The Geranium Girls (3 page)

Joe Paine was something of a celebrity, but Beryl didn’t know it until Stan told her. They were sitting outside at the Second Cup on Graham Avenue with their bulging mailbags next to them. Beryl Kyte and Stan Socz were letter carriers. This stop for coffee had become a ritual for them, as their routes began in the same section of downtown Winnipeg.

According to Stan, Joe wrote a column in a magazine for animal lovers; the column was called
Doggie Dog Days
. Stan subscribed to the magazine and sang Joe’s praises.

“He’s very well thought of in animal circles,” he said.

“Don’t you mean animal lovers’ circles, Stan?”

“Well, both then. I take my guys to see him and they love him. The only trouble is, he’s so busy because he’s so well liked. I doubt if he’s taking any new patients.”

“We’re quite happy with Dr. Swirsky,” Beryl said. “Can we please not talk about Joe anymore? I’m trying to not think about Saturday.”

The morning was hot and humid. Summer lay heavy on the downtown streets, its weight stilling the air. Sweat trickled down both their faces.

“We’re going to perish out here today,” Beryl said. “It must be thirty degrees already.”

“Maybe you should have stayed home for a while,” Stan said. “For today, at least; Mondays are so hard.”

“And do what? I’d be sitting there alone, freaking my own self out in one way or another. Coming to work helps.”

“Yeah, this job is a riot,” Stan said.

“Well, once you get out of that hell-hole it’s not so bad.” Beryl nodded in the direction of the main post office. “And at least in there this morning I could forget about Saturday for a few minutes here and there. There’s so much other stupid stuff going on all the time.

“I think too much on the street, though,” she went on, picking Stan’s cigarette up from the ashtray where it lay burning, setting it down again.

It could be a lonely job, delivering mail. Once you hit the streets, it was just “good mornings,” maybe helping the odd tourist with directions, some small talk: “Cold enough for ya?” “Hot enough for ya?” “Got any cheques in there for me?”

Stan knew all about Joe’s cat, Rollo.

“Dr. Paine’s been writing about him for years,” he said. “He’s gotta be devastated by that cat’s death.”

“Yeah, he is, actually. I probably should have been nicer to him, but I thought he might be inventing it.”

“Jesus, Beryl.”

A senior citizen who had bright orange hair and was wearing a great deal of makeup approached their table. “So this is why we get our mail so late in the day. You spend all your time drinking coffee with your cohort.”

Beryl recognized the woman from a seniors’ residence on her route. She smiled. “Hi, Mrs. Wren. You caught me, I guess.” She thought the old woman was kidding.

“I’m going to report what I’ve seen here today. Don’t doubt that for a minute. The very idea! Lounging about in a coffee shop while I’m waiting for my phone bill. Next you’ll all be going on strike again.” She shuffled off.

“I’m entitled to a coffee break!” Beryl called after her. “Bitch,” she said quietly.

“Ignore her,” Stan said. “She’s just jealous because she saw you sitting with such a handsome guy.”

Beryl smiled. “It’s time I got going, Stan.” She began strapping herself into her bag. “I’ll see you later.”

“I’ve seen parachutes fastened on people less securely,” Stan said.

Straps criss-crossed over Beryl’s shoulders to even out the weight and another one secured the bag at her waist. She had a double bag on order, one with two pouches so she could divide her mail evenly on both sides of her body. She looked forward to its arrival.

“My body thanks me for my efforts, Stan. You’ll be sorry one day you didn’t behave more like me.”

“Heaven forbid,” Stan said, “that I should behave more like you.” He stood up and slung his thirty-five pound bag over one shoulder. And lit another cigarette.

“Anyway, I’m not going to live long enough to be sorry.” He grinned.

“Stan?”

“Yeah?”

“I wish I hadn’t given him my phone number. He called twice yesterday. I don’t want him to phone me anymore.”

“Who?”

“Joe!”

Stan smiled. “Don’t worry, Beryl. He’s a veterinarian.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Beryl watched him lope off towards The Bay, noticing the stoop of his shoulders for the first time. She was sure he was smaller than he used to be and she worried that what he said might be true, about not living long enough to be sorry. Please don’t die, Stan. But she could imagine it happening; she could picture herself at his funeral.

He turned around just then, as if he knew she was looking and gave a little one-finger wave. Beryl wanted to run after him, hug him to her chest. But they didn’t have a hugging-type relationship.

So she began the walk down Edmonton Street, fixed tightly and sensibly into her bag, like a parachutist.

Beryl was stung by a wasp on a Saturday in the middle of June, one week exactly after she tripped over the girl in St. Vital Park. The wasp bumbled its way between her sandal and her freshly bathed foot. A prick that could have been a pine needle or a tiny shard of glass, and then the long sting that could have been nothing else.

“Fuck!” she cried. “What is it with me and my feet!”

The last time she had been stung her foot had swelled up like a foot balloon. She had feared it would keep on till it exploded.

