Labor Day

Summer ended, like a bowl of punch. Like it was always going to. It happened on the Friday before Labor Day, and was reported with mixed feelings between neighbors and colleagues, just before five o’clock. Some had seen it coming, others hadn’t. But there was no mistake about it: sure as gunshot it had passed. On Friday, the weather couldn’t make its mind up. A blustery start turned into a mid-morning heatwave. Good skies veered to moderate. Then a brief shower through which you might still catch the year’s last sunburn. So much uncertainty inland made the night’s shipping forecast look tame: the seabound anticyclones were mere blips compared to the weather on the continent. And then around three o’clock in the afternoon, the temperature dropped one last time and settled for the high 50s. New York City was rid of its gripping fever. The great soap opera of summer was over for another nine months. Still: there was one last punch in the trifle dish. It so often happens that way.

There is no such thing as equality between seasons: not in birth, not in death. No matter how sweet the primroses or decent the burgeon, twelve weeks of Spring still make Spring look like a drawbridge. But twelve weeks of Summer are like an heirloom timepiece, handed down to you by a wise old person; someone who knows that nothing lasts forever and that not all children outlive their parents. Fall moved in on Friday night and unpacked a few of its props before dawn. The wind was first to return to the streets. Old folk, who had slept with the windows open two nights ago, now unpacked down jackets from hanging clothes bags stuffed with cedar balls. In the American Playground, swings carried ghosts, their rusty frames grinding apart in the whoosh. By morning the grass had turned brown. At the Saturday farmers’ market, people were walking around with squashes and pumpkins tucked under their arm. Babies were wearing so much knitwear, they started to look as though they had actually been knitted. By Monday morning, only the homeless were still mourning the change of season.

Sam was drinking a cup of coffee and reading the story Jean had just finished writing. He had a pen in hand, but couldn’t bring himself to use it on this draft. She would always ask him for critical insights but often these halted her and he felt cornered. He had no wish to be part of what stopped her and besides, he was enjoying just reading. This one dealt with a gang of child scuba divers, who hunted antique hotel china in a hidden lagoon. It was another children’s mystery. Some of the mysteries of children would soon be elucidated now that Jean was pregnant. Sam lifted his eyes to the window, almost filled with the ivy-covered factory wall that backed onto the yard. Beyond that, the Manhattan skyline lay fractured at the whim of old tenement buildings and condemned water towers. A few bees were still at work on the ivy, but the permanent breeze made it harder now for them to land precisely on the flopping green blooms. The cold air coaxed out smells that Sam had never noticed before, like tin dust and the neighbor’s fried eggs. This would be a season for preparation, he thought, as he watched the steam slink out of the kettle.

Irena appeared out of nowhere, like Mrs Danvers. She jumped onto the window ledge, stretched her hind legs and anchored her claws in the screen. She liked to do her nails this way; pulling at the mesh, which was full of old puncture wounds. Sam pulled the screen up and encouraged Irena to get out onto the fire escape. Irena shunned the open window, put off by the cold. The apartment was what was called railroad-style; a long corridor of rooms where each room was a passage as well as a destination. The kitchen was separated from the bedroom by a large opening in the wall, where there had once been a window. Irena now hopped onto the old window ledge, which overlooked the bed where Jean was sleeping. Sam stared out at the Woolworth building, whose limestone seemed to have metamorphized into marble, as adjustment to the new season. Irena was always looking for a one-up from whatever she already had. As she reached down from the ledge to feel for a solid hill in the pillow, she lost her balance. “You stupid cat”, said Sam, too loudly. Irena wheezed with confusion and vanished down the side of the bed.

