All Saints (10 page)

Then came that Sunday morning last fall when she asked God for Simon. Now all the stuff that used to make her feel safe—her job, her friends, her church, her RRSP—has started to scare her. She feels afraid. All the time. Afraid of her own life.

Nine-fifteen. By this time at work she's on the front counter, doing intake, topping up copier cards, keeping an eye on Dwayne in the corner with his cat and dog magazines, hoping he isn't going to have one of his days.

Polyp.

She pictures a tiny mushroom, poking palely into the dark. A little round head on a skinny neck of stem. There. That's what she should be afraid of. But she can't even keep it in mind. Can't quite believe in it.

“You have a small polyp growing on one side of your cervix.”

They were sitting in Susan's office again, once Kelly had her clothes back on. Susan's tone was light, almost casual, and she kept her eyes down while she went through Kelly's file. “It's probably nothing to worry about. But I'll make an appointment for you to have it frozen and taken out and tested. That way we'll be sure.” She looked up then and smiled.

She would have found it during the internal. Kelly sips her cooling coffee, thinking back over that part of the physical. Trying to remember a hesitation, a change in tone.

“Do you know how we learn this procedure when we're in school?” Susan had her back turned. She was keeping the speculum out of sight, holding it under the warm water tap for a minute before inserting it between Kelly's trying-to-relax thighs. “There. Too cold? Too hot?”

Kelly said, “Just right,” reminding herself of Goldilocks. “No. How do you learn to do this?” She was staring at the ceiling, breathing in, breathing out, willing her mind to be as white as the tiles.
Create in me—

“We hire prostitutes and practice on them.”

“You're kidding.”—
a clean heart.

“Nope. That's what we do. And it's good, because they don't mind us fumbling around, and they're off their feet, and they know they're in a safe environment for once. Okay. You'll hear a clicking noise. And you'll feel some pressure. There. All done.” No indication that she had seen anything out of line. Just the distracting chatter.

Kelly needs her jacket again. It's going to be that kind of day—jacket on, jacket off. Just before she puts her left arm into the sleeve, she peels back the Band-Aid in the crook of her elbow and takes a look at the tiny puncture. It's already formed a scab. And on the ball of cotton, there's a twin dot of blood.

Why does she always dread the yearly blood test more than the internal? Maybe because she's never seen the ­speculum, but there's nothing stopping her from watching every step of the blood work—the cold alcohol swab, the nurse's fingers tapping to raise a vein, then the point of the needle denting her skin. This morning she tried to keep her eyes straight ahead, focused on a box of latex gloves. But she looked back in time to see the ampoules clicking around like the carriage of a six-shooter, filling up in turn. Every year, she's surprised by how much is being taken out of her, and the darkness of her own blood.

She puts the Band-Aid back in place, noticing how the skin of her forearm is starting to crepe. The first brown spots are blooming on the backs of her hands too, and the veins there are getting wormy. Susan routinely asks about hot flashes now. And this morning, for the first time, she said, “How's your libido?”

It's nine-thirty. Her apple cake is gone, and she shouldn't have any more coffee. The bone densitometry office is in the medical building she left an hour ago, right above her doctor's. There's a little card shop beside it across the street. A minute ago the CLOSED sign in its window got turned around to OPEN. She could browse in there until her bone test.

Outside, she has to S-curve around lakes of slush to get across the street. She pushes open the card shop door, breathing in perfumed warmth. The whole place is done up in reds and pinks. Heart-shaped helium balloons and cardboard cupids float at eye level. Little round tables are covered with white lace cloths and crowded with Valentine's Day trinkets. Kelly can almost taste the sweetness in the air from scented candles and potpourri.

She goes over to a rack of cards and starts opening them, reading the messages inside and putting them back. She picks up one that says
For My Good Friend on Valentine's Day
. Inside it's blank.

“I could talk to you all day
.
”

He did say that to her the last time he phoned about an article for
Saints Alive
and they ended up chatting for more than an hour
.

You could talk to me all day and all night, if you like.

What if she had said that into the phone? She was so close. Sometimes she imagines herself very old, thinking back on all the things she could have said throughout her life, but didn't. Because she didn't want to make a fool of herself. Or didn't want to make a scene. Or rock the boat. Or find out the truth. Which could be that he meant nothing by the little things he said. That he was just being nice.

No. There had to be more to it than that. What about the time he was late and she waited for him in the restaurant? Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. He finally came through the door, flustered and apologetic. An angry parishioner had buttonholed him just as he was leaving the church, and wouldn't let him go, even when he told her—

“Everybody assumes I'm there for them and them alone,” he said, snapping open his napkin, his face flushed. “They never stop to consider that I've got a whole congregation to look after. They just think I'm their personal Rock of Gibraltar.”

I don't think of you that way
.

“It never occurs to them that I'm just one human being. That I've got my limitations. My boundaries. Maybe even a lunch date.”

It occurs to me all the time.
He called what they were doing a date. And he was confiding in her. Even though he had apologized for dumping.

“Dump away,” she had said lightly. She says most things to him lightly. Breezily. He would never guess how she cherishes his every word, holds it in memory the way she would carry in her pocket some beautiful stone she had found.

For My Good Friend On Valentine's Day.
What if she did send this one to him? With some casual, breezy little message inside, aimed at keeping things light?

She puts the card back. Picks up another one that says
To My Secret Valentine.
Also blank inside. She could send this one unsigned. Get Bev to address the envelope for her so he wouldn't recognize the handwriting.

For God's sake, Kelly.
You're not in high school.

