Grapevine Wasps
David is a teddy bear with a blue shirt and a big
voice. Some days, his voice ricochets
across the thin wood-panelling of our shared house. Other days, it’s husky and
faint from exhaustion.
Today, it’s husky and faint.
“Leslie, get down here and gather the clothes off the
floor, before they turn to shit.”
A lone lawn mower cuts through the summer haze.
“Leslie….LES-LAAAAAAY!”
I hear pounding footsteps from upstairs. Leslie’s voice materializes.
“Dad. I’ll do it when I get back. Promise.”
The thud of the
screen door marks Leslie’s swift departure.
David gasps between steps along the basement hallway.
His rubber shoes squeak against the soaked carpet. Puddles of black water edge
out and then recede back into the pink folds. They’re reminders of the aged
plumbing, and the rainy summer.
David occupies the main floor of our rented four-bedroom
bungalow, along with his teenage son, Leslie, and a big black Labrador named
Mushka. He used to be a mechanic, until
a heart condition made him unsuitable to work.
David collects disability cheques. His son is about to enter his final
year in high school.
Sam and I are his ‘cell mates’, or so he calls us. We
live in the basement’s two bedrooms, with a shared kitchen, bathroom and
laundry. We pay cheap rent. Just like David.
Every night, David and Leslie fight about where Leslie
will live when he goes to college.
Leslie wants to live away from home.
He assures his father that he will pay for rent and tuition with his
part- time job at the bank.
David insists
that Leslie will be mooching off his dad soon enough after the first year. He tells Leslie that it’s better off to stay
home for college, to save money.
“Remember what your grandmother says. It’s good to be
nice, but nice doesn’t pay the bills.
What kind of skill do you have to show the world, huh? Or do you think it’s
easy to work and study at the same time?”
David staggers up each creaking step to the main floor. As
he reaches the top stair, he pauses to poke his cane into a cobweb buried in
the corner. A lone centipede scuttles up
the wall, now evicted from its hiding place.
“Promise me never
to kill the centipedes,” David mutters.
A smile creases his thick lips. “They eat the spider eggs. Population
control.”
We both exit the basement’s rear entrance. David shields his eyes from the harsh sun. He
sighs before limping to the open garage.
Bags of clothing, shoes and books line the inner walls
of David’s garage. There is so much stuff
in bags that there is hardly any room for a car.
David’s Chevy bakes outside, in the mid-August heat.
“Tell you what,” David whispers, “Since my ungrateful
son won’t help me, why don’t you take these out to the front and put them on
display for the yard sale?”
I pause. I remember the stack of library books I need to
return by day’s end. I want to avoid fines.
David clears his throat.
“If you can help me schlep this stuff, I’ll give you and
Sam ten bucks each. Plus, you both get to choose something from the sale.”
“Okay,” I concede. It’s the weekend. At least I don’t
need to work for two days.
But I doubt if Sam is able to help. Sam is a machinist from
Sri Lanka. He wanted to be an engineer, but then he dropped out before
graduating from university in Sri Lanka. Sam has lived in Toronto for five
years. He works strange shifts, smokes a lot, and drinks a lot.
I don’t imagine Sam would have the energy to fold baby
clothes, after a long day in front of a lathe.
I didn’t hear Sam
leave this morning. He normally slams the bathroom door and spits out phlegm in
the shower. That usually wakes me up. I wonder if he left earlier than usual. I
savor the momentary quiet of the empty basement in the early morning.
David arranges
two tables in the front yard. His new girlfriend, Linda, sits primly between the
tables. She folds tank tops into neat bunches.
Linda is in her fifties. She wears a black dress with a
matching sun hat, to protect her fair skin and bobbed hair.
Linda purses her lips. She doesn’t look up when David
and I unload our bags onto the table.
“Larry, these clothes have got to be over thirty years
old.” She holds up a blue and red Spider Man t-shirt. Tiny holes pepper the
inner sleeves and shoulders.
I wonder whether they were from moths, or just the wear
and tear of children’s play. And I wonder why David’s girlfriend calls him Larry.
David shrugs. “Hey, they will do just fine. Some people
think these are collectibles, you know. I see them re-sell it on e-bay.”
“To unsuspecting kids with credit cards,” Linda snarls.
“Hey, it’s an original. And it’s a steal.”
Linda pulls a long face and continues to fold the
clothes. Soon they form little coloured bunches across the tables. They look
like baby cotton bunnies alongside the musty record albums and old electronic
gadgets.