Jean woke up when Irena fell onto her face. The thought of the cat’s never-trimmed claws so close to her eyes was the day’s first anxiety. She had woken up at the part where her mother misses a step (a step her father has put there for no reason) and drops the tray holding aunt Hilda’s china tea set. Jean thought she heard Sam call her mother a stupid cunt. (Sam was always making disparaging comments about her mother). Jean awoke to untrimmed cat claws, a treacherous step, tea everywhere and a broken century of china. She opened her eyes and faced Execution Light. It reminded her of the froth you get when you beat an egg without separating the yolk from the white. In this light and at this range, she wasn’t sure about Execution Light. It’s true that it complemented Battleship Potemkin Grey uncannily well, but on this Labor Day morning, with all things passing and shattering, it struck her as a sick joke. Jean closed her eyes, put one hand on the place where her baby was growing, and fell asleep again.

When she woke up for the second time that morning, Sam was doing laundry in the bathtub. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and he was using a rice paddle to create a whirlpool. Jean got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet and watched as he stirred her knickers and socks into a volume of water that ressembled a grey peasoup.
“You know they make it so that the detergent actually turns the water grey? They must think that if you see dirty water, you’ll believe their stuff really works.” She had espoused this theory as a little girl and she clung on to it still, like an original contribution to science.
“It really does work,” said Sam, “look at the water. These were filthy.” Jean’s mind was suddenly invaded with a vision of Groucho Marx, standing in the shower and scrubbing coleslaw stains off a rented tuxedo. Through the soap bubbles he still managed to smoke a cigar. It wasn’t even from a real film.
“That’s what I’m saying, Sam. It’s a trick.” Of course, she’d told him all this before.
“I don’t know,” said Sam, wringing her pantyhose, “I think the water’s grey because those socks your mum sent you are running.”
“How hot is that water? You can’t wash wool in hot water.” She needed all the socks she could get.
“I don’t know, Jean. Put the duck in and see if it changes color.” Jean had bought one of those rubber ducks that turns blue when the bathwater is too hot for a baby. A very premature purchase, she knew, but she liked the look of the duck and she liked the idea of baby equipment.
“Well, try not to ruin the socks.”
“I’m not,” said Sam, “I’m trying to wash them.”

The clothes were so bloated by now that Sam’s effort was slowed down to a limp stir. Eventually he pulled the plug on the grey water. After she peed, Jean noticed blood on the toilet paper. She had spotted last week, but they’d had it checked out with an ultrasound. The doctor had reassured them that the bleeding had nothing to do with the pregnancy tissue. Everything looked healthy in there and was Jean still taking her folic acid daily? Oh good. They’d even heard its heartbeat and Jean was overwhelmed to realize that the fastest ticking instrument in the room was inside her womb. The doctor had printed out a picture of the ultrasound for them and on the subway home, they had tried to guess which nodule would grow into what. It was Sam who had later put the picture in the shrine, next to the Russian leaders nesting dolls and the one-eared Oaxacan bunny.

“Jesus, Sam, I’m bleeding again.” It almost felt criminal to panic once you’d been given the all-clear. Think of all the real bad news out there.
“How much?”
“I don’t know… three thimbles full?” She could tell from his face that this was no measure for him.
“Didn’t they say there’s a difference between bleeding and spotting? Is it bleeding… or is it spotting?” He was right. There was a difference. But how many spots before a bleed? What was the exact, scientific cut-off point? She hoped her specimen was on the right side of the line between spotting and bleeding.
“Spotting, I guess.” The bathwater was draining too slowly and making obscene suction noises. A film of white suds had settled onto the emerged garments, which made them look like the tips of icebergs.
“So don’t worry about it. They said not to.” And because he also had one eye on the plumbing: “Why does it take so long?”
“Maybe the drains are clogged.” The socks had definitely run, because the vinyl Toile-de-Jouy shower curtain, purchased for $1.19 at the dollar store, was now splattered with blue dye.

