Articles

by Michelle Berry

Is it any wonder that I’m always yelling? This morning, for example, the candy bar wrapper on the front hall bench, the rotting apple in the lunch bag, the gym clothes on the kitchen table. And the basketball rolling at my feet. Every morning I trip on the damn thing. Plus the dog. He’s under foot all the time. I find myself leaning over him to fill up the kettle in the sink. It’s easier to bend over him, as he lies there on the floor like he thinks he’s the kitchen rug, than to tell him to “move it” every fifteen seconds. You get tired of saying the same thing over and over. He slinks back, you see. That’s the problem. He leaves—at least he listens to me—but suddenly he is there again, underfoot. They all look at me like I’m crazy. They rush around, creating chaos, and then they leave to school, to work. And I’m stuck having to clean it all up, to try and get my life, my house, back together.   

I need order to get any work done. Because that’s the thing about me. I have to touch everything, even it all up, move it around, in order to make it mine again. This takes about an hour. An hour to feel they are truly gone and I’m safe, silent, alone. It’s not the house that’s mine, it’s the quiet creak in the stair, the freedom to hear that, the feeling that once again I am something besides mother and wife. I am human again. So when the knock on the front door comes, I ignore it and hide. There is no other option. My hour is up. The morning is mine again—the world is mine—and I’m not letting anyone destroy this peace. I won’t even answer the phone during the day.    

I listen to the answering machine and pick up only if I feel the need. Last night Charlie, my youngest, pulled my face down close to his mouth while I was kissing him goodnight and said, “Will I ever be as old as you and Dad?” I suppressed the urge to hit him, to laugh, to cry. Instead I said, “I hope so, honey,” and he looked disappointed and miserable. For a brief second I hoped I had given him nightmares. Except that he always climbs into our bed when he has nightmares.   

I’m forty-eight years old. How did that happen? The knock again. I’m hiding behind the sofa in the living room. If I want to get up to my sewing room I have to pass the front door and whoever is knocking will see me. I could always wave and continue on up the stairs. I could hold up a small sign that says, “I’m working, go away.” I could give the person my middle finger. Behind the sofa, down here, I notice the lint on the rug, the crumbs from where Rachel was eating her cereal. Our dog will eat large things, but not crumbs. He won’t vacuum the carpet for me and that is why I got him in the first place. In fact, other than making me feel guilty for not taking him for a walk, my dog does very little but get in the way. And the cats. The goldfish. What have I gotten myself into? When I was young I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to take Broadway by storm. I wanted to be admired. Now I own a small (I’m the only employee) business making bears. Specialty bears. In my sewing room. And, according to my eight-year-old son, I’m very old. 

“Knock knock.” The person at the door actually says that. “Knock knock.” As if the physical knock on the door isn’t enough. I wonder if I should say, “Ding Dong,” when I go over to Rebecca’s house, or shout, “tinkle tinkle,” when I enter the corner store. Here I am, on the floor, crouching, feeling sorry for myself. Surrounded by my family’s mess and my pets. While my neighbours, Rebecca and Carrie, have nothing but each other. And a cat. Left everyone they knew in California and came here to start afresh. I feel for her sometimes. Other times I envy her. “I can see you in there,” the voice says. Is it start fresh, or start afresh? What is afresh? More than fresh? Fresh again, I suppose. “Damn.” I stand. What more can I do? I put my hands on my hips. Isn’t the fact that I’m hiding enough? Can’t he get the hint? “Just a minute of your time?” I see his shape at the door but can’t see his features. The light is dim, the shadows fall around him. Maybe he’s delivering bear parts—button eyes, little bow-ties, shiny, sparkling shoes and dresses? But, no, I filled out my order online only yesterday. It takes at least a week for delivery. “It’s about your children,” the man says and that starts me walking fast towards the door. No matter how much they drive me crazy, no matter how much I sometimes wish they would just grow up and leave home, my children are my blood, they are my soul, they are my heart. Anyone mentions them and I melt a little. 

