Dead Flowers Read online

  Elly and Sam had been apart for some months. Each of them had been waiting for a moment like this. Now that they were alone and in relative privacy, they fell into each other on the rocks. Elly was on top and then they rolled, and although they couldn’t take off any clothes, they pressed into each other. Sam used the buckle of his belt to bear into her, and Elly felt soft, as if the bones had gone out of her body. She felt pliable and kneaded, caught between the spine of a rock and the callous urgency of a man she thought she loved.

  Elly started setting up her room. She found a desk and dresser at the Sally Anne and procured a futon frame and a mattress from relatives. Sam helped her carry these things home, carting everything on the bus and taking multiple trips.

  She complained one day of having only one set of bedsheets so Jim showed her a closet in the house full of linens. She asked him who they belonged to and he shrugged. They’d been left behind, abandoned, he said, so Elly took a selection of the best. She washed them twice and let them air out in the sun.

  All over the house were the signs and remnants of previous tenants. One couldn’t make sense or remember the history of all those who’d lived in these rooms. In the kitchen, taking up a portion of the table, was a sprawling collection of unopened mail. The collection was several years old and continued to grow, all because someone in the house had decided it was unlawful to either open or discard another person’s mail. So here was a pile of envelopes, each one addressed to one of a litany of names. Elly, over breakfast one day, tried to organize the pile. She counted twenty-five different names before her tea had grown cold, but in the end she gave up.

  Of the people who lived here now, besides Jim, there were three living upstairs. Tom and Julia shared a room, although the room belonged to Julia, and then there was Sara. Downstairs, there were two other bedrooms besides the one that Elly rented. The one that had belonged to Banjo’s would-be killer remained empty for now. The other was where Jodi lived. Jodi was a friend of Tom’s and she owned two dogs. Julia also had a dog. So, thought Elly, counting it out, six bedrooms, one empty, six people, four dogs.

  Elly learned more about the house from both Jim and Tom. These two men, each a few years older than her, were both similar and yet different from each other. She hardly ever saw the two of them together. It was as if they traded shifts. During the day, every day, it would be Tom sitting in the living room, watching tv with Julia’s dog at his feet and Banjo on the edges of the room. Then the sun would set and suddenly it’d be Jim, sitting on the couch, beer in his hand, Banjo at his feet, the other dog now a respectful distance off.

  There was a rhythm to each one of her roommates, Elly soon learned. Sara, for instance, was pre-med and on weekends she liked to get drunk. She worked hard in school and pushed herself, but also kept a vibrant social life. She had several men in her life, although none was ever seen around the house. Often, Sara would disappear from Thursday morning until Sunday night, and then be found in the kitchen, sheepishly making herself a meal, nursing a headache with Tylenol, and getting ready to shuffle off early to bed.

  Julia was studying law. She shared a bedroom with Tom, but the bedroom was hers, and the lease for the entire house was in her name. Elly hadn’t met her yet. She could hear Julia in the morning though, leaving the house at an impossibly early hour. Then again at night as Julia returned home after dark. The woman drove a vintage Oldsmobile which made such an awful racket, Elly could hardly fail to notice her coming and going.

  Every morning Julia would get up and shower. Meanwhile, Tom would put the coffee on. She would pour herself a cup, give Tom a quick kiss and give her dog a quick pat on the head. The two of them would stand together in the doorway, looking lost and forlorn, watching her go. Elly imagined that the dog would be the first to lose interest as Julia’s car disappeared. The dog would slink back into the house, find its place in the living room and wait for Tom.

  Tom was not a student and he didn’t have a job. Until recently, he’d been in Alberta working on the oil sands, and because his work had been seasonal, he collected what amounted to a generous wage in unemployment checks.

  It was hard to imagine Tom on the oil sands. He wore rectangular glasses and had long and somewhat wavy blond hair. He spoke with a lisp and didn’t seem to have friends. So, between caring for his girlfriend’s bedroom and her dog, he had plenty of time to sit and think.

