A Year Less a Day. James Hawkins
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whole-grain dough and slaps it into baking pans. “Have you paid Tom yet?” Trina continues as she helps herself to an apple. Ruth’s affirmative nod is a lie. Trina knows, but doesn’t push the point.
It’s over a week since Trina’s warning, but Tom’s meter is still running. Ruth knows there will be a judgment day—the day after Jordan’s funeral, when she stands to survey the wreckage of her life—then the greasy little man will pop up with his hand out.
You could run. You’ve done it before, Ruth tells herself, thinking of the times her mother had forced her out of basement windows and dragged her from motel rooms before dawn, and she keeps it as an option. But there is an alternative. The date of the Los Angeles experiment has not yet been finalized. Could she beg Jordan to give up his hopes and reclaim the enrolment fee?
The need for action comes sooner than expected when Tom nails Ruth the following morning.
“How much?” she shrieks, though knew it was coming.
“Over eighteen thousand,” Tom repeats. “I’m not worried personally, Ruth, but my people in London ... I’m sure you understand.”
It’s only a few weeks to Christmas, and Jordan seems to be responding well to the relentless regime of treatment. He’s away three or four days a week, and even appears somewhat rejuvenated on his return.
“You’re looking good,” says Ruth and, burying her guilty conscience, she brings up the Los Angeles experiment. “I want you to go if you’re absolutely certain it will help,” she tells him, hoping to trigger a question mark. She certainly has reservations herself, particularly after the skeptical response she’d been given at the support group.
“I’ve never heard of it,” Erica had admitted, “but there’s a lot of quackery out there.”
However, Ruth’s hopes crash as Jordan announces that he is actually deteriorating, despite outward appearances, and his only remaining prospect is the experiment.
Ruth immerses herself in work as she tries to blot out the future and, despite Trina’s encouragement, spends her days hiding in the kitchen and sinking under the weight of her loneliness and grief. But the loneliness is not confined to the days Jordan is absent; it is with her every day. Erica at the support group had warned her: “The problem with cancer is that you can lose the person long before they die.” And Ruth has lost Jordan. In-between his weekly treatment sessions, he hibernates in his smoke-filled room. Now she knocks and waits. Sometimes he’ll answer and call her in, but more often she is forced to creep quietly away.
“Depression,” says Erica at the next meeting. “He’s trying to come to terms with it. You’ll just have to give him time.”
“He doesn’t have time,” blubbers Ruth.
Downstairs, in the café, Ruth smiles and makes light of inquiries about Jordan’s health as she tries to keep a sheen on their shattered life, while upstairs the chasm between them has become almost insurmountable. Only during Jordan’s weekly treatment sessions is Ruth able to enter his room to clean and change the linen, but it is becoming increasingly painful for her to look at his empty bed. Feeling like a visitor to a mausoleum, she tiptoes around, touching Jordan’s possessions with reverence—and she never pries.
The accidental discovery of a box of pills doesn’t initially bother her, but as she goes to replace them in the drawer, she notices that the box is clearly date-stamped. “September the twenty-first,” she reads aloud and, intrigued, she opens the box, but finds nothing other than a full blister-pack.
A few minutes later she is downstairs in the café’s kitchen, shoving the box in Trina’s face, yelling, “He’s not taking them! He thinks we can’t afford them and he’s trying to kill himself!”
Trina takes a look, seeking the reference number on the label, but it has been torn off. “Give me his health card number and I’ll check,” she says. “Though don’t tell anyone, or I’ll lose my job.”
Jordan phones that evening, his muffled voice sounding more distant than usual, and Ruth is taciturn as she fights to keep back news of her find.
“I asked the doctor how I could avoid falling hair, and he told me to jump out of the way,” jokes Jordan, as he tries to cheer her up, but her mind is elsewhere and she forgets to laugh.
“Well, I thought it was funny,” he says, but senses tension and cuts the call short. “You’d better get some sleep, Ruth. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Subconsciously, Ruth knows that sleep is just another nightmare waiting to torment her, and avoids the torture by staying awake in a chair. She succumbs eventually, and the nightmare morphs to reality when the phone rings and she leaps up, convinced that Jordan has died during treatment. But it’s Trina, whispering hoarsely, “Ruth, is that you?”
“It’s nearly three o’clock,” Ruth groans.
“I know,” says Trina excitedly, as if they are on a sleepover. “I’m on night shift at the old-folks’ place. I’m checking the ministry computer, but Jordan hasn’t bought any drugs in the past month.” She pauses to scroll down. “Hold on,” she whispers. “There has to be a mistake. He’s not on the system at all. This can’t be right ... Oh, gotta go. Someone’s coming.”
Ruth makes some coffee and fights to stay awake as she tries to make sense of the information. Trina must be wrong, she thinks, but then has another thought. Maybe Jordan has used a nom-de-plume in his determination to prevent his mother from discovering his ailment and reclaiming her money.
Cindy opens the door at seven, and Tom hits the washroom at full speed. Trina, in his wake, veers off and heads straight for the kitchen.
“Then why didn’t he take the pills?” Trina wants to know, when Ruth lays out her suspicions about an alias.
“He’s given up. I knew it,” says Ruth as the truth sinks in. “He’s so sure of this thing in Los Angeles that he’s just not trying anything else.”
“But these pills are from September,” says Trina. “Jordan didn’t know about the Los Angeles experiment back then, did he?”
Ruth takes a moment, then bursts into tears. “He’s worried about the money. It must be the money.”
Ruth’s financial lows hit bottom when Tom finally corners her as she makes a crunchy-cashew salad. He has a dark look as he tells her, “My people need some money now, Ruth.”
“But I can’t ... Not yet,” she says, dicing carrots and celery. “I’ll soon be able to pay. This place is making money. I’ve just got a few things ...”
“Ruth ... When my people say ‘now,’ they kinda mean now.”
“But, Tom. You said ...”
Tom stops her with his hand. “Ruth. You don’t understand. Now means now.”
“I can’t pay,” Ruth says boldly, as she fiercely attacks a cucumber. “What can they do, take me to court?”
Tom laughs wryly. “Ruth. These people don’t use courts—they use bricks and razors.”
Ruth freezes and weighs up the carving knife in her hand, wondering if it might be easier in the long run to slit Tom’s throat and plead insanity.
“I thought they were in London,” she scoffs, but, in truth knows that semantics won’t help. “If I could do anything about it I would,” she says. “I just can’t give you any money.”
“There might be something ...” says Tom, eyeing Ruth’s fulsome physique.
“What? Anything,” she replies, throwing in the cashews and drizzling vinaigrette, though she could never have imagined what she was agreeing to.
Ruth is back hiding in the kitchen again. She’s been there for three days with hardly a break, but this time she is avoiding Trina. “Tell her I’m