“Sisters from another Mister” by Jill Malleck

 

Cheryl picks me up at the corner of Queen and Duke on Saturdays at three. It just makes sense, she said not long after we met. I’m going right by there anyway. It was my bus stop to Freeport, only now I lean out of the Plexiglas shelter and give a little wave, so the bus doesn’t stop. Today he pulls in to drop someone off. My face is red. It’s stupid how ashamed I feel about that dismissive wave.

Cheryl, she’s the brave one. She pulls up to the stop in her orange Corolla like she owns the place. She looks chill, not in a bitchy way some women have, but in that laid-back, it’s-all-good way that regular pot-smokers have. Cheryl and I each grew up around pot. We’re like sisters in that way too.

“What ya got today?” Cheryl asks as I shove the big Walmart bag into the back seat.  We never say “hello, how are you?” Real friends, we pick right up and cut to the chase.

“Dad’s toothpaste and beige sweater,” I say. “And a seat cushion off my balcony chair. I just can’t stand sitting in those crappy visitor chairs all afternoon. What are you bringing?”

“Nothing but what the cat dragged in.”

She laughs over Country 105.3 and spins the wheel into traffic. Cheryl’s quoting her dad there – she thinks it’s hilarious to talk like the old man, now that he can’t.

The first time I saw Cheryl she was lounging in a dirty plastic chair outside of Room 2B at Freeport Health Centre. I had stepped out of 2C to take a short break while my step-dad napped. Cheryl looked up like she was expecting me, but also like she was totally fine if I wanted to ignore her. Her chill. There was something about her that seemed familiar. Did we go to the same high school? You never knew who you’d run into at Freeport, it was the only place most families could afford.

“You get kicked out here too.” She laughed. “He hates if I stay and watch when the nurse comes. Hates when they ask him questions he can’t answer. Wiggles those squirrelly brows at me: Get the hell out.”

It’s easy to find common ground in the hall at Freeport.  Like how we both made Saturdays our usual day (Cheryl goes up on Wednesdays too, but I can’t stand the thought of two trips a week). And how neither one of us really gave two-shits about the old men in those beds.

By the time the frazzled nurse rushed to the next patient, Cheryl was offering to drive me home and stop for a Timmy’s on the way. So, that’s our Saturday routine – pick up, visit the dads, go for coffee and compare notes, drop off. I have to say that I’m glad. I don’t really like to talk about my personal life at work.

Today was a bigger surprise than discovering our shared plight had been. All the stories Cheryl’s been telling me dropped from my head to my gut. I don’t feel embarrassed about it, I mean I didn’t have a clue until we were sitting in Tim Horton’s.

“How’s your step-dad doing?”

Cheryl always asks me that first, as we slide into the booth furthest from the busy counter.

“Same old, same old. How about Eddie?”

“Well, I don’t think I’ll be coming next Saturday,” she said gravely. “I might not even have to come on Wednesday.”

My face felt frozen. Should I have known?

“Oh, sorry, I mean if you need a ride I can bring you anyway….but I figured you’d go back to taking the bus?”

“Yeah, course, I don’t care about that. What’s up with Ed?”

We know a few days can make a huge difference at Freeport. And with Ed more than my dad, since he’s had two strokes already.

“Nothing I can really put my finger on. He just seems, I don’t know, weaker. I couldn’t even make out what he was trying to say. I think he’s giving up…about time I’d say.”

Yeah, Cheryl can sound harsh sometimes when she talks about Ed. It’s shocking when you first hear it, but anyone listening who’s been chained to a patient, especially an ass like Ed, ignores the tone. Respects it, even.

Cheryl wasn’t just a talker. She was a good listener too. The second time we went to Tim’s I got up the nerve to ask why she called her dad Ed. I know it’s cool now for kids to be like friends with their parents, but no one I grew up with did. I’d have got smacked if I’d tried.

“Well that’s his name, and that’s all he’s getting from me. Drank like a fish, worked mom into her grave. Never beat the shit out of us but took a few swipes. Dumbass was too drunk to be really dangerous. I wouldn’t come at all, but I wanna make sure what he’s got is coming to me…” She’d rolled up the rim on her cup as she spilled.

“Heh, look, a free donut! Don’t let me throw this out.”

She took a sip right on top of the mushed lip. “He hates when I call him Ed. Can’t say a damn thing about it though.”

The cheating heart thing came up a few weeks ago. We’d taken to picking up magazines on our way through the gift shop. I’d get People and she’d get Us, and then we’d switch in the hall during our break. Both covers were splashed full of a famous actor who’d been caught red-handed with a butt-ugly prostitute.