Why did she have to go and say she'd fallen in love
when Susan asked about her libido? She can't keep on telling people. It's too small a world. Six degrees of separation. Last week she told the woman she talks to every Saturday morning in the laundry room of her apartment building, and it turned out this woman knows somebody who goes to All Saints. She promised not to tell, but ever since a cold panic has started up in Kelly whenever she imagines her laundry room friend telling her All Saints friend, who tells somebody else, who tells somebody else, until the story works its way up to Simon. She knows it's far-fetched, but—

Anyway, it's pathetic to tell people. It's just bragging.
Look what I've managed to do! At fifty-seven! So much for dropping and drying!

Nine-forty. Still too early to go back to the medical building. She wanders around the card shop, hugging her purse close to keep it from swiping china cupids off tables. Every now and then a hanging cardboard heart gives the top of her head a spidery caress.

There was a labelled diagram of a heart on the wall of Susan's examining room. Kelly studied it while she stripped to the waist for her electrocardiogram, wondering how anybody could look at a real heart and come up with something as smooth and symmetrical as a valentine. She lay down on the padded table and the nurse put cold sticky disks on her skin—a few in a rough circle around her left breast, a couple on each arm. Then she attached wires to the disks and started up a machine that hummed and clunked and extruded a printout, inch by inch.

Later, as Kelly was putting on her coat in the waiting room, looking forward to coffee, Susan walked by, waving the printout at her. “This looks good.” Then she winked and said, “Let me know how things work out!”

She got all excited about Kelly being in love. “I'm a matchmaker,” she said. “And I'm brilliant. I got my brother and sister-in-law together. I've found partners for three of my friends. So. You say you're friends with this guy? You have interests in common? You go for lunch? And now your feelings for him have changed? But you're afraid to tell him because it might screw up the friendship? Is that it? Have I got it right?”

Kelly kept nodding, even though that wasn't quite it. She has imagined telling him. Blurting it out, with sudden tears. Or planning it ahead of time. Making reservations at a restaurant. Or making an appointment to see him in his office at the church. Even asking him to lunch at her place. She always has a speech prepared which she has rehearsed so she can do it without either tearing up or sounding cold and crafty.

No matter where she sets the scene, she can only ever imagine one response from him. She sees first surprise in his expression, even shock. Then embarrassment. Then worry. And when he speaks, it is so gently. He chooses his words with such care, ever the professional counsellor.
Very fond. Greatly admire. Cherish our friendship. But.

The scene always ends in her apartment, with him sitting on the couch and her in the armchair facing him. She has stopped hearing his voice, is reading all she needs to know from his face and hands and the slow drawing back of his body. They talk for a little while. She makes it easy for him. Makes a show of being okay.

Then she is closing her door against the sight of him waiting in the hall for the elevator. There's the click of her chain lock sliding into place. She turns to face her empty apartment. The ghastly sunlight streaming through the blinds.

“Kelly? Hello? Lost you there for a minute. Okay. I was saying, so don't tell him. Show him. How's the casual touch situation? You hug, right? And maybe there's a friendly little kiss every now and then?”

Kelly smiles. Once a week she kneels in front of Simon and cups her hands to receive a round disc of bread marked with a cross. His fingertips brush the ball of her thumb as he presses the bread into her palm and says, “The Body of Christ. The Bread of Heaven.” She looks up and meets his eyes. He smiles. Sometimes he winks.

“We … hug.”

And they do. Whenever they're saying goodbye after one of their lunches, they embrace, briefly and awkwardly. Kelly always initiates it, reaching up, and Simon bends from the waist, preserving a space between their pelvises.

“Okay. You hug. This is good. So, next time, you prolong the hug. Just a bit. Then look into his eyes. Maintain eye contact whenever you can. And find reasons to touch him. Just little touches. On the arm, say. Trust me. It all sends a message.”

She wouldn't be talking that way if she was really worried about the polyp
, Kelly thinks now, sniffing a lavender-scented sachet.
Would she
?

Nine fifty-five. Time to start back to the medical building.

There are two other people in the waiting room of the bone densitometry office, an old couple sitting together and talking in what sounds like Russian. Their voices are gentle, hesitant, pitched as if to comfort each other. Kelly wonders which of them has the appointment, and which is just there for support. Or there because they're there. In the same bed for decades, breathing the other's breath. Their clothes rubbing up against the other's in the closet. Their shoes lined up beside the other's on the closet floor.

In a far corner of her mind, Kelly still feels married to her ex. She still sometimes runs scenes through her mind of the two of them in old age. Herself peeking at Phil from around corners, watching his chest for the rising and falling before going back to her ironing. Phil reminding her every morning to take her medication, then running water in the bathroom to cover the sound of opening the medicine cabinet to count her pills.

The last time she saw him was three years ago in a subway station. She was going up the up escalator and a man who looked strangely familiar was coming down the down. By the time she recognized him, he was past her. He didn't look in her direction and she didn't call his name. Not long after that, she started scanning the obituary page in the paper every morning for Phil's name. She's not sure what she'll do if she ever finds it. Go to the service? Sit at the back and slip out without signing the guest book? She just wants to know. That's all. She doubts she'll feel any grief. But it troubles her to think of him gone without her knowing.

The receptionist calls her name.

In the examination room, a thin dark young man in a white coat takes her hand for a second without shaking it and murmurs that his name is Unni. “Hello, Unni,” Kelly says. She would rather call him Doctor something, even though his surname takes up a line and a half on his ID badge. She's funny about names. She thinks there should be just a little ceremony involved. It took her four internal exams to get from
Doctor Fisher
to
Susan.
And she refuses to wear a name tag in church. “We look like a cult,” she said to Simon once over lunch. “As if everybody's been baptized HI MY NAME IS.”