David’s Labrador, Mushka, claws at the screen door and
whimpers. David hobbles up the front steps and opens the door. The dog lunges
toward David, nearly knocking him over. David wraps his free arm around Mushka and
kisses his head.
“My baby,” he cries. His voice fades into the house. The
dog follows at his feet. The scratch of claws against linoleum mingles with the
tap of the wooden cane.
Cars slow down as the tables fill with more clothes and used
articles. But not too many people stop.
The elderly neighbour across the street pauses at her
porch. She plops on her chair, puts down her coffee, narrows her eyes in my
direction, and thrusts a newspaper in front of her face.
David stumbles back outside with Mushka at his heels. He
wears a Yankees baseball cap to protect his face against the sun. His nods when he recognizes a few of the cars.
But some of them look sketchy, especially the dark cars with tinted
windows. David snaps the shades onto his
glasses and lowers the lid of his cap.
David parks on a deck chair beside me. I dust off books
and stack them up in a row. I try to arrange them in some semblance of order:
historical fiction, house-repair, music. There are no philosophy or literary books
in the pile. I strain to find something that interests me.
A stack of
romance books fills a big shoebox. Numbers grace their side bindings. A small
piece of masking tape binds them together. It reads: set of twenty, fifteen
dollars.
I scratch my head. “Where did you get these?”
“I bought them for my ex-wife years ago, when we were
young. You know, the good old days.” David rubs his hand across his round hairy
potbelly.
David takes out his wallet from his back pocket. He
shows me a faded picture of a young couple. David’s face looks unrecognizable,
without his sunglasses and beard.
“I don’t know what happened. I did everything I could
for Barbara. Took care of her, gave her a roof. What more could I have done?”
David leans toward me and whispers. “You know, you and
Sam are lucky. You are used to being by yourselves. It’s been five years now. I
never did get used to living alone.”
David gazes at the piles of clothes and antiques. He
waves at the passing cars. Nobody waves back.
“Few years ago, I stopped going to the Synagogue. Then they complained I wasn’t devoted enough. I’m a single working father. What could I do? I was too busy to go. And tired. But people talk.”
“Few years ago, I stopped going to the Synagogue. Then they complained I wasn’t devoted enough. I’m a single working father. What could I do? I was too busy to go. And tired. But people talk.”
I nod.
“Yeah, yeah. It must be hard,” I say.
My legs start to feel sore from standing for so long. I
rock my heels from side to side.
I think about the
Jewish community of Bathurst and Sheppard, where we live. Everyone must know each other. I feel lucky
to be anonymous.
David looks down at his cane and at the Labrador sitting
at his feet. “Now I can’t even work anymore. They think I’m faking all this. I
tell them that if I were to walk longer than this street, I would drop dead.
But they don’t believe me.”
Mushka levels his sad eyes in my direction. David pats
his head.
“He’s got to be the gentlest dog I’ve seen,” I point
out. “He doesn’t bark or anything.”
David laughs. “Of course he doesn’t. He’s the only one
who doesn’t give me a headache. Doncha, Mushka? You’re my baby, Mushka. Mwa,
mwa, mwa.”
David’s eyes twinkle as he strokes Mushka’s silky fur.
Mushka sinks beside his water bowl and sprawls his back legs out into the
driveway. Flies swarm around his closing
eyes. Muskha’s eyelids jerk and twitch.
The afternoon arrives. People start to come in droves.
Many of them don’t intend to buy anything, but they mingle at the tables. A few
people marvel at the old transistor radios and Polaroid cameras in boxes
underneath the tables. The crowd creates the impression that something is
happening.
A young girl in a pink t-shirt and cut-off shorts
inspects the book pile. She discovers the ten- volume romance collection and
signals to her two girlfriends. The three of them start to giggle and blush.
“How much for these?” the girl asks. She twirls her body
around to no one in particular.
“Fifteen,” David says. His face hardly shifts an inch toward
the young bidder.
The girls confer with each other for several seconds. A
few heads shake, followed by whispers.
“Ten?” the pink shirted girl asks.
“Thirteen,” David snaps.
“Thirteen…such an unlucky number,” The girl strokes her
left index finger across her bottom lip. “Twelve fifty?”
“Unlucky for you.
I don’t carry coins.” David crosses his arms. “This is vintage romance. Twelve fifty? C’mon.”
The girls huddle again in a circle. Finally, one open
hand emerges from the tussle, with a few crumpled bills and a couple of
quarters.
Twelve dollars
and fifty cents.
David hesitates, then whips out his right arm and pockets
the money into his trousers.
“You girls should consider yourselves lucky that I’m so
nice.” The right side of his lip curls into a half-smile.
