, a service from which she would have gladly unsubscribed. She sniffs: smell of mildew, smell of mouse, smell of something very possibly dead in some overlooked corner. Smell of J.C., too. Faint. Very faint. She smiles.
“I’m ready if you are,” she says.
Bonnie will be gone in a week, will say her last goodbye on New Year’s Eve as four exhausted men and two vans pull away from the building. Tears. Thank yous. Promises. They won’t see each other again until they meet by accident on the seawall, three years hence, in 2021. Bonnie will be walking with a friend. Rosellen, who will have mastered Facebook during the time it took her to recover from her hip replacement, will be feeling more herself than she has in a long, long time. During a fumbling moment in the introductions Rosellen will realize Bonnie has forgotten her last name, will wonder if perhaps, after thirty-five years, she ever knew it. The die-cut sticker on her mailbox identified her only as “MANGER.” Few could wring thirty-five years of enduring delight from an absent vowel. Rosellen Sweete can; blessed is she among women.
“Let’s get together soon,” Bonnie will say when the conversation has run its two-minute course.
“Sure,” Rosellen will reply, as one does, even though of all the stupid, frivolous things conventionally intelligent people say, “Let’s get together soon” is surely the stupidest. The frivolousest. Bonnie and her friend will proceed in the direction of the Lions Gate Bridge and the garish rise of the heritage sulphur heaps. Rosellen will settle onto the bench that bears the plaque she quit chocolate to afford.
“I remember the Snata Maria, 1954–2019. R.S.”
Rosellen will stay as long as she’s allowed – January 15 is the last possible day of occupancy – the captain doing what the captain must for the ship she loves. Shortly before noon, she’ll shut the door to 101. The active decision not to lock will set her synapses chatting. She will remember what she’s forgotten, will make a final pass through the basement. Bonnie will not have completed the job she began on Christmas Eve. In both her lockers, one assigned and one gifted, will remain a sordid miscellany. Rosellen will have tried calling her, will have left messages. No response. Too late. Whatever’s there belongs to cranes, backhoes, diggers. She’ll find her lock, closed tight, pondering whatever secrets it contains in its tempered heart. For the first time in thirty-five years, she’ll whisper its “Open Sesame.”
Hello, old friend.
We have places to go.
Let’s get the hell out.
Dead bulb in an Emergency Exit sign. Permits expired on the fire extinguishers. Not a moment too soon. She’ll go out the front door for the last time. She’ll have promised herself she won’t give the place so much as an over-the-shoulder glance. She won’t be that strong. She’ll do a Lot’s wife turn, will walk away backwards, eyes glued to the place she loved, the ship that came in the nick of time. That saved her.
Of J.C. there will be no sign. Who knows – perhaps he’ll watch her quit the building, then move right back, make peace with his own lost past, revel in sole, if short-term, proprietorship of 101, of the whole damn place. Maybe, as Rosellen is making her way to her new apartment – she’ll have found one, at the last minute, two blocks north, one block west – he’ll be rolling about in the La-Z-Boy, may he lounge in peace. Never, not once, in thirty-five years did Rosellen sit in the bloody thing.
Will they meet again, Rosellen and J.C.? Rosellen suspects not. She can reasonably forecast occasional bouts of nostalgia, but has no reason to expect paralyzing gales of grief. To endings, she’s no stranger. About them, she’s cultivated a level-headed serenity. One never knows. If next Christmas Eve she were to discover the angel in her popcorn maker, if she were to whiff in the air the unholy trinity of J.C.’s signature scent, she wouldn’t be so very surprised. For that to happen, however, he himself will have to find the angel. On her last night in the Santa Maria, before she shuts off the breaker for the stove, before the troublesome clock dims forever, Rosellen will spend a long time meditating on where best to leave her. About that concealment, she will be very very very very very very very very very very very cunning. So, good luck, J.C. Good luck to us all.
On Christmas Eve –
Passing through the basement, J.C. beside, behind, all around her, Rosellen checks the washers, the dryers, checks the high ledges, checks the small hole in the drywall left when someone bashed into it moving out last month; she makes a note to repair it, even though no one will be left to notice or mind. She feels a familiar, welcome warmth as Jean-Christophe leads her up the stairs, leads her to the lobby – that last Decorating Party was a humdinger – leads her to where the tree stands, there in the corner, where it has always stood. Up, up. She looks up. That is where, for the first, for the last time, she finds the angel, hiding in plain sight, just where God, just where the Holy Ghost, just where J.C., too, intend her to be, beaming from the highest artificial branch, blameless, immaculate, radiant, her mouth a perfect O, wide open in silent hallelujah, there, in her rightful, proper place; there, right there, exactly where, in this time, in that place, she belongs.
On Christmas Eve.
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