  Tom wasn’t unhappy. He was patient and calm. He was even puritanical, in a way. He admitted to Elly that he’d once been hooked on methamphetamines, but that these days coffee was his only vice. Through diet, focus and daily contemplation, he was trying to maintain a healthy body, mind and soul.

  When Elly and Julia finally met, Elly was just waking up from a nap. It was the middle of the day and she’d been lying on the couch. Meanwhile, Julia had only come into the house for a moment, running in just to run out again.

  Elly heard voices and opened her eyes. Tom was at the door with a woman who was thin, with a sharp nose and long blond hair. Seeing that Elly had opened her eyes, and that she was trying hard to stay awake, Julia smiled. She said to Tom, Oh, isn’t she a pretty young thing?

  Meeting Sara, Elly got another distinct perspective on life in the house. Sara informed her that everyone here (herself excluded, naturally) suffered from genital warts.

  It’s just something to think about, Sara said, that there is a certain amount of hygienic discretion you’ll want to uphold.

  Another helpful tip was to never leave any used tampons in the bathroom because, according to Sara, Banjo couldn’t help himself. He’s a fucking mutt, she explained. Somehow, he gets into the room, sticks his nose into the bin, and then spreads them around the house.

  Elly continued to settle in her room. She dusted, cleaned the walls, vacuumed the carpet, washed the window. She had an issue with the window, in that it wouldn’t open. She wished it would, and it seemed as if it had been made to open, so she tested it. She pressed her fingers into the glass and pushed, but it was stuck.

  Elly kept waiting for a run-in with Jodi. Every time she opened her bedroom door, she was prepared to see Jodi in the hallway. She expected to see Jodi at the shared washing machine, outside the bathroom, or to see her standing in the basement kitchenette, hovering over the stove with a mug, waiting for water to boil. But a week went by, then another week, and still she hadn’t met her final roommate.

  Even more unlikely was that there were two dogs living in Jodi’s room, and that Elly had neither seen nor heard any hint of them. Elly pressed her ear against the wall and thought she heard the jiggling of a collar, maybe the intake of a breath.

  Finally one morning, as she was making herself a bit of toast, Elly heard a scuffling of paws over the floor, then the sticky sound of a door being opened. All of a sudden the dogs came bounding into the room, overwhelming her. They tumbled together and were practically jumping over one another on their way toward the door in a corner of the little kitchenette. The door opened onto a staircase that went up into the yard. The dogs waited there, hardly able to contain themselves. One was bouncing up and down on its forepaws, the other was shaking, waiting for her master.

  Jodi came into the room and smiled wearily. She opened the door, allowing the dogs to burst up the stairs. Once in the yard, they squatted to piss in the uncut grass.

  Jodi stood in the open doorway and lit a cigarette. She rubbed her eyes. She was wearing colourful, kitschy pajama pants, a faded tank top without a bra, and had a tangle of wild orange hair.

  You must be Eleanor, Jodi said.

  Oh, it’s Elizabeth, actually.

  Jodi looked her up and down. Well, that is a much better name, she said.

  The dogs were running in rapid circles around and around the yard. Elly knew nothing about dogs. She would have said that one of these was maybe a greyhound, but it probably wasn’t. It looked like it was made to run though. It was fast and lean and strong. Jodi introduced the dogs as Franny and Zooey.

  Oh funny. Which
one is the boy? Elly asked.

  No, said Jodi, they’re girls. And then after a pause, You’re a student?

  I am. I’m studying anthropology, I think. I mean, that’s what I’m doing now, but it might change. It’ll probably change.

  Well, Jodi replied, you’re young anyway.

  Right, so I guess I get to change my mind.

  Having already spoken about Jodi with Tom, Elly knew a bit about her past. She knew that Jodi had grown up in Prince George, that she had moved to Vancouver as a teenager, that she had attempted some college, but eventually decided it wasn’t for her. Now she worked part-time as a dispatch person for the local police. Elly tried to imagine Jodi wearing a headset, sitting at a cramped desk and taking emergency calls, pushing buttons on a complicated phone. Jodi’s other job, which she worked full-time, was at Starbucks. Jodi explained that her hours were long. She started early and finished late, which is probably why Elly hadn’t seen her before. As for the dogs, they stayed kennelled in her room whenever Jodi was out.