Jean poured herself a cup of coffee and fetched the milk from the fridge. The milk stood between two bags of dwarf apples she’d bought at the market. They were a perfect shade of green, with tiny sappy stalks and dried black leaves. To Jean, stalks and leaves on apples were a treat, like oranges wrapped in the gold and purple tissue paper that spelled “Morocco”, or the heads on carrots. She had planned to fill Mason Ball jar upon Mason Ball jar with apple butter, enough to last them until the baby came, on April 1st. She was going to be like Diane Keaton in Baby Boom: famous for her apple sauce and for her baby. Over breakfast, Sam brought up the City Island plan again. They’d tried to go several times since the spring, but on every occasion something had gotten in the way; a barbecue with neighbors, the oppressive heat, or the fear that it might be a disappointment once they got there. Plus, they didn’t have a map. As though that terminated things. Jean could see her story lying on the table. She wondered whether Sam had read it. And if he’d read it, whether he liked it. Outside, the wind was picking up and the sky had the same thick and sunny color as a slice of Polish cheesecake. Yes, she could see herself walking arm in arm with Sam down a beach, a jetty, or whatever it was they had on City Island. They could have a rambling conference about the future and she would buy him lunch.

The train to the Bronx was packed with people carrying fishing rods and fold up chairs. A little boy was shouting out superhero names every time he saw a man on a billboard. “Superman!” His father was trying to let him down the honest way.
“No, Tyrone. That’s just a liar trying to sell you a burger”.
They got off the train and walked to the bus stop. Sam squeezed Jean’s arm as the bus arrived and she knew he wanted her to relax. A woman came to the stop, pushing a shopping cart from one of the nearby stores. A small dog sat in the child seat and the cart was full of plastic bags. She wore an expression that was both fierce and weary, but she didn’t wear any shoes. She pushed her way through people and parked herself at the very front of the line. Nobody interfered with her, just like you don’t interfere with a snake you don’t recognize, when it dashes out of the grass and crosses the road at your feet. The woman muttered to the crowd, singling out passengers for a bone to pick. She seemed oblivious to their shifting as they avoided her. The dog, which was perfectly groomed and not at all like the dog of a crazy, started barking. The woman fished something out of a carrier bag and started feeding the dog biscuits, one by one. Jean noticed her expensive manicure. The bus to City Island arrived and the doors opened. The woman with the cart looked at the driver expectantly and the misunderstanding between them fascinated the line for a second.
“Well ain’t ya gonna lower the step for me?”
“Ma’am, you can’t board with the cart.”
“You sonofabitch, what do you expect me to do? Carry all this shit on?”
“Ma’am, you’re gonna have to let go of the cart if you wanna use this bus.”
“I’m disabled, you know!” The driver did his best to ignore her but it was hard because she was loud and unflinching. “I’ll make trouble for you, you sonofabitch.” Others, sensing the argument was lost, started boarding, walking past the woman and her vehicle. Eventually she picked up the dog and two plastic bags from the cart and huffed and puffed her way into the middle of the bus, where she asked an old Mexican man to give up his seat. She whispered something in the dog’s ear and cursed some more at the driver. Watching her was like looking at the autopsy of an explosion. Jean wondered what her story was. She thought about the woman’s mother, pregnant with her daughter’s future. She wondered whether the woman had ever been pregnant, and whether she’d had the baby. Jean resolved herself never to go batty if she could help it. They passed Pelham Bay Park. “We’ll have to come here with the baby,” said Jean. Sam smiled, perhaps with warmth, but most likely because the baby was far off into the future, like a space station on Mars.

Jean and Sam got off outside the City Island Diner. Jean was hungry again (because of carrying, she liked to think), so they stopped at the diner for some food. Jean ordered an egg and sausage sandwich and Sam, the Island buffalo wings. Jean knew he would regret his choice, even if Sam at that point didn’t.
“I don’t know if I should have more coffee or not.”
“You should have what you want. They said you shouldn’t do anything differently.”
He was right, again, but coffee with cramps seemed like a silly idea. The cramps were a bother, but mild. They must be what it felt like to be pregnant: the great stretch from the inside, to make room for fingers, knees, arteries, toes and organs. Some people got morning sickness, Jean got cramps. More proof that it really was happening. Sam finished the wings because no matter what they’d have to be paid for, and they left the diner in search of a port, boats, some proof of the nautical life that was meant to be going on here. It was hard to imagine there were on average three murders a year here, a statistic that Jean had read on the tourist website. She was sure none of the murders happened on Labor Day. They walked to the end of the main avenue, towards the open water. At the end of City Island Avenue was a fork in the road and the choice between two panoramas. Each view was owned by a fried fish restaurant and framed by a shabby patio of concrete and melamine picnic tables. One restaurant had a big car park for patrons, but today there were more gulls there than cars. Jean walked to the restaurant on the left, following the noise. Inside, it was huge. There must have been thirty tables, most of them occupied. Faces and tables shined from the glow that frying oil perpetuates. Spots of grease streaked the wood paneling and the floor was slippery from the crumbs of battered crab claws and lobster tails. Even the misted over windows could not hide how much fat was floating around the place. Jean closed the door and joined Sam across the road. The other restaurant had an ambitious mariner theme of fishing nets, oxidized copper and painted driftwood that concealed the effects of deep frying a little more deceitfully. On either side it was the same menu, same catch, at the same prices - just different families sitting down to lunch, probably from the same family.

