Six Metres of Pavement. Farzana Doctor
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sign flapping in the wind above what used to be an empty storefront. For years, a dusty display of men’s briefs occupied the front window, and he’d often wondered if anyone was going to come along and revitalize the old haberdashery. The new owners transformed the property into The Merry Pint, a typical-looking drinking hole, with a few tables spread along one side and a long bar down the other. The back had a refurbished pool table and a few booths where local drug dealers set up shop. The lighting was always on the dim side, although its south-facing windows drew sunshine on bright days. The bathrooms downstairs were kept fairly clean, but still managed to exude a faint smell of urine.
That day, the fluttering banner advertised, “Come in for a $1 beer — this week only!!!” and so Ismail followed its enthusiastic command, and went inside, intending to have a cheap drink and then go home to his leftover Patak’s curry. It was during the frightful restructuring days at work, and perhaps he’d been a little more on edge than usual. That one beer turned into two more, drinks that provided him with a giddy, enlivened intoxication he eagerly welcomed. Until then, he rarely drank, except on special occasions: a sip of champagne at New Year’s, a glass of wine at dinner with his brother’s family.
And then there was the companionship; amiable chatter from a few patrons who, along with Ismail, would soon become Merry Pint regulars. By his third visit, he realized that none of the others recognized his name, were not interested in his history whatsoever. He was welcomed into their drunken tribe, and together, they enjoyed a perpetual present.
At first, a few drinks once or twice a week permitted him a respite from his life. Then, those drinks weren’t enough, and he found himself there every night after work, drinking a few, talking nonsense with the regulars and eating lukewarm battered cheese until he was sleepy and nauseated. Not surprisingly, the tipsy fun was soon replaced by a dull, drunken routine:
Sleep. Work. Beer. Cheese. Sleep. Work. Beer. And so on.
This regimen had great staying power, but of course, it finally dawned on Ismail it wasn’t sustainable. About a dozen years into his tenure at the Merry Pint, just after his forty-eighth birthday, he awoke with a strange radiating pain in his side, uncomfortable enough to force him to go to the local walk-in clinic. After an hour’s wait, the young doctor took his history, twirling a strand of blond hair with her left hand, while she took notes, in green ballpoint, with her right. Her eyes widened when he calculated that he’d been drinking heavily for over a decade. Ismail attempted to avoid looking down her tight blouse or noticing her low-riding trousers while she strapped on a blood pressure cuff and listened to his quickened pulse.
In serious tones, she suggested residential alcohol treatment, and warned him about high cholesterol and liver disease. She sent him away with ultrasound and blood test requisition forms and called him in two weeks later to review the results. Despite the fact that she reminded Ismail of Britney Spears, he took her counsel seriously, shocked that he had let things advance to such a sordid place.
So, two years before his fiftieth birthday, he tried for the first time ever to quell his urge to drink. For about eight months, he managed to quit the fried cheese, switch to light beer, and not surprisingly, lost about twenty pounds, returning to his previous slender physique. He visited Dr. Britney at regular intervals, and since the mystery pain had disappeared, she seemed pleased with his progress. He never told her he hadn’t quit drinking, that he’d only switched to light beer. Week after week, usually on a Sunday evening, he resolved to do so, making plans to take a few days off from the sauce. Some of the attempts lasted a day, maybe two. Most of the time, though, he spent his evenings hunkered down in his living room, sipping Blue Light and watching TV. Ismail’s Sony Trinitron became a nonjudgmental, consistent companion and a somewhat adequate replacement for his old drinking friends.
But it wasn’t as depressing as it sounds. Ismail discovered entertaining and productive shows on home décor, which reminded him a little of his old self, the person he’d been before Zubi died and Rehana left. Back then, he’d been a tidy sort, even slightly fastidious, according to Rehana, who hadn’t been used to a man who knew how to use a vacuum. He’d lost some of that while his drinking was at its worst. Rings of grime coated his bathtub, empties piled up by the back door, and dust and cobwebs accumulated in every room’s corners.
But from April to November of that year, Martha, Debbie Travis, and Mike Holmes motivated Ismail to bash down a living room wall, and install a skylight that let bright shafts of sunlight into his office. He painted the kitchen walls various hues of yellow and orange, back-splashed with new ceramic tiles, hung expensive-looking and pensive artwork in the dining room, and planted an attractive perennial garden out back.
With the encouragement of HGTV, he worked steadily, devoting himself to his projects each evening, weekend, and statutory holiday. He even used a few sick days for the really time-consuming and tricky jobs. As he destroyed places within the house that reminded him of the old days, he hoped to make homeless the memories that lingered long in that old row house.
Bad memories are like relatives who visit and overstay their welcome. Soon your irritation builds when night after night, you return home to find them lounging on your couch, or raiding the refrigerator. And bad memories can be a noisy lot, keeping you up late at night with their endless chatter. Sometimes, you rouse at night to find one of them standing next to your bed, pillow in hand, about to smother you to death.
Evicting them is futile, for memories are slippery and sly, able to find new hiding places and cubbyholes in which to live. They grudgingly vacated for a night or two, fooling him into thinking they were gone, only to make their appearance once again. When he repositioned his bedroom furniture to improve the feng shui, he found a pair of Rehana’s socks trapped behind the dresser, coated in pinkish-grayish dust. He brushed them off, and, unsure of what to do with them, meekly folded them into a tight ball and tossed them to the back of the closet.
One day while digging a hole for a new Rose of Sharon bush, he spied something buried a foot down in the soil. He poked it with his trowel, yanked it free from the earth, and held it in his gloved hand. It was a bright yellow car, encrusted in grime, just the right size for a toddler’s grip. Tiny cartoon faces peered out from its dirty windows: a father at the steering wheel, a mother in the passenger seat, and two children in the back. A gush of high-pitched babbling filled the air. Ismail looked around for children in neighbouring yards, but there weren’t any. He closed his eyes and listened until the sounds stopped.
Sometimes, on rainy days, he’d enter Zubi’s nursery, an abandoned, closed-up area of the house. He considered redoing the room, perhaps turning it into a mini-gym. He planned to donate the dusty pine crib, dresser, and change table to charity, but never managed the task. At least the closet was mostly empty; Rehana had packed up Zubi’s clothing, photo albums, and toys long ago. She left behind three framed photographs of Zubi on the dresser. He hadn’t moved them from where they’d been placed, and could hardly bear to look at them.
Over the years, the room turned musty and the wallpaper shabby, its edges peeling and curling up into itself. Rehana and Ismail had hung the wallpaper together, one of their first home decorating efforts. They had an argument about whether to go with a balloon or teddy bear motif, and as usual her choice prevailed. Rehana steadied a ladder for Ismail, and her seven-month tummy got in the way, rubbing up against the paste. After he’d hung the paper, Ismail painted the ceiling sky blue, with puffy white clouds, so that their baby would have something soothing to look at when she woke.
His renovations stopped there, at the threshold of Zubi’s room. In the rest of the house, the lovely walls, new finishes, and garden left him feeling lonelier than ever. He returned to the Merry Pint for solace, and within days, was drinking to get drunk again.
For a spell he had cheerless sexual encounters with the not-so-merry, half-sauced women he met there. They seemed to efficiently manage their dance cards through some kind of unspoken agreement with one another, switching partners on alternate nights. Ismail was among the dozen or so men who frequently vied for their attentions, buying them drinks, going home with them on a weekday evening. The luckiest, the ones most in the women’s favour on a particular week, got a Friday or Saturday night of inebriated tangoing.
They filled the vacant space in Ismail’s