  I used to let them run around in there, she said, but they peed all over and Franny, I think it was Franny, tore the place up. I came home once and found that she had chewed up a box of my old photographs, so that was the last time I had them out. Because that was my life, you know. All my memories, Jodi made a gesture, gone.

  After talking a while, Jodi stepped into the yard. She sat at the top of the stairs and crossed her legs. The dogs came to see her. The one, the runner, was grey. The other was white. The grey one jumped and tried to lick her face. Jodi pushed it away with her fingertips, but then as an afterthought, scooped its jaw into the palm of her hand and held it tenderly.

  For a while, living in that room, Elly was eager to open the window. She thought that she could possibly hire someone to come and work the thing onto some hinges. Sam thought she was crazy.

  Listen to you, talk about hiring someone. Do you have any idea what that’s going to cost? he asked.

  Sympathetic as he was though to her every desire, Sam remembered that he knew a guy who had worked on a construction crew.

  Maybe we could ask him for advice, he said.

  The advice was to take off the window’s trim, then run a knife between the window and the wall to find where it was fastened, or nailed. Once the nails had been found, they could be cut with a saw, and then the window could be simply removed.

  Okay, Elly said, and then what?

  Beats me, said Sam. Buy a new window?

  The window was a safety issue, certainly, but Elly’s concern with it was primarily aesthetic. She just couldn’t stand how the air in the room sat heavy all the time, unmoving. September had come in with a breeze, but within her bedroom, everything was stagnant. There was no flow. Energy was stuck. Everything was bound, caught up in the corners.

  And she did spend an hour one afternoon, armed with a butter knife, popping the trim. She crouched on her desk, and as Sam’s friend had suggested that it might be possible just to push the window out of the wall with a steady, even force, she laid her shoulder against the frame, but the damned thing wouldn’t budge.

  With Sam, she spent long days in bed. On weekends they went out on dates. They would sit in a downtown bar drinking beer and cocktails, talking for hours.

  One Friday afternoon they met on campus after their classes were done. Sam had asked if Elly would split a sandwich. He had in mind a particular grassy knoll where he thought they might like to sit. Admittedly, it wasn’t much of a knoll, just a shaded bit of grass above the sidewalk.

  It’s alright, Elly said about the knoll, I guess.

  Did I rave about the knoll? Did I build it up too much?

  After sharing the sandwich, the couple decided to drink a beer at the campus pub. Hours later, as the sun was low and golden, they walked home. That is, they walked the long and winding roads to Elly’s house. That night they didn’t go out. Instead they remained in bed and played mancala, tired and contented after sex.

  Elly said, I’ve got to rearrange this room.

  Sam looked up in a distracted way. I like it, he said, just the way it is.

  Ugh, it’s suffocating. Just look at this corner, Elly said and jumped out of the bed. I need something to put in this corner, but I don’t know what it should be.

  Why don’t we move the bed over there? That way we could see out the window. Imagine, Sam said, waking up, lying in bed and seeing the sky…

  Sure, while everyone else looks in and sees us, Elly said with a snort.

  The next day they woke up late and stayed in bed an extra hour or two. As they got up, the afternoon was starting to fade. They ran into Jodi on their way out of the house. It was the first time that Jodi and Sam met.

  Introductions were made and Jodi asked, How long have you two been together?

  Well it’s kind of a long story, Sam started. We met last year, and we spent some time together, but then we were apart. We wrote each other letters almost every day, for four months, but I guess we weren’t really a couple until we came back here at the end of the summer.

  So, it’s basically a month, Elly concluded.

  Jodi grinned and waggled her head. I knew you two were fresh because of all the time you spend caged up together in that room.

