Happenstance
It was way back in the 20th century that I originally wrote this short story. On a whim, I decided to submit it to a contest sponsored by the Valley Writers’ Guild in the Ottawa Valley in the year 2000. A few months later a phone call (on a land line!) came from out of the blue. The gentleman on the line told me that I had won first place in the contest ($500! As much as my first book advance!) out of approximately 100 submissions.
I was so gobsmacked I could barely even speak. I hung up in shock and dismay, then promptly called him back to make certain that he had called the right person. Me? And yes, me! I had actually won. The story is about an elderly woman named Alice who lives with her son and daughter-in-law, and can’t give up her lifetime smoking vice.
Fast forward a little over twenty years. My mother, who lives in a retirement home, sneaks out onto the balcony one winter afternoon for a quick smoke, which is prohibited. She’s already been warned twice, but she’s a stubborn old broad. Well doesn’t she slip and fall on the ice on her balcony, banging her noggin. She isn’t wearing her call button around her neck the way she’s supposed to all the time. It takes her an hour to drag herself back inside.
My mom turned 95 this year. She still has a couple of smokes a day. But she makes sure she always goes outside, like a good girl. She’s one tough cookie! Please keep reading and you’ll understand why I’ve included this little anecdote. Thanks!
Like Smoke
By Deb Loughead
Alice wants a cigarette. But her daughter-in-law’s voice hovers in the air as she stands staring out the window at the winter morning, makes her hesitate for an instant. Frigid gusts of wind stir up sparkling snow cyclones on the frozen parking lot below the apartment building. Sunlight glints on the icicles that jut like yeti teeth from the balcony above. The temperature has dropped from the freezing point to minus 22 degrees overnight.
Alice’s hands tremble when she lights the cigarette. She’s thought twice about smoking it inside, but today is far too cold to stand out there. Winter has finally swept in over the weekend, put a strangle-hold on January and doesn’t plan on letting go until spring, by the looks of it. Up until now Alice has been able to step out onto the balcony clad only in a sweater because of the unseasonable mildness, has been able to indulge her vice without the worry of stinking up the apartment.
The smell always lingers whenever she smokes inside, even if she sits in the bathroom, shuts the door and turns on the fan. Isabel still catches the scent when she gets home from school. Because she’s unaccustomed to cigarette smoke, because her pristine lungs have never been exposed to it, even second-hand. Alice thinks the woman might have grown up in a plastic bubble, protected from the hazards of the real world. Isabel says that she smells it on her clothes, on her furniture, in her drapes, then reprimands Alice like she would a child, in her grating teacher’s voice.
“I asked you not to smoke inside, Mrs. Best. It’s disgusting. It gets all over the furniture, in my hair and my clothes. My students smell it on me at school and think it’s me who smokes. Why don’t you quit. It just might kill you someday, you know.”
Alice opens the door just a little to let fresh air sweep through the apartment. She pushes her mouth up to the crack to exhale, and watches the smoke quickly dissipate in the winter wind. She stands there, leaning on her cane, to smoke the entire cigarette. A scarf is wrapped for protection around her thin neck and she wears a toque pulled low over her ears to protect from the draft. Back when she was a child, a draft had killed her baby sister. Little Mary, fresh out of the bath, and caught in a draft from an open window. Died two days later, because of the draft, everyone said. In the middle of summer yet. Alice avoids drafts.
She stubs the butt in an ashtray, then hobbles to the bathroom to flush away the evidence. She will repeat this routine every half hour. She would like to do it every fifteen minutes, but gets tired standing so much. The arthritis that ravages her body has played havoc with the tiny bones in her feet. It’s impossible to stand for too long. And she hasn’t the strength to drag a chair over to sit on. Besides, Isabel would notice the tracks on the carpet, and reprimand her again. Every evening before bed, she vacuums up the footprints that their slippers have pressed into the pile so the carpet will always look brand new, untrod upon, show-room perfect. Isabel likes everything in the right place, nothing disturbed, always neat and tidy. Alice is sure that Isabel catches the dust before it falls on the furniture, too. She would like to call her daughter-in-law anal-retentive, but doesn’t dare.
Alice wishes that she didn’t have to live here, to complicate the woman’s orderly life just because her body is breaking down on her, because she’s become a hostage to her pain. She doesn’t ever feel welcome. Isabel seems to have a hard time disguising her impatience behind a twisted smile. She’s always wiping up, sweeping up, picking up behind her, disposing of any trail that attests to her existence, as though she’d like to do the same thing to Alice. But she can’t, because of her husband.
Alice’s son David is doting. He tolerates her imposition on his life, had insisted on it, in fact, when he’d realized how serious her condition had become during her Christmas visit, how she could barely lower herself into a chair and needed a cane now.
“You can’t go home again, Mom,” he’d told her in a gentle way. “You’ll have to stay with us until we can find a place for you. You’re not safe in your own home in that condition.”
He’d sprung it on her just like that, sitting by the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, and from the corner of her eye she’d seen Isabel’s whole body stiffen. Now she’s always whispering to David, nudging him when Alice does something Isabel disapproves of, which is often, imploring with her eyes for David to fix things. For Alice, the last three weeks already feel like three years. And probably, she figures, for Isabel, too.
