didn't expect anyone to agree with me, or see my point of view. I've
always preferred that people don't agree, why want the next person
to be like myself cause then who'll be able to tell you apart?, favourite
colour red, if you like hot chocolate, which Beatle you think is a
genius.
And believe you me, if not for that incident with the crazy man that
night in New York, we might still think that John Lennon never
knows when to be quiet.
What it is, is knowing when enough is enough.
The night Donny comes into my life is like any regular night, making
myself my nightly (early evening) hot chocolate in my favourite big
red mug. Except when I reach for the bag of mini marshmallows on the
top shelf and I pull it down, I notice it feels light which means
that like some dummy, I'd used almost all of them up and forgot last
trip to Sobey's to pick up another pack. Hot chocolate isn't any fun
with no mini marshmallows, hot chocolate isn't even worth it, I figure
I eat about forty-five, fifty every night with my nightly hot chocolate
cause they're small and it's like I'm eating air.
I pull the kettle off the burner and I make sure I have my plastic
green change purse and then I put on my duffel coat and my striped
scarf and my blue cap and my Sorels and I walk the thirteen blocks
to Dunphy's. I always take the same route, three blocks out to Main,
west on Main for the next nine blocks, past the video store where
every December ninth I check out 'It's A Wonderful Life' and past
the all night donut store where the disreputables hang out led by
Shamus Collander whose father owns the two gas stations in town and
damned if I don't see Angie, the little girl who works with me, she's
drinking Coke through a straw and watching Shamus bully the pinball
machine. I turn south the last block, knock twice on the Porter's
metal mailbox with the whale with no spout (spout comes up when there's
mail) and then I'm there.
"Evening Mr. Dunphy."
He's an old man, his wife died just a month back and he had her cremated
like she asked except I don't think she asked for him to put the vase
of her remains on the counter in between the beef jerky and the year
old chocolate Easter eggs, still that's where Mrs. Dunphy sits day
and night, never gets a break. Saw a man once, a visitor from out
of town, he thought it was a place for pennies so after he got change
for a pack of Clorets, he dropped the rest into Mrs. Dunphy. Mr. Dunphy
waited till the visitor was gone before he reached in with a fish
net and retrieved the pennies and dumped them in the garbage. I'm
wondering if maybe Mr. Dunphy didn't much like Mrs. Dunphy after all.
"Evening, Violet."
I let him call me by my first name. Most people, because I work in
a position of authority, I run the coffee shop, I insist they call
me by my last name, address me as Miss cause I don't go for any of
that Gloria Stineman crap, Miss Isbister. Don't think I don't know
that Shamus and his comrades say behind the magazine racks, 'Yes Miss
Dustbuster', ' Anything you say, Miss Who'dkissher', 'Sure, Miss Catwhiskers'
and I won't even go near the rude ones. I heard em all.
I pick up some tin foil and another bag of oats for porridge as well
as the mini marshmallows and think maybe I should put mini marshmallows
in my oatmeal, it's worth a try and then I grab a Snickers bar.
"It's a cold one," Mr. Dunphy says to me.
"I walked here," I tell him, "you don't need to tell me."
"Mrs. Dunphy doesn't much like the cold."
I lean into the vase, because Mr. Dunphy likes it when you do this,
and I say,
"Doncha, Mrs. Dunphy? Thank the good Lord you're warm as toast in
here then."
I walk the thirteen blocks back, same route and back inside where
my cat Davie Keon tells me off for leaving with out letting him out
first.
"In, out, in, out. There you go then," I say to him and watch his
orange, white and black bottom, my one-eyed cat trundle off in search
of Amanda, the peach coloured tabby whore from three doors down who
isn't fixed. I won't see him till morning when his cries wake me and
the dead both (my apologies to Mrs. Dunphy).
I put the kettle back on and take my scarf and hat and coat and boots
off and toss my change purse into the silverware drawer. I stuff the
rest of the first bag of mini marshmallows in my mouth cause it's
almost like I need my fix and it's way past due, it's almost nine,
for crying out loud.
Every time I make hot chocolate, I think the same thing, that it
smells like Christmas stockings and a warm bath and Mum God bless
her soul and blue skies and apples in fall all rolled into a big tortilla
shell and dipped in cream. I put the woolen blanket over me, rest
the mug in my lap, find the remote in between the cushions and turn
the tv on. I get two channels because I believe the cable company
is Satan (thirty five dollars and seventy cents a month, shame!) and
will not ascribe my fine family name to the roster of such greed and
unholiness. Two channels does me fine.
