Circa 1988 at the zoo
In which Lorne recalls meeting Monica for the first time
Hilda McGuire is browsing for a new hose in Valley Hardware – she’s decided to try vegetable gardening again, she tells Lorne. He remembers when he and Monica were first married and she grew cherry tomatoes on the balcony; this was nearly a decade ago.
“I’ve been married almost ten years,” he says.
Hilda’s eyes light up in a way Lorne has learned to fear.
“Ten years... why, that’s bronze!” she exclaims. She is now pointing a nozzle towards him, willing him to understand.
“I beg your pardon?” Lorne says.
“There’s a traditional gift for each year of marriage. This year you must find Monica something bronze.” Lorne has no idea about such things. He’s planned on getting her matching lawn chairs that extend with a foot rest, like a foldable Laz-y boy. Hilda McGuire gives him a withering stare when he explains his intentions, exhaling sharply as though letting the air out of a tire with a machete.
“I honestly don’t know how you ended up with her, Lorne.”
“I should go to the jewellery store then, eh?”
Hilda smiles and slaps the hose on the counter like a dead snake. “You’re learning.”
Nine Years Earlier
The week after Sharanne married Chuck, the lawn-care maintenance man with the 69 LeMans blue Corvette, Lorne was restless. He paced the floor of his apartment above Valley Hardware, the creaky-floored emporium he’d accidentally inherited, with the distinct feeling there was something he ought to be doing. He’d counted inventory yesterday. The day before he’d dusted the shelves and waxed the floors. Lois, his ex-mother-in-law/ sole employee, had come by to redo the front windows – the fireworks of July to be replaced with the canning jars of August and September. Earlier that evening he’d taken Ella down to the pier to watch the sailboats come in. She’d dripped ice-cream down the front of her shirt and it was so sticky and blue they’d jumped in the lake with their clothes on.
“Easier than a bath,” he reasoned.
She’d giggled but he knew Sharanne would have never let her do such a thing. Later, when he tucked her in her bed and kissed her goodnight, she still smelled like bubble gum.
He flicked through the channels on the television with the volume low. There was nothing good except for a documentary on Kenya. Before Sharanne and Ella, he’d wanted to be a zoologist. He’d secured an internship to study third eyed lizards but instead of spending six weeks in the desert, Sharanne had called to let him know she was pregnant. Rather than set up camp, he’d set up house. It’s not that he ever stopped being interested in animals, but he put those dreams aside, in a compartment of his mind he thought he’d revisit someday when Ella was grown. He watched the zebras on the television run across a river. Any moment now one of them would get caught by a lioness in pursuit. He always turned the television off before the bloody hunt was over. It was nature, but he didn’t have to watch it. The lioness’ hind legs blurred through the tall grasses as she gave chase and just as she was about to attack, a commercial came on advertising a two-for-one special at the zoo. Now that would be something…
Lois assured him she’d be fine on her own minding the store while they ventured to the city.
“Go on, son. It’ll do you good to get out of town for the weekend,” she said.
Lorne and Ella woke up early to get to the gates before the crowds arrived. Why hadn’t he thought to bring Ella here before? He’d loved the zoo as a kid. She wanted to start with the monkeys.
“It’s your day, kiddo,” he said cheerfully.
After four hours of wandering, they were less cheerful. It had begun to rain and many of the animals retreated into their man-made dens.
“Daddy, I’m hungry.”
He hadn’t thought to pack a picnic. Sharanne always had a million granola bars in her enormous purse. They bought chips and pop at the canteen and decided they’d check out one last exhibit and call it a day. They would spend the night near Lorne’s college stomping ground, at his friend Roy’s apartment, and pick up pizza on the way.
The streets looked different from the eyes of a dad than the eyes of a carefree college kid. The last time Lorne had wandered through his student neighbourhood, it hadn’t seemed so seedy. The walk-ups were poorly maintained, and young people rode bicycles on the sidewalks to avoid the construction vehicles blocking the road.
“I’m thirsty,” Ella said. Her nose and cheeks were flushed.