  October came, and Tom moved out. Afterward, Julia’s dog almost died. The poor thing didn’t eat anything for a week. His body trembled and he looked depressed.

  That dog really creeps me out, said Jim. He just stands at the edge of the room and stares. He’s like, too intelligent for his own good. I have no fucking clue what must be going through his head.

  He’s just sad, Elly said. He lost a friend.

  Tom and Julia had apparently split. The details would never be known to the rest of the roommates, but Tom had returned to Alberta and his unlikely work on the oil sands. The dog eventually rallied. As for Julia, nothing much changed. She still woke up every day before the sun, had a shower, made a whole pot of coffee for herself, and then drove off noisily in her Oldsmobile. Presumably she worked all day, very focused and diligent, then came home just to sleep. Every so often a friend would come home with her, but he never spent the night. Whether or not it was the same friend every time, Elly couldn’t be sure. To her it seemed to make sense this way, although she too had been sad to see Tom disappear. It made sense for Julia to be without his sedentary love lingering around the house. And although nothing was overtly altered, although Julia’s schedule and her demeanour remained unchanged, Elly sensed now that she moved with greater ease and balance.

  Elly did notice a more distinct change when it came to Sam, however. As they settled into habit, Elly began to feel that their reasons for being together were becoming less obvious. It was as if things were meant to work out between them, if only because of their long separation, if only because of the letters they’d written. Everything should be well and they should be in love. But one night, as they were having sex, Elly felt overwhelmed. Suddenly fed up, she rolled off him.

  You have to stop doing that, she said.

  Doing what? What are you talking about?

  You keep grabbing me, like with your hands on my hips. You keep moving me around the way you want me to move. It’s like you don’t really want me, you want, like, a doll to fuck.

  I don’t want a doll, said Sam. Honestly, I didn’t know I was doing that.

  Well, you do it every time, Elly said, and it feels awful.

  I’m sorry, said Sam. Really, I didn’t know. I don’t want a doll.

  A few days later, it was he who lost his patience. This was on a Sunday night after they’d spent a few hours drinking in a bar. Elly and Sam were walking back to his place, when out of the blue, Sam muttered something about not wanting to spend the night together.

  What? said Elly. Why?

  Because you’re drunk.

  Elly laughed. I’m drunk? Yeah, but so are you.

  Yeah, but it was your idea to go to a bar.

  Was it? Elly thought. Had it been her idea
? In her recollection, they had made the plan together.

  I don’t understand why you always want to drink. Every night that we go out, it’s like the only thing we do, said Sam.

  I didn’t, Elly said. I mean, I’m totally surprised by this.

  Yeah, said Sam, well. Maybe it’s something you should think about.

  Sam kept walking. Elly followed. Half a block later, they were walking side by side again. And then, despite what Sam had said, they did spend that night together at his place.

  After Tom left the house, a problem arose regarding Jodi’s dogs. It seemed that every afternoon, Tom had been taking them out for a walk in the yard. Franny and Zooey had grown accustomed to this, but without Tom, no one was there to let them out. Now, whenever Elly finished classes for the day and returned to her room, the dogs would start to howl in despair. Elly tried to ignore them. She opened a book and lay down in her bed but the dogs kept up a constant, plaintive noise. In the end, she ventured into Jodi’s room.

  The first time she ever went in there, she found all the windows wide open. It was late October and cold outside. She could almost see her breath. The dogs were quiet, waiting for her. Their kennels were at the far side of the bedroom. Elly had to step over a pile of clothes, and in doing so, felt as if she’d crossed a line. Jodi was a stranger, more or less, but here was her underwear, limp and discarded on top of the pile. Here were her books and her pictures on the wall. And here was Elly, making her way deeper into this more-or-less stranger’s life, gingerly crossing the bedroom, trying not to touch or upset anything. When she opened the kennel doors, the dogs bolted out of the room. She followed and found them by the door in the kitchenette. When she let them into the yard, they stopped and squatted to pee. Urine escaped them with such a force, Elly noticed, that it carved little divots in the dirt.