One channel is news by now and I do not trust this anchorman, a mannequin-like
wax version of what he may have been twenty years before or more likely,
the product of blueprints, wires, plastic parts and that silicon.
He says lies about people from other countries, of this I have proof
because I have a cousin in Ireland and once the anchorman said there
is great chaos in Ireland and next day I got a letter from her saying
she'd gone to the fair and won a kewpie doll. Now where could chaos
and kewpie dolls prevail both at the same time? Nowheres, that's where
and Megan's never lied, always used to say as a kid when she'd come
on visits,
"I have never told a lie and I never will."
I change to the other channel, channel two, I call it, even though
it is channel nine. And there he is.
I've never seen a face quite like his and I imagine I never will
again. It is a variety show, The Andy Williams Show, and these
five boys are singing like songbirds and there is one at the very
end, the youngest one, Donny. The face of an angel.
I check in the tv guide that comes free to see what the show is
and it says something about a news magazine but I figure it must be
a programming change because it's The Andy Williams Show (apparently
he's some sort of singer too) and these boys are The Osmond Brothers.
So I watch a few numbers, I'm transfixed but it's a funny thing about
tv which is another reason I don't subscribe to the evil power called
Cable, no matter if I'm watching a Partridge Family episode
or a movie of the week about a woman in peril or even figure skating,
I end up dozing off. When I wake up next, there's the other anchorman
on now, this one not so waxlike and I trust him more but I think his
ties send subliminal messages (the Iraqi government loves you) so
I switch it off, check for Davie Keon (he's still out sniffing at
Peaches), floss, brush, urinate and go to bed. This night, I don't
have to do my mental images of snow falling or Captain Kangaroo
with Bunny Rabbit and Moose and the falling Ping-Pong balls, that
night I conjure up the face of one Donny Osmond and I drift off into
a dreamless sleep.
open the
coffee shop at seven on the dot and Severn Willis is waiting
right there on the stoop, like he is every other morning except
Mondays when he sleeps in till eight. "
'Lo, Severn."
" 'Lo, Violet."
I let Severn call me by my first name as well. Severn and I lay
in side-by-side cradles in the hospital when we were born. Can't very
well ask him to call me Miss Isbister when chances are he saw me at
least once with no diaper for maybe a flash second.
He tips his filthy baseball cap at me, revealing a balding forehead,
greasy black and grey hair and the birthmark, the one shaped like
Russia, on his left temple.
"Medium coffee, double double."
I told Severn once that 'I know' but he still goes on saying his
order, makes him think he's special, I think, so I gave up saying
'I know' a long time ago and just pour him his double double. Thing
is, I just pour the coffee, the cream and sugar's right in front of
him which is one reason I came to be infuriated by his spoken order,
but eventually you have to say, Who cares?
I push the Styrofoam cup his way. See, the other game we play is,
after I give him his coffee, I say,
"That'll be ninety five cents, Severn."
And he always says,
"You don't think I know how much it is by now, Violet? Jesus."
"Don't take the Lord's name in vain."
And he sighs and gives me ninety-five exactly and I drop Severn's
sweaty change (even on a cold day) in the till.
While he's pouring and stirring, I get up on the utility stool and
I take the framed picture of Paul McCartney down from the wall. Severn
is watching me when I turn back, open the drawer and drop Paul in
and shut it again. He glances up, open-mouthed at the light-coloured
square and empty nail above the sunflower clock.
"Why'd you take Paul down?"
"Circumstances."
"He getting a new frame?"
I shake my head.
"Well I'll be done-garned, Violet. I've known you for going on thirty-five
years now and you've been thinking Paul McCartney's the bee's knees
from day one. You used to hum that song..."
"Eleanor Rigby."
"...all day long in the sandbox. Remember you wanted Reverend Nutskill
to have the organist play it because you said it was a religious tune
as they mention church and some Reverend?"
"Father Mackenzie. Course I remember, Severn. I just moved on, that's
all."
He sips his coffee for a while, shaking his head at me, and then
he says he's got to be off, like Severn's got somewheres to go when
I know he's just going to the Laundromat to hang out and sweep every
once in a while.
And I've got to find me a picture of Mr. Donny Osmond.
[MORE]
© Sarah Eddenden 2001