He looked at his daughter. A headache was teasing, something that happened nowadays the further he got from the quiet comfort of the store. He wasn’t a city dweller anymore. The traffic, the people, the lights… he was forgetting why they were staying over instead of driving home. Pulling out the crumpled paper from his back pocket, he double-checked Roy’s new address.
“Only a couple more blocks.”
“Why did we leave the car?”
He gritted his teeth. He’d lied and told Ella the subway was an adventure, but the truth was he didn’t want to pay for overnight parking. He should have known better than to try to save a buck when entertaining a six-year old.
Ella’s shoulders drooped as she hauled her little suitcase behind her. The purple plastic wheels tottered along the cement like a toy truck.
At last they arrived at Roy’s building. Roy buzzed them in and Lorne and Ella walked hand-in-hand through a lobby that might have briefly been regal in the 1940’s. The elevator doors opened and they stepped inside. Just as the doors were closing, a woman rushed towards them. “Hold the door!”
She made it just in time and laughed. Giggled really. “You have to time it just so!”
Lorne smiled back. “Which floor?”
“Fourteen, please.”
He punched in the number and glanced back at the woman. She pinned her loose hair into a bun and he noticed she was wearing a clerical collar. The woman smiled at the sight of Ella’s suitcase. The elevator hummed, lurched upwards and then stopped and made a clicking sound. They were at the fourth floor.
“Not again,” the woman rolled her eyes. “I should have taken the stairs.”
“To the fourteenth floor?” Lorne said.
“Wouldn’t have been the first time.”
Lorne studied the panel. His instinct was to pry the doors open but he wasn’t certain they weren’t in between floors. Before he could make a decision, the woman pushed a button and spoke into the microphone.
A scratchy voice answered. “Superintendent. What can I do for you?”
“Hi Tony. It’s Reverend Monica. I’m stuck in the left elevator bank, just below the fifth floor.”
“Again?”
She smiled at Lorne and he noticed she had a charming gap between her front teeth. “I’m wearing this button out. You gotta come quick today, because there’s a man and his little girl here, too.”
Ella’s eyes widened. “I’m not little!”
The woman smiled apologetically. “I know, honey but they won’t hurry for big girls and then your pizza will get cold.”
The speaker buzzed back to life. “Sorry Rev. They’ll be here in a half an hour.”
Lorne took his hoodie and made a spot for Ella to sit down on the floor. Monica loosened her collar and joined them.
“I’m Monica,” she said, extending a hand. “I come here on Saturday afternoons.”
“I’m Lorne and this is Ella. We hardly ever come to the city…”
“But Mom’s in Cuba with Chuck so Dad took me to the zoo!” Ella piped up.
Monica’s amused gaze shifted to Lorne. “As one does.”
Lorne coughed. “Want some pizza?”
Either the elevator repair man was a liar or the superintendent was a liar.
A half hour passed, they finished the pizza and still nobody came to let them out of the elevator that was still stuck between the fourth and fifth floor. Ella rested her head on Lorne’s lap and fell asleep. Monica called every half an hour, and to Lorne’s surprise, her language became less Reverend-like with each subsequent check-in, after which she would cover her mouth and stage whisper an apology to Lorne before slumping back down on the ground.
“So, how did you get into…” he pointed at her collar. “Your line of work?”
She held her head in one hand. “It’s kind of a long story.”
Lorne looked at the sealed elevator door and the empty pizza box. “I think we’ve got time.”
~
Lorne shuts off the lights, turns the sign on the door to “Closed” and puts the cash into the safe for the night. Ella’s at her mother’s and Monica’s at the church leading Evensong/Yoga. He takes the dogs and heads down to the river. Since no one’s around, he lets the dogs off their leashes and they chase one another, splashing through the shallows. On the way home, his new neighbour calls him over and invites him in for a beer.
Greg McQuarrie’s yard is a bit of a sore point with the local BIA. Trailers full of scrap metal overflow onto the lawn, though the trailers don’t have wheels. The strip of businesses along the main street are trying to re-invent the alleys as a local arts and crafts destination and Greg’s yard is thwarting their efforts. But Greg’s not a bad guy. Lorne understands that it’s hard to let go of a good thing just because you haven’t thought of a use for it yet. He surveys the yard as Greg hands him an Old Milwaukee.
