The Number Three
The single fried egg might be life’s loneliest meal. He listens to the sizzle of unfertilized yolk and waits another second before lifting away from the heat. The timing is important. He wants the skin starting to harden but everything else still shaky and runny inside. It quivers on his spatula before sliding onto the plate slimy and wet, like a living thing. Half a shake of salt, a full shake of pepper and good to go. This is supper. The toaster pops and he looks over. Watches the filament cooling, turning black again. He butters and dips and mops. The room is almost silent. Only the occasional gurgling coming from deep inside the fridge. A single fried egg, he thinks: enough food for one person, as long as they aren’t hungry.
He checks the cordless telephone again but there is no change. The phone is a smug little bird that refuses to sing. Words on its tiny screen say No new messages. There is a button for Talk and a button for End. Redial and Flash and Clear and Mute. Nothing from it all day. He looks at the calendar. One day until the day. Already one year. It goes and comes so fast. Only these hours left. You better call. He says it out loud. You better know what you need to do.
The house is too big for him now. He feels like the marble in one of those tilting wooden labyrinths and he has to try not to bang off the walls or fall through the holes. The space is crowded with things that should have disappeared, a thousand items that should have been wiped away and deleted, all at the exact same moment, while the body was flying through the air. Instead, they stayed and registered nothing.
When it gets like this, the kitchen is worse than the bedroom. More intimate. Always something else waiting behind a cupboard or rolling loose in a drawer. The World’s Greatest Mom mug — a last-minute gift from a lazy kid — hanging on its hook. And stuck behind a magnet is the reminder card for a dentist’s appointment they never made it to. The secretary from that office left messages for a month, trying to reschedule a semi-annual cleaning. The boy’s favourite deep cereal bowl and her preferred paring knife, the only one that stays sharp.
Scattered clothes and mismatched socks. Filthy T-shirts he washed only eight months later when the last of the smell was gone. The bristles of their toothbrushes, fanned by his thumb. Her half-completed plan for renovating the basement. Magazines flopping through the slot every two weeks. Style at Home and Canadian Living. His son’s password-protected laptop. He knows there are messages in there.
His daughter, the one who wasn’t there, the one still left, says he needs to get out. Find something smaller, something more manageable. Maybe a condo downtown. A place where no one has lived before. Walking distance to everything from there. Think how much better that would be.
When it was all over and they finally let him out of the hospital, she took a semester off from her school in Kitchener. They tried to fill in the blanks and get their rhythm back, tried to live as close to the original pattern as possible, but even while it was happening, he knew it couldn’t last. A girl, a woman in her early twenties, must go back to what she is. Things have to be done when they need to be done and the somewhere-else schedule will not wait. Friends and paper deadlines, she says. Assignments and exams. Picking up extra shifts at the restaurant. Been very, very busy these last few days.
She calls twice a week now. Usually Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons. Usually on her cellphone. How are you, Dad? He hears other voices in the background. Are you in a car? he asks. Are you driving? Don’t talk to me while you’re driving. I’m hanging up right now. Pull over and stop and talk to me then. Not driving she says. God. Just a bad signal. Sitting in a restaurant. Poor reception. Then five dutiful minutes of their voices passing each other on a satellite network. I have to go, she says. Love you.
He picks up the receiver and hits Talk. They say it works both ways, but this is different. He would go with her if she came to pick him up. He would make an exception for her. Tomorrow will always be a different day. The dial tone comes through steady and clear and he puts the sound up on the speaker. If you listen carefully you hear a clacking in the background, behind the tone, something like a train. He puts his ear toward it, straining. Feels like he is getting close to something before a quick ring cuts in. A ring inside the dial tone. A message from the phone itself. A stranger’s voice, a man who seems official. He says: If you would like to make a call, please dial a number. If you need help, please hang up and dial your operator. The voice starts to say it again, but the phone cuts him off. The phone cuts itself off. The phone is frustrated with this situation and cannot allow it to continue. A high pitched squealing rises. Like talking to a fax machine. Then a hard, extra loud busy signal. Bomp bomp bomp bomp. He hangs up. Pushes Off.
Anniversary, he thinks. It makes him so angry. Parents and their kids, nothing can be done. Connected and separated, different ages at different times. They can never really live together. By the time they are who they are going to be, they’re gone. He thinks about the fundamental difference between remembering and being reminded. The next time they talk, she will say something about how she lost track of time, how she was in the middle of it, squeezed up against an immediate pressure that blotted out everything else and she simply forgot. She will likely cry and she will be so, so sorry, but it already makes him feel sick. Jesus Christ. A person should know where they need to be and when they need to be there.
He listens to the forecast, takes out his map of the county and studies the Number Three. An inch here is equal to two miles there. He measures with a ruler, estimates distance, and considers the problem of travel. How to pull it off. Probably close to thirty miles, definitely more than twenty-five. It will take some doing, but if she doesn’t call by tonight, then that is it. He will go by himself.
It felt like rescue in the beginning. Ninety days in and a chance at safety for the rest of their lives. A guaranteed spot on the seniority list as long as he kept up his end of the deal. Collective bargaining, the way work works. It meant everything for them. Getting in and hooking up for the steady ride and a reliable flow. Pure blind luck. He was hired off the street, plucked away from the rest of the world and delivered from what other people have to do to make a living.
We can go for another now, can’t we? She whispered it in his ear. It was the night of the ninetieth day. Their girl just three years old, still sleeping in a toddler bed. Yes, he said. Her hand moving under the sheets. Tingling in her voice. His eyes on the ceiling before he rolled his knee against her thigh. Yes, he said. It was the night of the ninetieth day. I think we’re going to be okay.
Around here, nineteen-eighty-three is the year that counts and that is where the line should go if they ever write a history of this place. This was long before he started, years before they got in, but nineteen-eighty-three matters for everybody. The way it came along and shook up the whole domestic side of the business. Lee Iaccoca taking a risk. The famous picture. His not-so-confident smile as he stands there at the Auto Show in front of the first generation. The paint they used to have. That in-between shade of maroon and a strip of Wood-grain paneling running down the side. It was the last of the real game-changers and they decided to build it here. Somebody’s arm got twisted on that, a face was pushed up against a wall. He knows that, thinks about it sometimes, the question of origins. Why it is where it is. The first one, the one in the picture, it’s in the Smithsonian now.