The pink-shirted girl marches away with the books across
her chest. Her nose cocks up to the sky. She looks triumphant. Her two
girlfriends trail behind her.
“I must have paid twice that much for those damned
things. And that was in the sixties.” David strokes his beard.
“I’m sure she appreciates it,” I reply. “She looked all
set, like she will never need to date again.”
“Yeah, well,
that’ll buy me dog food for Mushka. And maybe some leftover dog food for
myself.”
Sales
start to shoot up. People line up and down the tables. They bid and grab their
goods. Linda heads inside the house for plastic bags.
Someone
asks if Mushka’s water dish is for sale.
David chuckles. His humor has
arisen, like the scorching sun.
A white van pulls over to the curb. It looks like an
armored money truck. The man inside gets out, pauses in front of the clothes,
and spots a batman shirt. It must have belonged to Leslie when he was a young
boy.
The man pulls out a five dollar bill and hands it to
Linda. He carries the shirt back to his truck and smacks it onto the dashboard
like a dishrag. He pulls away with a big grin on his face.
David looks at me and shrugs.
“What the hell was that?” he whispers.
David is happy again.
***
At
sundown, David and Linda truck the remaining clothes and books to the garage
and backyard. Linda takes a deep breath and hunches over the picnic table. She
braces herself for tomorrow: Day Two of
the annual Yard Sale.
Sam comes home at quarter to eight. He wears his
green plaid flannel shirt and denim jeans. His skinny body droops from
exhaustion. He stoops to carry the heavier boxes back. Between the four of us,
he’s the strongest. But now, he looks like he is about to collapse.
Sam jokes
about trying to apply for a job at Linamar, a popular auto manufacturer on the
West end. He grumbles about how the receptionist sang ‘Linamar’ in a cheery
voice. He mocks her condescending demeanor. The job hunt descends into a black comedy.
David counts the cash in a plain white envelope. He
stuffs the wad into his pocket and paces around the backyard.
“Not bad at all,” he mutters.
Linda
leans her head into her left palm. She
gazes at the vines curled around the tressle.
“Larry, I just don’t get it.” She sneers. “You guys have had these grapes in your backyard, and now look at them.”
“Larry, I just don’t get it.” She sneers. “You guys have had these grapes in your backyard, and now look at them.”
We
look at the grapes in the falling light. Many have shrivelled into ripened husks.
Wasps swarm around the remaining bunches. Most of them look rotten.
“Hey,
not my department,” David says. “I can’t eat too many of those things, with my
diabetes.”
David
looks back at me and Sam. “You two spring chickens should have eaten them long
ago. God knows you both need it.”
“Oh,”
I pause. “I didn’t know if they’re safe and stuff.”
“Of
course they’re safe,” David moans. “They don’t have pesticides. They’re safer
than the store bought grapes.”
“Not
now,” Sam mutters. “All those bloody wasps probably have diseases. I hate
insects. We used to have huge insects in Sri Lanka, where I was growing up. I
get sick from bugs very easily. Centipedes, ugh…”
Sam
shudders. He shakes his head and staggers down the stairway into his room.
“What
a waste,” David says. “I told you guys before. You should have eaten them while
they were still free. Nobody gets anything for free anymore. I’m going inside.”
Linda
follows David up the stairs into the main floor.
My
basement room is cold and musty. I feel the relief of the air conditioning
after the humid day. I start to feel burn marks on my bare arms and the tip of
my nose. I regret not putting on sunscreen in the morning.
I can
hear the sounds of a television set upstairs. Electronic static fills the air.
Leslie has returned home with his girlfriend. They giggle in the bedroom. Beeps
and gunshots signal another round of video games. The Backstreet Boys play in
the background.
“Leslie,
I told you to pick the shit off the floor downstairs. Did you do it yet?”
David’s voice booms again. The day’s success restores his vigor.
“Dad, not
now. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“That’s not what you told me this morning! You do it now, or I’m gonna kick you out!”
“That’s not what you told me this morning! You do it now, or I’m gonna kick you out!”
Footsteps
pound down the stairs into the basement. I hear arms clutching at a mass of
crumpled clothes. The dryer door slams.
Footsteps
amble back upstairs again. The upstairs door
slams.
Leslie
and his girlfriend giggle again. The TV volume increases. More gunshot sounds
ensue.
David
sings a song in Hebrew. His voice overpowers the video sounds. I don’t
understand the words at all, but it sounds like opera. I make a note to ask him
the meaning one day. I am certain that the song is religious. Its beauty surrounds
me.
The
house fills with mercy.
