When the sun just barely grazed the horizon, dad had woken up and gotten himself ready for work. It wasn't often that he had a day off, sometimes he would take Sunday to relax, but he preferred to stay busy. I remained on the sofa for quite a long time, sleeping in until almost noon. It wasn't such a bad thing given that it was Saturday, but I hated to think how much time I had wasted simply in sleep. When I finally managed to wake-up, I was so groggy that I poured myself a cup of coffee in the hope of getting myself to be more alert. I was going to spend the afternoon with Elaine, as I often did on the weekend, and by the red blinking light on the answering machine she was clearly worried that I had forgotten.
Except I hadn't, I never would. My mind was elsewhere as I thought of the fact that Rechyl Caraswell was now dead. It pained me to think of her family and what they must have been going through, reliving the last few minutes that I had seen her and the fact that I could have, possibly, stopped it. I wanted to believe I could, but I wasn't able to fool myself for long. I had promised myself long ago that I would never try to stop a death, I thought I had learned my lesson, apparently that wasn't the case. I kept reminding myself that I did make a difference in how she died, and tried to hold tight to the comfort of knowing what the outcome of last night could have been.
I felt empty as I got myself ready and headed over to Elaine's house, unable to stop my thoughts from racing. As soon as Elaine made eye contact with me, she could tell something was bothering me. Even though Elaine had no idea what caused me to act the way that I did, she knew exactly what to do to bring me comfort. Whenever I was upset about a death or a premonition and I wasn't able to hide it, Elaine would take me into the attic of her house and go through all of her photo albums over the years. Something about seeing her life and how it had progressed made me happy, it took away from the fact that inside I felt as though I was being torn apart over and over again.
We flipped through the boxes of albums, each photograph held a very special memory and a story attached to it. Her favourite album was of the day she married Larry, often reminiscing about the excitement which in turn showed on her face, as if that day was happening all over again. I loved her wedding dress, which she still had to this day. The dress was a soft champange colour that was floor-length with long sheer sleeves adorned with flowery appliques, the neck dipped into a V while the waist was cinched in silk. The skirt was made of chiffon and the hemline flowed straight to the floor with no train, giving it an elegant look that could rarely be replicated. Elaine expressed that she always felt sad that her daughter Jane never wore it to her own wedding, wishing that it didn't have to sit in the attic until the moths ate away at every last fiber. I told her that it was the most beautiful dress that I had ever seen and maybe one day someone would wear it, to which she smiled and told me that if I wanted I could have it when I was ready. I would be lying if I said I didn't already think about it, but I never wanted to impose something like that on Elaine.
After awhile her back started to get sore and she didn't think she would be able to get down the stairs if she stayed in the attic for much longer, so I helped her downstairs to what she loved to call her chesterfield and prepared some tea for her. She turned on the radio and tried her best to knit, but she took more breaks than usual due to the pain in her hands. She never wanted to admit that in the last few months her arthritis was getting worse, but I was seeing more of it every day. Her hands would cramp up to the point where she wasn't able to move her fingers, which she would blame purely on the weather. I hated to think of her being alone, especially when I was working and unable to spend time with her. She would always try to convince me that she was fine, but there was no denying that there were many things she was unable to do without me. More often than not she would immediately ask me if I could help her to the bathroom as soon as I stepped foot in the door, which made me worry that she had to hold her urine all day until I came over. I wanted to discuss her looking into a home-care nurse, but after hearing her get upset about her daughter talking about putting her into a long-term care home I decided it was best not to push my luck. Elaine knew what she wanted, and she wanted to live the last few months of her life with dignity. I couldn't argue with that, because that was her final wish.
When I came back into the living-room with Elaine's hot cup of tea, she quickly hid the fact that she had been massaging her hands due to the pain. Without acknowledging that I had seen her nursing her sore hands, I grabbed the bottle of ibuprofen from the cabinet and handed her two. We had an unspoken rule not to ask too many questions about how she felt, instead it was easier to avoid confrontation and just give her what she needed to make it through the day. The radio chimed in the background, announcing that a single car accident had taken place in the early hours of the morning on a back road leading out of town. There was only one fatality, which confirmed what I had already known. The police weren't saying the identity yet due to the fact that not all of the family had been notified, but they did announce that it was a seventeen year old girl.