“Come on back to the studio and have a look at my newest project,” he says.
Studio? Lorne follows him behind a corrugated shed. There’s a garden hiding behind the scrap metal, and tomatoes and beans are terraced along a delicate metal frame. But that’s not what Greg wants to show him. In the middle of the garden, there’s a tree. A tree made of metal pipes and fittings and coils. He’s fashioned a trunk that looks like actual bark, and it’s beautiful. Greg beams and tells Lorne to take a step back. He turns a lever on the wall and the tree becomes a sprinkler, watering his entire garden, reaching every single plant. Lorne grins.
“I want one,” he says.
Greg finishes his beer and crushes the can underneath his giant work boot. “You don’t have a garden.”
“No. But I have these two wet dogs who need a bath.”
Lorne pictures the tin bonsai addition to their patio. He’ll paint it up real nice with a can of tremclad, bronze, in case Monica knows about the traditional stuff Hilda was on him about.
“Lorne?” Greg interrupts his train of thought.
“Yeah?”
“You think other people would pay for this kind of thing?” Greg asks.
Lorne looks at the metal tree and some of the other lawn art his neighbour has created. People, especially people from the city, will definitely buy Greg’s art. But his would-be customers will be scared off for fear of Tetanus if he doesn’t clean up first.
“What you need is a trailer,” Lorne says, surveying the debris.
“I have a…”
“With wheels. You need to get rid of some of this.” He walks through the piles of coils and rough-cut sheet metal. Waving his arms, he imagines a path, a display area. “You build a fence to hide the mess, and the customers will come to see your studio.”
“Think I’ll make friends on the BIA?”
Lorne smiles. Greg’s studio will be a hit. They’ll make him president. “I’ll find you a trailer.”
Greg promises to start on Monica’s gift.
The week passes quickly. Lorne hauls a half a dozen loads from Greg’s yard to the scrap metal dealer. Monica asks if he wants to dine out for their anniversary and he tells her to go ahead and make a reservation. He ignores the hurt expression on her face – he’ll make it up to her. At dinner she says he’s become a bit obsessed with the junk from Greg’s yard, and he admits it’s true.
“The BIA has wanted to draw people down here for years, and Greg’s studio will do that. I have a good feeling about this.” Lorne tells her again about the sign they’ve made and the projects Greg is working on.
What he doesn’t tell her is that in Greg’s massive piles of scrap metal, he found gold. Not literal gold, anniversary gold.
The morning of their anniversary he takes Monica by the hand and leads her onto their patio to show her the dog-washing tree. The dogs are a bit leery about a moveable, bronze branch hosing them down, but Monica tells Lorne it’s beautiful, and agrees everyone will want their own art-piece sprinkler. And of course she knows all about the traditional anniversary gifts. “Hilda is upset she didn’t see you at the jewelry store,” she says, as they drink coffee on the veranda before the store opens. He kisses his wife. “I’ll see you for dinner.”
That evening, after work, he trades his cap and flannel for a collared shirt and some hair product he finds in the back corners of the medicine cabinet, beside the VapoRub. He turns to his wife, who is putting perfume on her wrists and is almost ready for dinner, and gives her a little box.
“Another present?” she asks.
He nods.
She removes the tissue and pulls out a long coppery chain. Two plastic circles dangle, like ivory dog tags with gold rims. She turns them over in her hands and traces their edges with her fingers.
He’d found the elevator panel in the fourth load of scrap metal. It took him two minutes to pry the buttons – four and five – off the enamel grid and slip them into his pocket. Greg found the copper chain and saved him a trip to the jewelry store.
“Happy anniversary.” He slips the necklace around her neck.
“I love this,” she says.
They walk downtown hand in hand and try the new restaurant on the water, staying longer than usual, remembering a Saturday night years earlier when they ate cold pizza on the floor of a broken elevator, with a beautiful sleeping girl between them. Call it serendipity, there was no repairman on call that night. Monica told him her story, and he told her his, and their conversation has continued ever since.
The End