A Loafer's Guide To Living

2-2

“What is with the language?” she demanded.

“He is an asshole,” Nathan muttered under his breath.

“I heard that.” And before either of us knew what had happened, Sean had leapt over the bannister, launched himself on to Nathan and they began rolling around on the floor.

In one of those movie-like sequences, I dropped the paper and pushed myself off the couch while Sharon began to pound down the stairs. The coffee table had been overturned and a dish I'd always hated went crashing to the floor as the two boys thrashed about. On her way down, Sharon caught her foot and let loose with a piercing yell that brought the two boys to their senses enough so they sat up. She did a fine impression of a stuntwoman rolling down the stairs until she landed with a solid thump at the bottom. I made my way over to her. The boys looked red-faced and stricken with uncertainty.

I bent over her. “Sharon, are you okay?”

She was writhing in agony. “No, you damn fool, I'm not.”

She clutched at her ankle and I cleverly assessed the problem therein. “Boys, get an ice pack from the freezer. Move.” My tone seemed to jolt them out of their torpor and they scrambled off. Gingerly, I began to unlace Sharon's shoe.

“Oh good Christ, be careful, will ya?”

“Let's not be too harsh, darling. I am trying to help. Now just let me take a quick look.” Slowly, I eased the shoe off her foot, then slid the demi-sock off as well. The ankle had begun to puff already and quickly discoloured. “Badly sprained at least, possibly broken, I pronounced.”

“Oh thank you, doctor,” and squeezed out tears of pain. “Those little bastards,” she spat. “I'm going to kill them.”

Having heard her, Nathan ran in quickly with two ice packs then skedaddled. “Don't worry about the lift,” he said.

I applied the ice packs not too softly. She winced and gave me a murderous look. “We'll keep these on for a bit and then it's to the hospital for you. Better tell me what you want to take. I'm sure we'll be there for quite a while.”

For some odd reason that I can't quite identify, it gave me a smug sense of pleasure to see Sharon in pain. Perhaps it was because she was an unsympathetic person. She preferred to move on and not get personally involved with others. When her employees started to tell her their personal problems, inevitably she'd say, “Too much information.” That closed them off pretty quickly. And so people around her, her work mates and colleagues knew not to approach her on that level. I also knew that she hated the idea of sickness and being ill. She wasn't the nursemaid type. I had joked often enough that if I ever became incapacitated to any degree, she'd have me packed off to a nursing home before I knew what had hit me. So, to see her in discomfort, her injured ankle cradled in my lap as we sat across from each other in the hospital waiting area, pleased me.

“You're enjoying this,” she said.

I looked up from the book I was reading, the new Le Carré. “What?”

“You're enjoying this.”

“Oh yes, it's very good.”

“I don't mean the book, you lummox. I mean, having me here like this. Seeing me at a disadvantage.”

I smiled very carefully. “Well, it is unusual. And you do look so fetching in your workout togs.”

Sharon tilted her head in acknowledgement, then turned to survey the sea of humanity about here. “Reminds me of the tenements back home.” Indeed, she had grown up rough and poor in Belfast. After they emigrated when she was 12, her father Rory left them to seek his fortune playing in a country bar band. This left her mother, Felicity, with four kids to raise, Sharon and her three brothers. It hadn't been easy for them. But she'd left all that behind her in a past life. It's unlikely that she could even relate to it now, having spent the past 15 years forging her way up the corporate ladder and doing better and better each year. She'll be running the company soon, I thought. And why not? She was capable, no question. But did people respect her? Did they want to work for her and do their best? That was the only question in my mind. On some level, you have to like the people you work with and work for. That doesn't mean you need to know all the intimate details of their lives or hang out in the pub together three nights a week but having that ability to inspire respect made the difference in my opinion. It's hard to get people to work for you if they don't like you.

“You're a long way from that.”

“I know. It seems like another lifetime. Well, this is the first time I've been back in a hospital since the boys were born.”

I looked at her and felt a surge of tenderness. What a comedy of errors that had been. Before we left for the hospital, I called the doctor and found I couldn't rouse him from sleep. He kept snoring while the line was open and I couldn't hang up nor could I wake him. Must be drunk, the bastard I thought. And us with twins on the way. When we arrived at the Toronto General Hospital, it was chaos, five sets of twins had been birthed that same morning. We were the sixth. Nurses hustled about, hastily admitting the expectant parents, six women in varying degrees of discomfort, ranging from low moans to high-pitched shrieks, very unsettling for the would-be fathers, all of us looking as if we were about to pass out. One fellow did. He hit his head on the corner of a desk and opened a nasty cut to his temple. He had to be rushed off to be seen by a resident. Sharon looked and felt very ill. I had brought a bed pan with me in case she vomited, something she had been doing on a regular basis for the previous nine months. Why should this be any different? They shunted us from room to room. Sharon was given an epidural, had an intravenous in one arm, a blood pressure cuff on the other, and two fetal heart monitors strapped to her distended belly. And nobody could find the great, bloody Dr. Swann, the elderly patrician baby doc who was the best in the city we were told, who had the lowest Caesarian rate in the entire hospital. All I could think was, where the bloody hell was he? Well, true to his name, the old fart swanned in just moments before the babies came. Sharon had been prepped by the resident and the nurses. In the delivery room buzzed some fifteen people, not including me. I was shunted to the back like I was standing in a slow rising elevator and couldn't get out. Sharon and the action seemed very far away.