"Oh no, that's terrible," Elaine said, her voice pained. "I can't imagine what the family must be going through, and at such a young age."
I nodded, sitting down beside Elaine and clasping my hands between my legs. If I were a religious woman, I would have prayed at that moment. But I had a hard time finding God in such a cold and brutal world, my biggest thought always coming back to why any deity would allow death to happen the way that it does. Death is unforgiving, it doesn't discriminate, it doesn't make exceptions – we all die, and some of us unfortunately meet our end too soon. I wanted to believe, I really did, but maybe I was too angry to put faith in the way fate works.
Elaine had heard enough, turning off the radio and subsequently turning the television on. If there was one thing Elaine loved more than anything else, even more than dirty comedy movies, it was badly written Spanish soap operas from the early nineties. Her favourite revolved around a broken family that was richer than they knew what to do with, and how often money took precedence over love. She said she loved it so much because she couldn't understand what any of them were saying, so she liked to change the dialogue to fit her own stories for the characters. Throughout the hour long soap opera she would explain to me what was happening and what was being said, even if the scenes didn't always match up to what she was saying. I liked that her mind was so imaginative and that she was able to change the narrative to fit her own stories. I had asked her a few months ago why she didn't write her own book, but she told me that she wasn't nearly creative enough to make all of the words flow together. I told her that most times it doesn't matter how you put the words together, but instead how the words come together by the end of the book.
"Sergio is a handful, I tell you," Elaine remarked as the commercials came on, sighing as if the character had personally broken her heart. "First he thinks he can walk out of his mother's life without a word, then he goes on to marry some scam artist from Lithuania who clearly only wants to steal Sergio's share of his grandfather's inheritance. Sometimes he thinks far too much with his little head instead of his big head."
I laughed. It was the first time I had laughed since trying to save Rechyl, and it felt good to feel that release. "But the grandfather isn't dead yet?"
"Yet," Elaine added. "You really think Gabby is going to let him live for much longer? By God, we've seen her go to three different pharmacies in the last two episodes only to come back and hide a whole cabinet's worth of medication in her safe. It won't be long till Pop-Pop meets his maker."
"Is that his name – Pop-Pop? I thought it was Navid or something like that?"
"Of course it is, but he seems like a Pop-Pop type to me."
"Really? I don't know, but the whole killing his own daughter's beloved race horse Godfather style kind of tells me otherwise," I chuckled.
Elaine waved away the idea, her eyes still glued to the television as a new commercial flickered onto the screen. She almost dismissed what it was until something caught her attention, and suddenly she was like a child with excitement glittering all over her face. A sweet ballad began to play as a man looked out over a large body of water, seeing a dim green light flashing in the distance. A narrator described the character as always waiting to see if his true love would come back to him, that he was entirely devoted to her. The scene then flipped to the same man with a short-haired blonde woman as they went on a series of romantic endeavours together, only for the narrator to say that the woman belonged to someone else. The movie was set in the early 1920s, right in the peak of the Industrial Revolution and just before the stock market crash that changed society forever. The characters lived in fortune and excess, a theme that was highlighted throughout the entire trailer of the movie. By the end of the two minute trailer, Elaine was completely entranced. She slowly looked over to me with a wide smile, sparkles in her eyes as though she was about to cry.
"I have got to see this movie," She said in barely a whisper.
I hadn't seen Elaine this excited in quite some time, frankly she reminded me of a young girl who was enamoured with something for the first time and how quickly obsession takes over. I enjoyed seeing her this way, and nodded in agreement. "It premieres in theaters tomorrow evening, maybe after I'm finished cleaning up the fairgrounds with Jannie we can go?"
She would have bounced off of her chesterfield if she had the ability to, quickly clasping my hands in hers as her face swelled with emotion. "Really? You would actually take me to see it?"
"I haven't seen you this excited about something since – well, I don't know, to be honest. Besides, it's a change from our schedule, which maybe we both need," I replied.
She leaned in as fast as she could, wrapping her frail arms around me in a hug. I loved the way she hugged as it was so modest and yet filled with so much love, I never felt suffocated by her. "If you keep this up, I'm going to play a Pop-Pop move and give you all of my children's inheritance," She joked, laughing soon after.
"Does that mean I have to marry a scam artist from Lithuania?"
She pulled away, a smirk appearing on her face. "I would be disappointed if you didn't."