“See? His wife’s a freaking supermodel! It doesn’t matter how beautiful or successful you are. You’re still going to get cheated on.” That was Cheryl’s take.

“Did Ed cheat?”

“Oh, yeah. He’d be trying to fuck the nurses here if he could move his ass. Heh , maybe that’s what he’s moaning about! How about you, your step-dad ever do anything like that?”

I hesitated. “Depends how you look at it. Him and my mom worked together. Then Dad got offered a transfer to Calgary, and Mom said we weren’t going. So sis and me stayed with her. Couple years later, he’s our new dad.”

“But he was okay, right? Or why’d you be here every week.”

“Adequate. Paid for my college. Didn’t bother with us kids…or not much. I think he liked Connie more than me. When Mom died she asked us to look out for him.”

“Hey, where’s your sister? She come on Sundays? Love to meet her.”

“Cons doesn’t come. She hates him. Hated that dad left us. Typical step-kid stuff.”

“Well if I had a sister, I’d be telling her to get her ass down here and do her duty.”

Cheryl picked at a cold sore at the edge of her mouth. “You’re a trooper.”

I’m pretty sure that’s an Eddie expression, though I can’t tell you how he’d sound saying it. He wasn’t talking the only time I saw him, just drooling phlegm from the side of his limp mouth. Cheryl invited me in after I’d introduced her to my step-dad. Ed’s bulbous nose and heavy jowls made me think of W.C. Fields. Funny, but he hated kids too.

So now here we are, Ed on his last legs and Cheryl letting me know we won’t be sharing coffee at Tim’s anymore. I don’t know what to say. We’ve never talked outside of Saturdays. I don’t think I know her last name.

“You’ll have a funeral, right?”  Even I can hear Ed saying you’re grasping at straws.

“Nope, I’m not throwing good money after bad. The city will take care of that. Once he’s gone, I’m outta here.”

I nodded. Who could blame her? I didn’t buy for a minute that he’d only swiped at her. Nobody hated somebody that much without good reason.

Wednesday passed, and before Saturday came I got a call from Freeport. Some listeria virus was on the move, and no visitors were allowed. I’d go see Connie then. Take a Greyhound to Orangeville and spend the night with her and Rick.

Rick’s pickup was at the station. I didn’t expect Cons to come out. She’s had that fibromyalgia thing for years. Puts her in constant pain, makes it hard to climb into the truck. I smelled the skunky-weed smell coming up from the basement as soon as I walked in.

“Self-medicating,” she grinned with a hug.

“Yeah, sure, since you were fifteen!”

We caught up at the kitchen table while Rick fixed us Hamburger Helper sloppy joes. He added chopped onions like Mom used to and it made me salivate. They take good care of me, these two.

“Aren’t you going to ask about him?”

“Okay, but only because of you. Just tell me about how stressed the nurses are and whether the food is getting any better.”

“I met a woman whose dad is in the next room. It’s great to have someone to chat with. She’s got a sad story though – her dad was abusive to her mom and her.”

Connie shrugs. She’s fiddling with a pencil – up to her mouth, down again to tap the table. Poor Cons. I know she’s wanting another joint and is waiting till I go to the bathroom, so she can sneak downstairs.

“Living with him was no picnic either.”

“Yah, but come on…”

I stop when Rick turns from the stove to look at us. Connie rolls the pencil on the table.

“You don’t have to go. Rick and I don’t care if you stop.”

“We promised Mom, Cons. You and me. She said to us, take care of him, girls. You nodded too…”

“Well sure, but that was then. What did she know?”

I grab her hand and get my foot out of my mouth.

“I’m not saying I think you should travel down to Kitchener. I know how much it hurts in the truck.”

Rick has stopped stirring. Connie looks up at him. She’s chewing on the eraser. He shakes his head no.

“Anyways,” she says, “Mom’s in heaven now. And when you get to heaven you know everything, see everything that ever happened. She’d say you don’t have to go see him anymore.”

I don’t know what to say. I think of the pain Connie is in. I think how much she missed our dad when he left us. We both miss our mom, but I’m not all seized up about it.

“Thanks, Cons. But I’ll keep going for now. Make sure what he’s got is coming to us, eh?”

By the following Saturday, the outbreak is over, and I catch the bus up to Freeport. I almost wave the bus away, hoping Cheryl’s Corolla’s going to pull up.

No country music on the bus. She’d said we were like sisters from another mister, both of us products of a cheating heart. I thought I heard owners of a lonely heart and the echo of that ‘80s song attached itself to Cheryl forever in my mind. Either one is accurate.