“That was something, wasn't it?” I replied thinking how quickly 15 years had passed.

Sharon shifted her weight awkwardly. “These chairs are bloody uncomfortable, aren't they? Listen love, do you think you could get me a water or something? It's awfully dry in here.”

I patted her knee. “Sure thing.”

The x-rays came back negative. Sharon was given an elaborate bandage, a set of crutches and told to stay off her ankle for a week. By the time she had hobbled out to the parking lot and settled herself in the passenger seat of the Navigator, Sharon had arranged a limousine service to ferry her to and from from work for as long as she needed it.

She snapped her cell phone shut and regarded me as I maneuvered the oversized vehicle through the suddenly too narrow streets of the city. Saturday was a shopping day and there was more traffic than I would have liked. We had arrived at the emergency department shortly before noon and it was now just shy of five o'clock. The shoppers poured into the streets to head home.

“I'm famished,” she said. “Didn't have time for lunch.”

“Why don't you phone home, see if the kids are there.”

She nodded and pressed an exquisitely tapered finger and lacquered nail on the speed dial. “You don't feel like cooking tonight, do you?”

Sharon didn't cook, she had no aptitude or feel for it. I liked to cook and in addition to a host of other chores, all of the shopping and cooking fell to me. Through some shrewd negotiating and outright bribery, I'd managed to get Sean and Nathan to do most of the yard work, although I stopped at hedge trimming. God knows the c*****e that might result in. It was scary enough to think about the two of them obtaining a driver's license in less than a year's time. Legalized homicide in my opinion. “No one's answering,” she said.

“They could be listening to music. Nothing penetrates that.”

“I don't know,” she mused. “Sean seems to have a sixth sense about the phone. Sometimes, I think he can hear it in his sleep.”

“That's only a result of limiting himself to four hours of chat a night.”

Sharon looked down at her bandaged ankle and her bare foot, then wriggled her toes. “They put the damn thing on so tight. It's cutting off my circulation near enough.”

“Is your foot all tingly?”

“Yes.”

“Wriggle your toes.”

“Oh, thank you, doctor.”

“You're welcome. Standard therapy, you know. We'll adjust the bandage when we get home.”

“Sure enough,” she said, then switched on the radio to the oldies station. Elvis Presley singing, “Suspicious Minds” filled the interior. I decided to concentrate strictly on the driving. I didn't want to pulverize anyone or anything, after all.

I put Sharon's arm around my shoulder and helped her hobble up the front steps. Having her balance against me, I fumbled for the keys and only managed to drop them twice while she gave me an exasperated look, then unlocked the door. “The alarm's not on,” she remarked.

We short-hopped into the living room where I deposited her on the couch. I got her foot elevated, propping it with a few pillows. “I'll see if they're here.” I checked their rooms, then the basement and finally, the kitchen. There was a note, Gone to the movies, back around 11. It was in Nathan's hand but I assumed he wrote it for the both of them. “They're out,” I said.

Sharon looked at the note. “Do you really think they've gone to the movies? Or are they making out with some girls, do you think?”

“I don't know. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. You know Nathan has shown no interest in girls, at least not yet. Sean's a different story altogether.”

“He is, isn't he? Let's hope he doesn't knock anyone up.”

“They've had s*x ed in school.”

“Fat lot of good that'll do in the heat of the moment.”

“Well. Shall we keep a bowl of condoms by the front door. Help yourself on your way out?”

Sharon thought about it. “Mightn't be a bad idea, at that,” she concluded.

“You don't think we'll be encouraging them to be sexually active?”

“Well, they're going to do it anyway, whether we like it or not. Isn't it better to be open than have them sneaking around? Wouldn't you rather have them practicing safe s*x than getting some poor lassie pregnant?”

“No,” I said. “I want to be a grandfather before I'm forty.”

Sharon fell back against the pillows. “Button up, will ya? You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you like to wind me up, that's what.”

“So?”

“You're the only one who can do that. Now why is that, do you suppose?”

“You've forgotten about your brothers and your mother. I think they've got your number.”