I fling open the door. “Yes? What?” He is a little man. Bald at the top of his head, hair in a ring, as if he’s one of those monks from the old days. And his brown suit aids that look. Monkish. If he had a rope belt I would not be surprised. “What about my children?” “Why were you hiding?” “Excuse me,” I say, “what about my children?” “Not your children in particular,” the man says. He clears his throat as I look down on him. I’m a big woman and he’s a small, bald man. He pushes his glasses up on his nose with his middle finger. One push right between the eyebrows. He squinches up his eyes and purses his lips. “You don’t have to be rude.” “Me?” I shout this a little. I can’t help it. “I’m obviously busy—” “Busy hiding?” “I am obviously not wanting to be disturbed—” "Yes, but—” “And you come pounding at my door—” “I knocked politely. I even said knock knock.” “Talking about my children—” “Not your children, just children in general. You see, they aren’t safe—” “Excuse me? Excuse me?” This is what you get, I think, when you disturb someone after she has finally had her hour, put her mind back together, formed herself afresh. 

I try to shut the door but the little man has his shiny shoe stuck in the doorway and no matter how many times I jamb it with the door, he doesn’t move. In fact, he shouts, “ouch,” but doesn’t pull his foot back. He’s a sucker for punishment. “Get your foot out of my door.” “But I have to tell you about the children.” The little man looks down at his foot as if he’s checking to see if it’s still there. “I don’t like Mondays,” he says, as an aside. “But it’s Tuesday.” I push a little more at the door, at his foot, but it’s wedged inside tight. “Here, just take this.” A pamphlet comes towards me. I take it. A natural thing. I can take the pamphlet and shut the door and go upstairs to my sewing room and make my bears. But first I will need to decompress, to give myself another hour—perhaps another coffee—in order to put my world back in order. The man looks sad, crestfallen. He looks like he’s going to cry. 

“What?” I say. “I took your pamphlet.” I shake it at him. “I’m not into this religious stuff.” And then he does cry. He starts to sob. His foot stuck in my door, his brown suit dull, his sad bald little head. He cries hard. “But think of the children,” he sobs. “Oh, for God’s sake.” Against my better judgment, I open the door. And the man steps on inside my house. He stops crying and steps in, one foot in front of the other. Sitting in the living room we stare each other down. I’ve still got the pamphlet in my hands but I haven’t looked at it. The whole situation is absurd. I have four bears to do this week and that includes delivering them. I look at where I was hiding behind the sofa and now that I’ve been up close to it, I know exactly where the cereal crumbs are and I can see them from across the room. My dog enters, bored. Some guard dog. Some watch dog. The only things he barks at are the squirrels. Nothing else gets him excited in the least. I guess I should be grateful. Tom and Maria’s dog barks all the time. I can hear him at night, across the street, barking to beat the band. They don’t seem to notice it, either. No one tells the dog to shut up. No one brings him inside on hot summer nights when the rest of us on the street are trying to sleep with our windows open to the breeze. 

There was a time we all got along fabulously. A whole neighbourhood of friends. But we don’t do much together anymore. The kids get on well. But whatever happened to the dinner parties and garden parties? The spontaneous pizza parties? It seems to me sometimes that we started taking each other for granted. It was that easy to do. I guess no effort is made when you get comfortable with people. That’s why new relationships are so interesting. Take, for example, Rebecca. She’s new. That’s why I invited her to play hockey with me. It’s a blast. She’s really improved. So have I. The man is looking around my living room like he’s the queen come for tea. “What can I help you with?” I try to remain patient, I try to take the edge out of my voice, but it’s hard. My voice is hard. “You don’t have to get snippy,” he says, pouting. “This thing I do, it’s daunting.” “Daunting?” Hold it in, Trish. Hold it in. I imagine pounding him on the top of his little bald head with the dictionary Charlie has left out on the coffee table. I imagine picking him up by the back of his muddy brown suit and kicking him out the front door. I imagine cutting him up and feeding him to the dog. “The sooner we get this over with,” I say—teeth tight together, lips barely open (and I wonder why my jaw always aches)—“the sooner I can get on with my day.” “Sigh.” Did he actually say “sigh?” Knock knock. Sigh. 