When I get to 2C my cushion has a note taped on it.

“I hope you don’t mind I used this. Take care of your dad. C.”

I wander into the hall, expecting to see her there. A janitor is sweeping out of room 2B. I peer past his shoulder and see a woman curled up like a featherless bird in a nest. She sees me and opens her mouth wordlessly.

When the nurse comes in at four with Dad’s pills, I ask what happened to the guy next door.

“Just stopped breathing – last Wednesday I think it was. Lucky his daughter was here to sign him out and take his stuff. There’s a long waiting list. Bed didn’t even get cold.”

I miss Cheryl’s matter-of-factness.

Dad’s asleep, it’s getting dark and I’m thinking about Connie. And the coffee I’m not going to have on the way home. Have to make instant, I guess. It’s when I grab my coat off the back of the chair that I see the white stain on my cushion. Smack dab in the middle. Must’ve been under the note. I use my fingernail to pick at it, and a small piece flakes off. Looks like dried salt. Weird.

I re-tape Cheryl’s note over it, tuck it under my arm. I’ll take it home and throw in the wash. Then I can think about if I need it in this room.

Jill Malleck’s home is in southwestern Ontario, landlocked so she escapes to Lake Huron in the summer. Most of her life has been spent reading and speaking others’ words. Her writing was confined to business projects, family correspondence and blogging about leadership. Today she’s telling stories.  

“Sisters from Another Mister” was previously published in literally stories. For information on submitting to literally stories, see here.

See Brian’s complete current schedule here,  including online and in-person writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Alliston, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Southampton, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.

Sick Day by Jill Malleck

 

The halo told me I was on the edge, and this wasn’t a simple hangover from Benny’s Halloween party. The alarm clock, the ceiling light, even my bedroom door, all were bathed in a fantastical nimbus. Awe always filled me at this stage, as if I stood on the edge of revelation. Awe, and also terror, because for sure, I stood at the edge of pain.

I curled in bed and lay as still as I could, hoping I’d called the drugstore fast enough. If the migraine arrived before the courier, it would feel like an ax cracking into my skull, chopping my brain in two, and that ax would keep thudding into me for hours. Days sometimes.

A very faint tweeting sound inched its way over the ticks and drips of my abandoned shower. I recognized that sound. Someone in this old complex had a bird. A pet, in our no-pets building.

We’d had a bird when I was a kid. One of those blue budgies that were so popular in the ’70s. A bird we named Harley after Dad’s motorcycle. A bird I’d both loved and feared because of the wickedness of his beak. The déjà vu sound skittered over the pain. Definitely somewhere there was a bird – or more than one – by the sound of it.

With my migraine still at bay, I gingerly moved to the window. The ledges were generous, one of the things I liked about this place. Reminiscent of all the old Gotham City and cornered-man-on-the-ledge movies. I pushed up the window and leaned out and over to have a look.

There on a ledge, not right below me but one over to the left, were the birds. That was what I’d heard, not a caged pet like Harley. These were pigeons and mourning doves, bobbing up and down furiously, like those silly-hatted bird toys dipping their beaks. Even weirder–they were pecking at something. Looked like handfuls of seeds; sunflowers and such.

I knew that most of us, including the super, hated the birds up close. If they shat on the ledges you couldn’t get it off; the rough texture of the stone seemed impervious to a soapy rag. Most of us pulled drapes or shades shut when we left for work, to stop the birds from stunning themselves on the reflected glass.  I’d never seen anyone deliberately attract birds to their ledge. Strange.

While I watched, the birds squawked and minced on the ledge.  A few took off and then circled back. Bathed in my migraine nimbus, they looked as if they were bursting with light–like the Holy Spirit church doves on a pillar candle at the Dollar Store. Each flap of their wings leaving behind a strobing afterimage. Beautiful.

Poor Harley–as a kid, I’d loved that bird, but he’d never been as beautiful as this. My head now was throbbing like a metronome. Ah, the sunlight, of course. I should have retreated to my dark bed. Instead, I leaned over the cool brick and rested my right cheek where I’d have an unobstructed view.

What I saw next was incomprehensible. Out of the window below came a pair of Mickey-Mouse hands, holding a bright red satin cloth–was it a pillow case? With a flick of the wrist, the glowing white gloves shook the cloth out and over the birds and swept them cleanly into the apartment. Two or three gathered together. The others escaped. The ledge, now pecked clean of seeds, was empty. I might have imagined it all.

My buzzer went. I almost ignored it–I was supposed to be at work anyhow, but the irritating buzz went again. Right, the drugstore delivering my migraine pills.