David’s smiles are real. He hugs her every morning, kisses her cheek, tries to help her whenever she needs it, is gentle and understanding. He even supplies her with cigarettes, a couple of packs a week. He knows what it’s like, because he used to smoke himself, until Isabel got her hands on him. And Alice has seen the expression on Isabel’s face when he brings them home. If looks could kill.
Mid-morning, Alice is thirsty and struggles with the bottle of grape juice. Her hands don’t work so well. They’re stiff and uncooperative, like trying to control a set of unfamiliar tools. Alice has heard that grape juice can be beneficial to arthritics, so she drinks some every day. She’s heard Isabel complain about the price, and David quickly stifle her comments with a tight grimace.
Today her hands are particularly bad, probably because of the sudden cold weather. She tries wrapping a dishcloth around the lid, to no avail. Isabel keeps reminding her about the smoking, how it’s linked to arthritis, how if she quit her symptoms would probably improve and her hands would work again. But Alice likes smoking and has no intention of quitting. Ever. It’s the only thing left that she can do now. She can’t even knit anymore, her fingers are so rigid and gnarled. Just trying to hold a book is a cumbersome and uncomfortable procedure, turning the pages an exercise in futility. The television and smoking are her only salvation.
Alice lowers herself onto a kitchen chair and tries to hold the bottle between her thighs as she twists the cap. She watches in disbelief as the bottle slips through her legs and smashes on the ceramic floor. Glass and grape juice spray in every direction. Her knitted slippers are saturated, and some has splattered the ivory dining room carpet like droplets of blood.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Alice whispers.
She struggles to pick up the glass, first. There are shards everywhere, glinting like broken bits of ice on the ceramic. She drops the pieces carefully into a paper bag that she’s placed inside a plastic one. The chink of each piece is satisfying, because she knows she’s making progress. But it’s the last piece, a jagged one that slices into her thumb like a honed blade. She drops the bag of glass. The first dribbles of blood spatter on the floor and blend in with the grape juice.
“Shit,” she murmurs. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” She wraps the dishcloth around the cut, and watches the blood seep through.
Alice removes her sodden slippers in the kitchen and hobbles to the bathroom, leaking blood. Her socks have soaked up some grape juice; she leaves a faint red and purple trail on the carpet all the way down the hall.
“I’ll pay for the cleaning bill. I’ll pay for it myself.”
In the bathroom, she fumbles with the roll of gauze and the tape in the medicine cabinet as her blood drips into the sink. She tightly wraps her thumb with layer upon layer of the gauze and then secures it with white tape until it begins to resemble a crooked cast. Shaking, she sits down on the toilet. White dots burst across her line of vision like shooting stars and she closes her eyes, breathes deeply until the dizzy sensation ebbs. She fetches a thick sponge, then the galvanized bucket from under the sink. She fills it with cold water in the bathtub.
Just lifting the bucket out of the tub is a challenge, even though it’s only half full. She hooks it over her trembling arm then shuffles down the hall leaning on her cane for support, careful not to let water slosh over the sides because of her uneven gait. So careful that she doesn’t notice the footstool and stumbles over it, crashing to the floor as awkward as a felled tree. She lands on the bucket then rolls over onto the carpet and groans. The puddle of water slowly seeps into the thirsty ivory fibres.
It’s nearly ten minutes before Alice can struggle to her feet. Her ribs ache from the fall and she is sure they are bruised, if not broken. Her thumb has begun to throb and the bandage turned crimson. But all she can think of right now is how good a cigarette would feel.
“Maybe I should call David at work,” she murmurs. “He could come and help me before Isabel gets home. Rent a carpet cleaner, maybe. She wouldn’t even have to know what happened. It’s only 10:30. Might even be enough time for the carpet to dry up. I’ll call. After my cigarette.”
Alice tugs on her sweater that’s draped over a chair by the door, careful not to smear any blood on the sleeve. She’s thought twice about smoking inside and decided against it this time. She’s done enough damage for one day, made enough mistakes. She lights the cigarette, tucks the packet and lighter into her pocket, then steps out onto the balcony, leaving the door open just a crack. The wind pushes a handful of icy air down her throat as she takes her first satisfying puff. She exhales and watches the smoke diffuse in a quick swirl of wind.
Alice’s hair dances in the gusts and she realizes that she’s forgotten her hat indoors. Her scarf, too, and her exposed neck is wrapped in a frigid grip. But she barely feels the cold. The hot throb of her thumb, the ache of her ribs, seem to have dispersed through the rest of her body, spread their tortuous warmth to her extremities so she can scarcely feel that other pain. She feels almost liberated by this pain, this discernable pain caused by her own clumsiness, not enigmatic like the tenacious arthritis that came from nowhere and grew. This pain is real and temporary and she revels in it, puffing on her cigarette out there on the balcony, flicking ashes into the wind, blowing the ephemeral smoke towards the tattered clouds that scud across a frosty sky.
When the balcony door slams shut in a severe gust, Alice’s reverie bursts like a frozen pipe. Because she knows the door is locked. She’s forgotten to release the little button on the handle before stepping outside. Overcome by a sudden weariness, she sinks into one of the cold plastic balcony chairs.
“I wonder what Isabel will think of all this when she gets home,” Alice murmurs into the wind. With fumbling fingers she lights another cigarette, cupping her bare hand around the lighter’s wavering flame.
* * *
John Spencer Hill Award for Fiction, 2000, First Place, Valley Writers’ Guild
Published in ‘Storyteller—Canada’s Short Story Magazine’, Winter 2003
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