Sitting down where she stood, in the middle of the sidewalk on Taché Avenue, she removed her sandal and the crippled wasp fumbled away to certain death. Three golden drops of poison balanced on the tender flesh of Beryl’s instep next to the white circle where the wasp had stuck the stinger in. He’d have been fighting for his life at that point, she knew. Or was it a she wasp? Was it only the females who stung, like mosquitoes? Beryl always felt slightly embarrassed when she heard scientific information like that, that cast the female of the species in an unpleasant light. As though she and female mosquitoes were part of a giant sisterhood whose sole purpose was to inflict discomfort. And pain, if wasps belonged.

Beryl figured the sight of three tiny globules of liquid pain was a good sign. They weren’t inside her. She brushed them away and decided not to try to squeeze out the poison that had entered her foot. In the
Free Press
the other day there had been a wasp article that said that squeezing sometimes makes the sting worse.

She put her shoe back on and continued her walk to the drugstore: a good destination under the circumstances. One of the pharmacists would be sure to give her some good advice. They were a lot more forthcoming than they used to be. Maybe the handsome one with skin the colour of creamy coffee would be there. Beryl had admired him from a distance since the first time she saw him there, several months ago.

Her friend Hermione’s shop was just across the road and Beryl had planned to visit her today, but that would have to wait.

The pain wavered a bit and after a few minutes settled a notch or two below the worst. Another good sign. Her foot was reddening for sure, but not growing bigger. She favoured it as she walked and worried about movement making it worse.

It was the handsome pharmacist who served her.

“I’ve been stung by a wasp,” she told him. “I’m a bit nervous because the last time it happened my foot swelled up to seven times its normal size.”

The pharmacist left his perch behind the counter and hurried around to her side.

“When were you stung?” he asked.

“Just a few minutes ago,” Beryl said.

The pharmacist, whose name tag said “Dhani Tata” guided her — pushed her really — to a bench where an elderly couple sat waiting for their prescriptions.

“Excuse us!” he announced and edged Beryl onto the bench next to them. The pharmacist seemed unsure on his feet, but he fell purposefully to his knees in front of Beryl.

The old woman began struggling to her feet but Dhani encouraged the couple to stay put.

“Where were you stung?” he asked Beryl.

“On my foot again, the right one,” she said, and showed him the spot.

He removed her sandal and placed it on the floor.

“I’d like to try something now, but only with your permission,” he said.

“Yes? What?” Beryl asked. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’d like to suck the poison from your foot as best I can, to try to minimize the reaction that way. It sometimes works for snake bites so I think it might be worth a try,” he explained.

“Well…if you think it’s worth a try, by all means,” Beryl said. “Are you sure you want to?” She looked at her foot.

“Yes, quite sure.”

And then his mouth was on her instep drawing out the poison. He spit once onto the floor.

“Sorry for spitting,” he said. “I’ll clean it up after.”

The elderly couple observed with interest. A few other people had gathered by now and they watched as the pharmacist fastened his lips once more onto the soft inside of Beryl’s foot. He sucked hard for all he was worth and spit again.

“I can taste it!”

He sucked till he couldn’t taste it anymore.

Beryl felt relaxed. She wanted to close her eyes against the small gaping group, and lie against the chest of this odd man who had so willingly taken her foot into his mouth.

He returned her foot to her.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“I hope it helps.”

She held her foot up in front of her and liked what she saw. Beryl thought of her feet as her best feature, though she had learned to keep that point of pride to herself. When she was a teenager she had mentioned it to a boyfriend once and he had said, “Nobody has nice feet.”

It had hurt her feelings, but hadn’t stopped her from admiring her own feet. If she was having a bad day, one of those days when she hated her face and her life and all the things she had done, and more things that she hadn’t done, her feet sometimes helped — just the sight of them.

“You have beautiful feet,” Dhani said quietly, so no one but Beryl could hear.

“Thank you,” she replied.

“The show’s over, folks.” He spoke loudly now and the crowd loosened up a bit. A disappointment to those who arrived too late to see what the excitement was about.

“It’s still going to hurt.” He helped Beryl to stand up. “But I’ll bet it won’t hurt as much. Come and sit behind the counter with me for a few minutes and we’ll talk about pain.”

She obeyed. She wanted very badly to talk about pain with this man. What could be better! She followed as he toddled along. He had a peculiar way of walking, a bit Chaplinesque, Beryl decided. He leaned backwards, as though to keep himself from falling forwards, but almost to the point of tipping from overcorrection.

“Careful,” she felt like saying, but didn’t.

She sat on a chair and Dhani sat across from her on a stool. Two other pharmacists or pharmacists’ helpers bustled about behind the counter. They smiled at Beryl and didn’t seem to think she was out of place. Perhaps Dhani made a habit of acts such as these.

“Okay, so pain?” Dhani said.

Beryl felt again the hard round bone of the mushroom girl pressing into the arch of her other foot, the left one. A duller, achier pain than the sharp sting of the wasp.