I took the steps down two at a time, easier to do since they’d laid the winter rubber mats.  In the lobby, a slight young man in a black toque and fingerless gloves slouched against the small table under the mail boxes. He thrust a small paper bag, stapled shut with printed instructions on it, at me. Didn’t ask me for ID or anything. Didn’t wait for a tip either, just headed out to the bike leaned up against the glass doors.

As I listened to the ancient elevator clang down, I noticed a homemade poster taped to the wall above the row of silver mailboxes. I’d never seen it before. Really, it was the pigeon that caught my eye, then the cape. “Authentic Roma Magician,” the headline read. “Three generations of untold secrets. Birthdays and other parties. Inquire to Silvanus at Apartment 406.”

I guessed the photograph was of Silvanus, in top hat, white gloves and a satin-lined cape, holding a silver-tipped baton in one hand, with an ugly gray pigeon alight on his other hand. Pulsing curtains of light shimmied across the poster like an aurora–sure just the forerunner of my migraine. Or, maybe, the promise of magic. Man, I loved magic.

So, the red satin he’d used to snag the birds–not a pillowcase, the inside lining of a black cape, like the one I’d worn as Dracula last night. My cape was tossed on the floor of the darkened bedroom, shed in a drunken stupor.

Back upstairs I looked for it–half expecting it to be gone. It was there. I rushed to the window. I was apartment 504. Most certainly the now empty ledge below me was 406. Silvanus had been trapping his show birds.

I took a pill and lay down on the top of my duvet, a warm, damp washcloth laid across my closed eyes.

As I dozed, Silvanus’ plight filled me with sadness. I imagined him, a small boy, fleeing the village guards to gypsy freedom, crouched in a dark field near a meager campfire. On the poster, his lips had been tightly pressed together, no doubt to hide the teeth of poverty. In my dream, I see a silver-haired grandfather cupping the young boy’s hands gently around a white dove that coos softly and intelligently at the attention. Later, his father, angry and drunk, slaps him across the face and tells him to forget magic and get to work. Tells him he is stupid and lazy. 

Silvanus grows taller, and as his life gets darker the birds turn gray and black. From a dingy attic window, the broken man is only able to attract filthy and stupid wild birds. He binds their beaks with tape, so they can’t peck him as he tucks them up his sleeve for the grand finale.

When I woke, I was sweating. I’d felt the sensation of wings brushing against my cheek and eyelids. When I swung my leg off the bed and stood up I felt pins and needles in my feet. Time for another pill, but I stopped at the window and leaned out again.

The light was softer now, less direct, and the magical halo of my migraine was more serene. I stayed still, collecting the dusk, when the bird alit. She was beautiful. Pure, snowy white and bathed in light. She settled on my ledge like Noah’s dove returning to the Ark from a fruitless flight. The mica dots glimmered in the sandstone beneath her. She looked straight at me, her head still and not bobbing. I was mesmerized.

I backed into my room and slowly closed the window. In the kitchen, while I gulped another pill with milk, I saw the wedding favor I’d stuck in the fridge in June, a sliver of yellow cake with red and green jellied fruit, wrapped in a white doily.

On the way back through my room, I stooped to grab the Dracula cape. Maybe there was something special about the color or the satin. Maybe it calmed them or drew the birds like a matador’s cape does the bull. 

I opened the window, prepared to see an empty ledge, where I’d crumbled the cake. My dove was still lying there, still glowing, still beautiful, as calm and perfect as the dove I could picture in my Sunday-School Bible. The Holy Spirit dove, descending on Jesus at his baptism.

Not a feather ruffled when I leaned out. I laid the unwrapped cake slice on the ledge, close to me. She got up and walked to it, her head bobbing. I held the cape like a scarf, red satin up, then threw the fabric out and over her, and swept it all into my room, bunching the bundle at the top to hold her inside.

I’d expected wild aggrieved flapping and a wicked pecking that I’d realized too late might be the reason for the Mickey Mouse gloves. There was no fuss. Just a warm small weight at the bottom of the makeshift bag. Like capturing a hamster or a guinea pig who’d escaped its cage. Apparently, I had the touch for this.

The door to 406 was identical to mine. The man who answered my knock seemed bigger than he looked on the poster, and swarthier. A dark-haired potent force at the center of a pulsing white nimbus. Except that was my migraine, wasn’t it? His black hair, which had been covered by a top hat on the poster, was full and standing in waves, like he’d just run his hands through it. Under his mustache there was still no smile. He might have been frowning.

