The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [21]
“Good idea. But do you want me to do it for you? I’m going there anyway.”
She counted the money and handed half to her son.
“Why don’t you watch TV until I get back?” said Noel.
“I can’t.”
“You can’t? Is the set broken?”
“Yes.”
Noel walked over and pushed in a plastic square. The box warmed to life. “No, it’s not, Mom. Look.”
“The shows are different now. They’re … broken. I can’t understand what’s going on. It’s all too much nowadays. The world goes too fast. And too far. What did your father call it?”
Here we go again, thought Noel. “Call what?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes you do. You’re just hiding it from me. As usual.”
“I am not hiding anything.”
“Yes you are.”
“‘Poetry is in the empyrean, TV in the pit’?”
“Not that one.”
“‘A TV is the Devil’s workshop’?”
“No. You know … I can never remember the name for anything in English. I can’t think of the English for the thing. For anything.”
“What is it in French?”
“I can’t remember.”
“I’ll be right back, Mom, just going to the bank. Don’t let anyone in while I’m gone. Do you promise?”
“I know what’s going on. Don’t think I don’t.”
“Nothing’s going on, Mom.”
“You don’t really want me here. I know money’s tight. You don’t have to draw me a map.”
After relocking the door, but not resetting the alarm or taking his pager, Noel walked four blocks to Prince de Tyr, a Lebanese slow-food on rue Laurier. While waiting to place his order he perspired prolifically under his down parka. I should’ve set the digital lock too, he said to himself, and reset the alarm, and taken … “Le numéro deux, s’il vous plaît. Je reviens tout de suite.”
Through discoloured snow and honking traffic, Noel made his way to and from a florist’s across the street—barely, as a black SUV the size of a destroyer nearly ripped off his ear with its wing mirror. Stop signs for Montrealers are mere suggestions, he reflected inside the restaurant while massaging his right temple. He then worried about his mother for forty-five minutes to Arabic music.
On the way back he invented omens. If the light ahead stayed green, his mother would get better, if he saw a black car, she wouldn’t … When he awkwardly opened the front door, his arms full of food and flowers, he sensed something different inside the house, something untoward. For he had seen a black car, and the light had changed to red.
“Mom! I’m back, I’ve got food! Phoenician food!”
“In here, dear!”
Noel walked into the living room. “I got menu number two, your favourite! Falalfel, baba ghanoush, stuffed vine leaves …”
He stopped when he saw someone official-looking, wearing glasses on a silver chain and giant clip-on earrings, sitting on the chair across from his mother. She had a clipboard on her lap and a body that flirted with immenseness. Oh no, not another salesperson. How the hell did she get in?
The woman introduced herself, her voice infecting Noel’s brain with bending otter-brown rectangles, which opened and closed like an accordion. Instead of returning her greeting, he turned on the stereo, slipped a silver disc into a tray: Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy. He then walked to the kitchen, set the food and flowers on the counter, opened the fridge and took out a jalapeño pepper.
“I’m sorry,” he said when he returned. “I was a bit distracted, Miss …”
“Mrs. Holtzberger. From Home Care.”
Weathering a tear-gas attack of perfume, Noel introduced himself. “I’m Noel, Mrs. Burun’s son.” He took a large bite out of the pepper, halving it, before shaking her hand. “How did you get in, Mrs. Holtzberger, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Well, I … your mother opened the door.”
“Right.”
The woman eyed the remains of the vegetable. “I’ve come to interview your mother to see if she qualifies.”
“Qualifies?”
“For assistance. For a day nurse. Two or three days a week to help your mom.”
“Right.” It was he himself who had filled out the application, six months before. To replace a nurse they couldn’t afford.
“I’m also here to check up on various reports that have been forwarded