“I came to think of it differently,” he said, “before I had my toes done.”

Ah, Beryl thought. So there’s something wrong with his feet.

“Yes,” Dhani said and Beryl tried to figure out from the way her mouth felt if she had spoken aloud. No, she was sure she hadn’t.

“I had rheumatoid arthritis in my toes,” he went on. “It was so bad there was nothing to do but chop them off.”

Beryl let out a little gasp.

Dhani held up one of his own feet.

“There are special slippers inside my shoes, with toes built in. False toes all in a clump. A malleable clump so it doesn’t hurt my stumps.

“Anyway,” he continued, “the business with my toes was the worst pain I ever had. Not so much after they were lopped off, but during the time leading up to the operation. Pain killers weren’t very effective and, anyway, I didn’t want to end up in Winnipeg’s version of the Betty Ford Center.”

He smiled at Beryl. “So I came to think of pain a little differently.”

“I’m sorry about your toes,” Beryl said. “You seem very young to have rheumatoid arthritis.”

“Yes, I am young,” Dhani said. “Just thirty-nine now and the operation was four years ago.” He held up both shoes this time. “I’m still getting used to my new feet.

“Anyway, I decided to begin from scratch with the pain. Pretend I had just met it and treat it differently from the vantage point of this new start. It was a presence all right, one that couldn’t be ignored. But it didn’t have to be the boss like it seemed to have been for so long.

“I didn’t call it pain anymore. I called it Roberta. Roberta was my powerful companion. I felt her presence but it wasn’t unpleasant anymore. It simply was.”

Beryl wanted to ask why he gave the pain a woman’s name. Was all pain part of the same sisterhood that she and mosquitoes and maybe wasps belonged to? But she let him go on.

“Roberta came and went as she always had. I started to miss her a little when she vanished completely and I greeted her heartily when she returned. She became a bit like a big unwieldy dog who’s more trouble than she’s worth but whom you love to pieces.”

“You loved your pain to pieces?” Beryl asked.

Her foot began to throb and she wanted to raise it and rest it on a pillow, or on Dhani’s knee. She wanted to sleep. The talk of his relationship with pain was all very well, but she knew she wasn’t the type of person who could pull off something like that.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t have the patience,” she said. “I’d succumb, like I’m succumbing now.”

Dhani leapt up.

“I’m sorry,” he said and lurched over to a small freezer where he reached in and came back with a cold pack. He wrapped it in a towel and pressed it to the sting and then sat down again with her foot upon his knee.

“The ice should help and I’ll give you a couple of Tylenols before you go.”

“Is it the female of the species, do you know,” Beryl asked, “the female wasp that does the stinging?”

“I don’t know,” Dhani said.

She longed to talk to him about the thing that had happened to her left foot last Saturday, the other thing she’d stepped on. She would tell him, but not just now. For sure she would be seeing him again.

He was thirty-nine. Was that too old for her? She was just twenty-nine last November. Ten years difference. When she was fifty-nine, he’d be sixty-nine. When she was eighty-nine, he’d be ninety-nine. Georges had been older too, but not by so much. That hadn’t turned out very well. But he was nothing like Dhani.

“Call me later and let me know how your foot is,” Dhani said as she was leaving. “I’m here till nine.”

On her way home Beryl realized she had forgotten to pick up the shampoo that she had been heading to the drugstore for in the first place. The coupon was folded inside the pocket of her shorts.

Certain things inside her had begun changing since last Saturday. She couldn’t describe the changes or even be absolutely sure what they were, just that they were there. Or maybe the whole of her was shifting, not just things inside her. She didn’t know.

And she was missing her dad for the first time in her life. She hadn’t even particularly liked him when he was alive, but now she wished she could ask him things and apologize for being the way she was.

Plus, she was doing things she’d never done before, like cutting out coupons, for one: she’d never done that. And washing her hair twice a day. That’s why she needed more shampoo. She was counting on getting over that one. It was too much.

Please, don’t let there be a message from Joe, Beryl prayed, as she unlocked the door and stuck her key back under the flower pot. He had phoned every day for the past week and she didn’t want to talk to him. She was never friendly and was starting to be rather short with him. She wanted to shout: “Can’t the most popular man in the pet world find someone who actually wants to talk to him?” But she didn’t.

There was no message from Joe. But there was a hang-up. Beryl dialed *69 to see if she could find out who it was, but the taped voice started with the “We’re sorry” business.

Maybe Joe was starting to get that he was bothering her.

Beryl phoned Hermione to let her know she wouldn’t be by today and why.

“No problemo,” said her friend. “Put your foot up and relax.”

Beryl put on her favourite Little Feat disc, the one with “Willin’” on it, the live version, and lay down on the couch to rest her foot. Her two cats, Dusty and Jude, joined her there. She drifted off, with Lowell George’s voice, singing — telling her how he’d driven every kind of rig that’d ever been made, how he’d driven down the back roads so he wouldn’t get weighed.