Sam still wanted to see the boats. They came to a marina with yachts the size of trailers, that looked like floating serviced offices, with their smoked brown glass and green carpet on the walls. Sam slipped under a rope to get a closer look at them. Sam liked to tread past barriers, slip under ropes, and generally remind the world of his right of way. He was an access-seeker with the curiosity of a child. People ran after him, salesmen excuse-me-sir’ed him, but still he feigned the incredulity of someone who is being told they are trespassing on their own property. After the boats, Sam wanted to explore a small gated park down by the water, at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was only a couple of blocks from the main road but Jean was exhausted from the walk. The road was on a slight decline, but to her it felt like climbing a mountain. “You look like you’ve just seen a mountain,” said Sam. Jean smiled at her husband and rubbed her tummy to remind him she was pregnant. The bus pulled up as they reached the avenue and they got on, because there really hadn’t been that much to see, apart from the little private cove of Minnieford Avenue, where two old people on deck chairs advised them about retirement plans and showed them their kayak. Before they got onto the subway, Sam bought Jean a glass of cold milk, for “both your bones”. On the train, he took her legs over his and rubbed her knees.
“I liked your story. I don’t understand why you waste your time doing anything else. You should keep at it.” Jean realised she had never set foot in the Bronx before today.
“You’re not just saying that? You really like it?”
“Jean, I just said that. Why can’t that just be enough?” She hated her lack of confidence. It made her uneasy to think she was her own worst enemy. The woman with the cart and the dog had been her own worst enemy.
“It sounds so nice, I want to hear it again. I’m not hurting anyone by asking for a repeat.”
“I can’t give you discipline,” said Sam, “just encouragement.”
They walked slowly down their own avenue, following Jean’s pace, which was slow from the cramping. When they got back, the man from apartment 2L was smoking on the stoop. One of his arms was in a plaster cast. A push pin stuck out of his thumb; a steel point with a round white plastic top. Jean wondered if he pinned his thumb to a cork board every night before bedtime. After all, people took their teeth out and dropped them in a jam jar at night. She wondered what other parts of the body you could just remove and store outside of yourself. She shuddered to think.

The kitchen window had stayed open all day and the house was cold. Irena was still cowering behind the bed, although she seemed to have come out once to shred the New Yorker. Maybe she lied too, like the detergent companies; did things to make you believe your actions were effective. She hissed at Sam when he tried to pick her up. Jean drew a long bath and tipped into it a sachet of lavender salts she had saved from their trip to Poland.
“Sam, will you come and look at me, please?” Jean was standing in the bathroom, naked, examining herself in the mirror.
“I can see you from here.”
“Do I look different yet? Can you tell I’m pregnant?”
“I can because I know you are.”
“Yes, but what does it look like?”
“Not much yet. Your breasts look different. And your arms, they look like they’re getting ready to hold something. You’re often doing this with your arms.” He made a cradling gesture.
“No I don’t!” She giggled but she was embarrassed. All this preparation seemed a little undignified. Sam shrugged and then, to not upset her, smiled quickly. Jean flexed her arms in the mirror and examined the muscle there. She got into the bath and pretended not to see the little swirl of blood that lost itself in the water. She washed her hair three times, for old times’ sake. She always used to smuggle a second round of the Avon conditioner when she was a little girl. When she let the water out, it left feebly down the drain. She went to lay on her bed and listened to Sam listening to the kitchen radio and making dinner. It was the presidential speech on healthcare reform. It was butternut squash and celeriac soup.

