Hi, I'm Carl From Upstairs

The town guys came around last week and put in a bunch of paths. I was in my kitchen, contemplating potential flooring alternatives. I needed something waterproof, but didn’t really like the designs I was seeing so far. I was sitting at the little table in the corner, flicking through online catalogues, when I heard the town guys arrive. First it was just shouting as the supervisors gave instructions. By the time I looked out the window, the supervisors were gone and it was just this one woman in a hardhat. At that moment, the guy from down the street with the noisy black car drove by, his exhaust pipes rattling. It was like he was dragging chains. It was an old car. Whenever he started it, black smoke came out. Depending on the wind, the smoke sometimes drifted in through my open windows in the summer months.

…

I reset Google Maps, and the first thing my phone suggested I do was to turn right onto Bloor, travel 200 metres, and then do a U-turn. This suggestion was insane. Besides the fact that there would never, in any conceivable time or situation, be any place to do a U-turn anywhere on Bloor Street, there was so much traffic going the other way that there was absolutely no hope of me ever getting turned around without making everybody else on the road really mad. So I just kept going along Bloor until Google Maps reset itself and suggested I turn right in 300 metres. Then, when Maps indicated that I was about a kilometre away from the pizza place, I found a side street to park on. But when I got out of the car and attempted to orient myself for the walk to the pizza joint, I got turned around trying to figure out how to get the arrow on Maps to point me in the right direction.

…

I woke up. It was morning. Monday. Summer. I thought it might be a good day to make spaghetti sauce. I’d made spaghetti sauce before. But this time, I decided, it was going to be different.

…

Flies love garbage. I’ve known about this for a long time, ever since I was a kid. But for some reason today it surprised me to find myself surrounded by flies when I took the garbage out to the curb.

…

I put the Honda on the street. Then I put the Matrix in the driveway. Then Kitty came rushing downstairs, grabbed her purse, tore out the front door, and jumped into the Matrix. Kitty hates the Matrix, because it’s standard. But Parky needs to go to the doctor today and he can’t drive standard, so Kitty, who usually drives the Honda, can’t take the Honda, because the Honda is automatic, and Parky needs an automatic to get to the doctor. When Parky gets back from the doctor, he and I will go to the pool together in the Honda.

…

When I came down from the bedroom, Kitty was sitting at the dining room table doing Wordle. She looked up at me. “Are you going to do Wordle now?” she asked. “I already did it,” I said. “Already?” she asked. “I did it as soon as I woke up,” I told her. “You did it in bed?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “You had your phone with you in bed?” she asked. “That’s not like you,” she said. “I know,” I said. I sat down across from her at the table. “Did Parky do Wordle?” I asked. “I don’t know,” Kitty said. “He hasn’t come down from his room yet this morning.”

…

We saw a kid in a knitted cap. Then two red cars went by. Someone was mowing their lawn. A silver car turned into a driveway. The car’s motor went off. Another silver car was going west. We came upon a red light. It was hot standing in the sun. There was a wind blowing from the south. Parky pressed the walk button to let the stoplight know we wanted to cross. Cars lined up to turn left. We waited for the walking man.

…

Probably the sun will stop shining soon. The clouds look like they are getting ready for some kind of gathering.

…

When Margery calls to tell me she just wants to hear my voice, I get a small glimpse of what is to come.

…

I cleaned up the back garden today. I already did the front garden a few days ago. I like going out back and looking at the garden. I’ve been going out every hour or so. It looks so neat. Plus, it’s really nice out there today. Sunny, but not too hot. When you’re doing the work of tidying up the gardens, they never look as good as you’d like them to look. This is because you see every little leaf or bit of detritus, and you can’t possibly get it all. But when you go back out later, it always looks so good.

…

Now I get why she’s always wearing scuba equipment, I think as I scramble out the front door of the house in my bathing suit, ruing the day I allowed myself to get tangled up with these shysters.

…

I woke up on the Wednesday after Easter with a headache. I could hear Kitty in the other room talking to herself. I stepped into the shower thinking of an incident that had happened weeks ago, on a Monday. I’d been standing in line at the grocery store. I had a bag of milk and a chocolate bar. A middle-aged woman stepped into line behind me. Her hair was piled up on her head like a turban. She wore eye shadow that was the same shade of blue women wore in the 1970s. When I turned and looked at her more closely, I saw that she was young, hardly more than a child. My first impression that she was middle-aged had been wrong. She was wearing a dress that could easily be described as a costume. It was pink with white lace fringed around the neckline and hem. Her knees were bare and she was wearing white ankle socks and shiny blue lace-up sneakers. Her legs were bruised and dirty, like she’d been roughhousing with the other kids before coming to the grocery store. She had a big yellow bow in her hair and she was holding a package of meat, whistling an airy tune that sounded like nothing much more than quiet wind. She was beautiful in a way that I couldn’t make sense of. Vulnerable, but also empty, like a child alone in the sandbox. Even with all these people around, she gave the impression of being isolated. I tried to reach out to her, not physically so much as emotionally, but I found that I hit what felt like a wall. I couldn’t break through.

…

That night, when I held your hand, I wasn’t really interested in anything but your hand.

…

“Those other people,” she said, shaking her head, and then she turned around and went back into the house. The screen door slammed shut. It seemed so quiet once she was gone, except for the occasional whoosh of car tires out on the street, and the cicadas anticipating the afternoon heat. I could see the wind moving the branches of the trees. There was a secret lull, a void in the day ahead that I had no desire to fill. I followed her into the house.

…

I was alone in the car with the Google Maps voice. I looked around. There were many other people alone in cars around me with the same voice telling them things that might or might not be the sensible thing to do. We were all stopped in a traffic jam with no sign of it ever letting up, so what the Maps voice was telling us was probably moot. It was twilight. I needed to get to the bakery. I was thinking it might close before I got there. I got out of the car, locked it, started to walk.

…

“What is it for you to come?” she asked. I had to give this some thought. “It’s kind of like a terrible foreboding,” I finally told her. “It’s like everything you’ve ever hoped for in life gathers up inside you and pushes against the inside of your skin, trying to get out.” I found myself breathing a little hard as I told her this, and I pulled my head back, only to find her staring at me out of darkly hooded eyes. I put my head back down on the pillow beside hers. I felt her black hair tickling my nose. “And you sort of don’t want to let it out,” I told her quietly, “but eventually it just goes totally out of your control and just spasms right out of you.” She had her hands on my back, but she wasn’t moving them. “Then,” I told her, “when it’s over,” I told her, “and you’re empty,” I said, “you just lie there for a while, marvelling at the fact that it’s gone. It feels so good to get it out,” I told her, “and you wonder why you didn’t want it gone sooner.” I breathed out. “And then,” I said, “at a certain point,” I said, “you miss it,” I said. “I mean, it isn’t the feeling of when it goes out of you that you miss so much as the feeling of having something inside of you that you might be able to keep there.” She was staying perfectly still. She wasn’t even breathing as far as I could tell. “Eventually, though,” I told her, “keeping it inside you becomes intolerable, and you give it all away in a kind of frenzied abandon, like it never meant anything to you at all to be full of whatever it is that keeps filling you up beyond what you might ever hope to bear.”