“I live upstairs. I saw your poster by the mailboxes…” I faltered. The noise of many birds stopped me. It sounded like he might have been watching National Geographic, or Alfred Hitchcock, on TV.

Now his smile appeared. His teeth were white and straight and fine.

“Oh, you want to have a party?  You need a magician? I can do… But not here. Not allowed. The super, he takes down my poster, and I put it back up. I can do a party…but not here. You have another place we can do the party, eh?”

The door was swinging wider. Behind him, just like in my apartment, was a living area and beyond it a door leading to the first bedroom, the larger one. I knew that to my right, down the hall, was a kitchen and another bedroom. The noise of the birds was getting louder, and he motioned me to step inside so he could shut the door.

“No, no, I’m not having a party. I saw you…with the pigeons…earlier today. I love magic shows. I’ve been to Vegas three times to see Penn and Teller. I just, I wondered, does it work? Can you train them even if they’re just city birds?”

When I’d said “no party,” his smile had disappeared. Like magic. But as I asked about his work, and said the word “love,” his smile reappeared.

“Yes, yes. Is good. Come and look. Meet my assistants.”

He was walking through the living room, toward the open bedroom door. It seemed dark in there, like the shade must be down. When we got to the door I saw that the shadow was actually the fine black lines of a net. There was a large fabric cage–floor to ceiling, wall to wall–of loosely hung netting. It stopped us at the door. Weights were sewn on the bottom of the net, which sat on a blue tarp. I imagined a shrimp net floating on the bottom of the ocean. There was a sharp tang of ammonia.

Inside the room, birds were flying or sat perched on coat racks. The tarp was covered in speckles of white and green droppings. There must have been eight or nine birds in the room, though they sounded like twice that many. I saw the dirty gray pigeon and a mourning dove–today’s captures. No longer glowing. Still, I think, how wonderful and generous of him. He has given the birds the master bedroom and he sleeps in the smaller bedroom down the hall.

Then I noticed bird bodies lying on the tarp. Were they dead? Had they flown into the walls? No, the clever netting was hung well away from the walls.

The magician saw my distress. “Oh, no, it’s alright…it’s okay…” he was reaching under the weighted netting at the door, tugging one of the still birds out.

“See, see…is okay. Touch it. Feel it…warm. It is thirsty, just thirsty. For a show tonight. See, I show you my secret. You love magic, see.”

He rolled the dark body between his meaty hands. It lengthened, spun and became like a clay rope. I remembered doing this with PlayDoh. The creature didn’t move. He stuffed it up his sleeve. If I hadn’t seen him do it, I wouldn’t have noticed the extra girth on his bicep. He moved down the hall toward the kitchen and I followed. When I stepped into the room, I saw him holding a backpack, an IronMan backpack, the kind with built-in water bottles and a hose that reaches your mouth, so you can drink without stopping.

“I don’t show you all of my trick…” he laughed. “But this…”  The unmoving cigar-bird was in lying in his hand again. He pushed the hose end into its mouth and pumped it a few times. As I watched, the bird inflated. Just as I thought it would burst, its eyes opened, and it fluttered to the floor. In two seconds, it was a pigeon flying down the hallway.

While I was been distracted by the bird, Silvanus had noticed the red bundle in my hand.

“A cape? Halloween done now, you want to sell it maybe?” he was asking as he hurried down the hallway. I realized he had to get the pigeon back into the aviary, and that meant capturing it and lifting the weighted net.

My bundle was stirring and gave a tiny coo. I prayed he hadn’t heard it over the general din and turned to the door.

“No, no,” I said. “Might need the cape again next year. Just heading to the laundry room on my way downstairs.”

He was frowning again, and I wondered if he recognized the size and shape of my lie. “Thank you so much, letting me see the birds,” I gushed. “I’ll be sure to tell all my friends at work about you and your services.”

I was out the door, and instead of fleeing to my apartment, I headed all the way down. I pushed outside and lay my bundle on the front stoop. I was terrified to open it. But there she was, lying there, just like she had on the ledge. Serene and innocent. Waiting for my prayer. I bent down and grabbed the edge of the cape like a matador, ready to shake it out.

“Go, go, go,” I said and waved it up toward the darkening sky.

***

Jill Malleck’s home is in southwestern Ontario, landlocked so she escapes to Lake Huron in the summer. Most of her life has been spent reading and speaking others’ words. Her writing was confined to business projects, family correspondence and blogging about leadership. Today she’s telling stories.  

"Sick Day" was previously published in Entropy magazine. For information on submitting to Entropy, see here.

See Brian’s complete current schedule here,  including online and in-person writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Alliston, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Southampton, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.