And then it happened.

It was like the passing of summer bursting out of a nutshell. Like her uncle’s vice biting a plank and leaving rusty teethmarks. Like a wasp sting and a marathon sweat combined. Like a thunderbolt hitting the one thing you love in a vast field. She lay very still, and breathed softly to make up for weeks of fanciful breathing. She drank a cup of water, then another and thought of that recommended liter and a half. She remembered her panic attack, at college, when they made her head of the seminar group. She could change: she would stop walking long distances, stop working late shifts at the bar, she would only ever drink decaffeinated earl grey. Sam used to say she drank as many cups of tea as a Mike Leigh film. She would be a model pregnant woman and turn taking it easy into an art. She’d live every day as though it were her first day of school.

Anything you speak to long enough, you believe is capable of pain. And because she’d been speaking to it for a good two weeks, Jean believed her baby was dying in agony. That night was the last night they all three shared a bed. Sam held her in his arms, saving his tears for a scientific answer. But Jean cried, all the water out her body.

No Querimony Over The Cake

“Many thanks for the wonderful Flowers you gave me.  As they open they are fantastic I have never seen anything like them before.  They really brighten my room.  Excuse my writing as my left hand is useless. Again many thanks and Love from Mrs Bet Brown.

PS: do you want to come round at teatime to watch the video recording Ernest made of the youths kicking in your car window?”

Borrowing butter from your neighbours around Stanley Common can lead to just about anything.  Once in December, Susan ran out of the stuff whilst making crust for a pie.  She knocked at the front door of number 40 and was greeted by Ernest Brown, 74, holding an air rifle.  (For sport and service to the country, Ernest liked to shoot the pigeons that fed under the holly bush in the backyard.  He spared the sparrows, robins and magpies).  Ernest always wore on his big grey face a puzzling expression that suggested hilarity and frustration in equal measure.  He would complain about his mother or the recent behavior of some neighbourhood children through a grin of unmanly proportions, whilst his brown eyes darted about his pale complexion impatiently.  When he laughed it lasted a long time but sounded like a huff.  Ernest illustrated better than anyone else in Maris Hill the ineptitude of the human physique to give countenance to the nuances of the human heart.

Months after the rifle incident, at the end of a chain of gifts that had included a slice of the pie, a length of drain pipe, two tins of tuna and the loan of some tools, she had made the latest offering of a bunch of daffodils, picked from the side of the road.  Bet, Ernest’s 99 year-old mother, had replied with a card, perhaps to seal the end of the chain and take it back to words and tea.

This latest message had dropped through the letterbox the morning after her first two asides with the cosmic substance.  First, there had been the protest note and after that, the declaration.  Susan had received precious few letters from anyone these last five years, although she had considered writing some in the past few weeks.  She was surprised to note that the first two deliveries had found her receptive; a state perhaps not solely of her own making.  This at once scared and reassured her: she had no doubt that whatever sign should come next, good or bad, she would at least find her way to it or it to she.  In any case, she had certainly never been inside number 40, but what she had glimpsed of it through the half open front and back doors, in the moments of their trades, had made her curious.  However, she was not taken with the idea of watching Ernest’s recording of the incident involving her car.

Ernest kept watch for all of the neighbours on the row.  In the front bay window of number 40, he had placed a security camera, hidden inside a cylinder, adjusted by himself to fit the purpose.  He had covered the cylinder with a glossy magazine cutout of Schloss Hohenzollern, with a carved out penny-sized hole in the top of one of the turrets for the camera lens.  There was no live streaming at number 40, only ninety minute tapes that needed to be changed, so that  Ernest always witnessed the 9.47am vandalism at 11.17am.  Ernest’s watchful guard came with the bewildering caveat that it was always too late to take any action.