He’s a sound effect man. “We got off on the wrong foot,” the man says. In fact, he bends down and rubs his foot, draws attention to it. Punctuates his sentence with the physical. The foot that was caught in the door. “Literally.” He laughs (as if I didn’t get it). One laugh, one “ha.” And his laugh is like a shot. It rings into the living room and startles the dog from his nap on the floor. The cat, slinking by, takes off like her tail is on fire. Shivers run up my spine. The phone rings. I don’t move to answer it. “Aren’t you going to get that?” “No.” “But—” the man stops talking and looks at me. Curiously. The answering machine kicks in. “Trish? Hi, it’s Mary, from the school. Your Christmas wreaths are in. Give me a call and we can arrange a time to pick them up. Or Rachel can bring them home. If she can carry them. Anyway, call me when you get a chance. It’s Mary.” “Beep,” the man says. He says it in time with the beep on the machine. I almost expected him to say that. “At least I’m not the only one you ignore.” He laughs again. That bark. “Ha.” Me, my pets, we all jump slightly and then settle ourselves quickly. That’s when I look down at the pamphlet. That’s when I see what I have in front of me, what I’m holding in my hands. And I almost drop it. I gasp. “Get out of my house.” Standing now. The man looks up at me and smiles. "Seriously, you really have to stop being so difficult. People will turn from you. People will turn their backs on you and walk away.

"These boots,” he says, pointing to his shiny shoes, “are made for walking.” I head towards the kitchen, meaning to pick up the phone. “I will call the police. I really will.” “But think of the children. Laugh, laugh.” “Get out.” My dog barks. A squirrel outside. The man stands from the sofa and follows me into the kitchen. “I thought you meant my children. And then I thought you meant children in general. Like poor children, or sad children, or starving children, or children who don’t get Christmas.” “I meant all those things. Children.” “What do you mean?” My hand on the phone. “What do you mean?” Shrill now. “This,” I throw the pamphlet down on the floor as if it has burned me, “this is disgusting.” The man bends to pick up the pamphlet. “Sigh,” he says again. And he begins to cry.

“You’re crazy. I’m phoning 9-1-1.” He turns and begins to walk out of my house. Down the hall, past the dog, past the cat rolling on the floor digging her claws in the hall carpet, and out the front door. “Wait. You can’t leave.” My hand on the phone. My heart in my throat. “You can’t pretend this doesn’t exist.” “You never think about the children,” he says. He turns and says this to me. “Bang,” he says, as the door slams shut behind him. “Clip clop,” he says as he starts down the wooden steps. “Whoosh,” he says as he starts to run up the street.

I’m on the front porch now, watching him rush away. A little bald man who looks like a monk in a brown suit. I don’t even have one of his pamphlets anymore. If I phone the police I have no proof he even exists. There were things in that pamphlet, in the second it took me to look at it, that I will never forget. I will close my eyes at night and those pictures will haunt me. They are imprinted on the backs of my lids. Sometimes you forget just how vulnerable you are. You move through the world taking things for granted. Just three months ago my friend Claire was diagnosed with breast cancer. Just three months ago. One day she was laughing about something, the next day she saw her future. And now there is a small man out there holding tightly to his pamphlets, rushing headlong down the street, towards the rest of the city, towards the rest of the wide wide world.

Although I often feel unbalanced and unsafe, there sometimes comes—full-force—those crisp mornings when the world moves slightly off-kilter and presents me with a new way of seeing things. Those cold mornings when what little time I’ve taken to straighten up my life and get on with my day doesn’t matter after all. And it’s those mornings that make all the difference.