Susan wondered if Ernest knew about the invitation from his mother.  He hadn’t mentioned anything about it last night, when, after closing time, he had caught her on the way to the front door.  He was polishing the bay window with his spit and an old rag and had an urgent bone to pick.  “Susan!  The rain’s gone right through the yard wall.  It’s trickling through the bricks, you see.  There was already a crack but it’s definitely bigger now”.

“Well, if there was already a crack…”, thought Susan.  (She was woozy and the space between her bare arm and leather jacket felt like solid ice).

“What it needs (he paused) is a gulley.  You could get that chap to do it”.  (That chap.  Talk of killing two birds with one stone.  He is a nosey fucker, that one).  “Is he still here, then, your friend?  American, then, is he?  That’s what mother reckons.  Said it reminds her of when the Yanks camped out on the common”.   

“I will make a gulley, Ernest, at the weekend.  I’m sorry about your wall.  I can point it”. 

“Oh there’s no point in that”, said Ernest.

Susan could not understand how it was that, minutes later, she and Ernest had conspired to kidnap a cat – a beautiful, soft, black she-cat?  Maybe because of her guilt over the wall, she had caught the cat and handed it over to Ernest.  The cat looked at her with resentment in her eyes. 

“Show her to your mother”, said Susan, volunteering the poor animal. “That’ll cheer her up”.  Ernest took her gladly.  “I’ll let her out the back door”, he said, as though the cat had found herself trapped inside number 40 and not been taken from the street.  “Yes, show her to your mother, Ernest.  It’ll make your mother happy”.  Ernest looked at her strangely.  (Why can I not stop saying the word mother?, thought Susan). 

“What it needs is a gulley”.

“I will make a gulley, Ernest, I’m sorry about your wall”.

“When I was in Bristol, there was a man gassed himself inside his motor.

-Ernest, how awful.

-But his widow, see, she knew we had dynamite at the depot.  Asked us to blow the car up, she did.  What with the smell and that.

-The smell of gas.

-No. Well… he’d been sick with the fumes, you see.

-Ernest, hang on a minute, I’ve got some daffodils inside I want to give to your mother”.  

There it was, again, the word mother.  Susan walked into the house and picked the flowers out of the vase.  Outside, Ernest was still holding the black cat in his arms.

“It’s not like Tiger to be out all night.  Well, you’re here now, that’s what matters, isn’t it, Tiger?

-Ernest, that’s not Tiger, that’s… never mind.  You just tell your mo… you tell Bet I’ll be seeing her”.

Once again she opened the front door with a kick as was necessary when it was damp outside.  The heating had been on all evening and the house smelled like a stale crumpet.  Without turning the lights on she walked to the window.  She bumped into just about everything in the room.  Stanley Common was empty tonight and floodlit.  The wooded part of the common, however, was like a black hole sinking between the grassy strip and the rooftops of another neighbourhood.  She stared at Stanley Common and he stared back.  I am sorry about the wall.  I am sorry for being such a lousy neighbour.  I am sorry for being so bad at saying goodbye, come back, don’t go, we have some way to go, my buddy, come right in, stay a while, give me this, and that…  She repeated the words on the mirror under her breath.  “Susan.  It is inscribed on my condition to love you”.   

Somebody with a sense of occasion let a firework off in a corner of the park and with that the day came to an end.

The latest note from Bet sealed the deal.  Susan would go to tea with the Browns.  But first, she had to buy a cake.  The last remaining bakery in Maris Hill was called Hope Bakery.  It was a five minute walk from the Eastern edge of Stanley Common, on  Mabel Avenue.  It stood in the centre of the last row of specialist shops in the neighbourhood.  On the left of it was the storefront for a mender of appliances.  Susan had come to him once with a broken toaster and left with a fully working toaster for the cost of two new toasters.  To the right was a pork meat butcher’s.  Like the rest of the small businesses, The Pork Shop had run into hard times and for now, the unfortunate loss of a red neon K and P spoke for the whole street.

Hope Bakery had been opened thirty years ago by a man called Terry, the day after his first courtship had turned sour.  (There was in fact a long-standing tradition of romantic tragedy and entrepreneurship in this neck of the woods).  He had worked there alone, day and night for several years, multiplying loaves at dusk and folding dough into danish apricot pinwheels at dawn.  Later, his new love and wife had joined ship and learned how to squeeze out the icing trim on French fancies and frost the violets on christening cakes.  For a while it had worked out just fine.  He needed help and someone who would not drag him away from his shop and life.  She was a mild woman with no call of her own and she liked cakes.  They even produced a daughter, Jenny.  When Jenny came along, the baker’s wife asked to move out of their flat above the bakery and into a better neighbourhood.  She said the flour got right up her nose and that all the racket from the machines couldn’t be good for the baby’s sleep.  Things went downhill from there and in time the baker grew tired of this woman whose heart was not into baking.  True, she had always kept the shop well stocked and he couldn’t find fault with her icing, except that it was maybe a little lackluster…  But unlike the baker, she would never feel the fever of a calling and there comes a time when a man needs to share his fever. 

Susan knew all this because she and Terry had started a conversation one night in the Pilgrim.  For the first two pints they merely shared a bench.  After the third pint, he revealed to her the optimum number of lemons in the drizzle of a deep tin cake.  After four, it was the secret of layer cakes and which was the best knife for coating with butter icing.  Past the five pint mark, he told her all about the first time he had played Scrabble and how the game had spelled out some home truths for him.  Sponge.  Jilt.  Jammy.  He had been playing the game for almost as long as he had been baking, and whilst the bakery had churned out the same rehearsed Bakewell tart week after week for thirty years, in Scrabble, Terry had gone from “jammy” to “querimony” and lost much of his innocence in the process.  Before they parted, Terry had bemoaned losing his celebration cake clientele to the big supermarkets and their themed super-hero vicky sponges that only cost a fiver.  “How can I compete with that?” he asked wisely, not expecting an answer.

Susan decided Mrs Brown’s invitation was celebration enough and placed a phone order with Terry for a victoria sponge filled with custard cream and adorned with marzipan roses –a speciality at Hope Bakery.  The cake was to be ready by three.

At four o’clock, she knocked on the door of number 40 with a white cardboard box tied with green ribbon.  It took Bet seven minutes to get out of bed and seventy-three hesitant steps to arrive at the door.  As she manipulated the lock, Susan heard her body creak.  It could have been the floorboards but for her weight, which was too slight even to budge a new bar of soap.  With the lock undone, Susan was able to turn the handle herself and let herself in.  The door opened and out shot the black cat. 

“I don’t know why Ernest brought that cat in”, said Bet.  “He must be losing it.  It’s not Tiger.  Tiger was run over in the autumn”.  The ribbon ends on the cake box fluttered in the wind.  “Well come in, love, or are you trying to kill me with this draft?”.  As one more body entered the house, its weight in dust slipped out, scattering on the stone doorstep.

Bet closed the door and noticed the box.  “Look at that!” she said, “you went all the way to Hope”.  Susan stepped inside the front room for the first time.  This is where Bet slept, on a small iron cot between the window and the fireplace.  A miniature christmas tree stood on the sideboard, whose doors were obstructed by a bullish display case of war medals.  “Let me turn on the tree lights since you’re here”.  Newspapers covered every surface: floor, bed, desk.  Bet caught Susan reading a headline twenty years old.  “You needn’t think I’m batty, dear.  I put that paper down for the bloody cat.  It was shitting everywhere and he certainly doesn’t clean up after it”.  She nodded towards the ceiling.  Upstairs, Ernest burst out laughing, probably replaying the tape of the latest violation on one of our properties.

“It’s my birthday, you know. I’m one hundred today”.  The cake box felt heavy, delicious and appropriate in Susan’s hands.  “He didn’t remember but I remembered.  You should never forget the day you were born”.  Susan nodded as she started pulling at the ribbons.  “Get it open, duck, then sit down and I’ll tell you all about the biggest mistake I ever made”.