The Red Purse
Monday, July 9, 2010
4.15 p.m.
She has just half an hour. Karen, her next-door neighbour, can watch the baby for the half-hour before she has to leave for work. Marina grabs her purse and a shopping bag. She drops a quick kiss on Larissa’s infant brow, a misshapen, bulbous brow that needs fixing.
With a wave to Karen, she’s out the door, down the townhouse steps and across Mill Road, the street that edges the little plaza. She has errands at Bruno’s Fine Foods, the drugstore, and the bank. Heat wavers above the asphalt, burning through her sandals.
The shopping takes longer than she expected. At the drugstore she picks up diapers. There’s a lineup at the checkout. At the bank, she sweats in another lineup, although the air conditioning is cranking out gusts of cool air. She can’t leave. She has to pick up the US dollars she needs for tomorrow.
The teller, a small, indeterminate sort of woman in a grey shirt greets her as bank policy prescribes. Marina isn’t sure whether she has seen this one before. The transaction is perfunctory. The teller asks her to sign and hands her a brown envelope of cash. Marina tucks the envelope into her large, red purse.
Passing by the ATM on her way out, Marina hesitates. She has some Canadian cash, but isn’t sure how much the airport taxi might cost. Better to be safe.
Extracting her wallet from the red bag, she drops purse and shopping bag at her feet. She slips out her bank card, makes a withdrawal, and with cash, card and wallet in hand, swoops an arm towards the handles of the bags, her feet already in motion towards the outer door.
As Marina is crossing Mill Road, her front door opens. Karen, ready to leave, stands on the step, holding a wailing Larissa.
Marina drops her shopping, keys, cash, wallet in the entrance to take the baby from Karen’s arms. With shouted good-byes, Karen hikes for the Forty-nine bus that’s pulling up at the corner of Bloor and Mill.
Settling into a deep chair, Marina comforts the baby with her breast. She calms herself as well as she can.
She dreads the coming day. Out to the airport by four in the morning to catch the early flight to Boston. Straight to the Children’s Hospital for Larissa’s surgery at one o’clock.
If only Tigran were here. Three days ago, he’d flown to Armenia, fearing he might be too late to see his dying father. She’d insisted that he go.
The chance to schedule Larissa’s surgery came within hours of his departure. A cancellation had opened up a spot. Dr. Leask recommended that she take it.
Larissa’s condition is becoming daily more threatening. Her skull is closed up as tight as a football. She needs surgery to separate the skull bones to make room for a growing brain.
Tigran would have looked after the money and the errands. He would have come with them to Boston.
Larissa nuzzles, nurses, sleeps. Marina lays her in the cradle that Tigran had carpentered and painted with a traditional Armenian motif.
Then she turns to the task of packing. She ponders logistics. What should go in the checked bag, the carry-on, her purse? Could she manage them all—the baby, the bags, the big purse? Her purse. Where was her purse?
Her thoughts go into a frantic replay. Bruno’s. The drug store. The bank. She remembers the brown envelope of US dollars. She’s sure she put it in her purse there at the bank. She must have left it at the bank.
It is 6:15.
The bank closes at six. Someone might be still be there.
* * *
4.55 p.m.
Another hour. Cynthia hates these new “Customers’ Hours”. When she first started at the bank they closed the doors at four. She sipped cold water from the conical paper cup, taking a few precious seconds to rest her eyes on the blue hydrangeas growing outside the bank’s glass doors.
She was turning to go back to work, when something red caught her eye—a softly slumped red bag with a pretty, braided leather strap. On the floor under the ATM. Just out of the surveillance camera’s range.
Cynthia ducked out into the alcove to retrieve the bag. It should be taken straight to the manager, of course, its contents examined by at least two people to assure that nothing is misplaced, or, heaven forbid, stolen. Its owner would be back for it in minutes.
The other tellers were busy. The path to the staff room was clear.
Cynthia would have been indignant to be called a thief. Infuriated, even. She considered herself a very honest person. And she was scrupulously honest about many things: did not cheat on her income tax; never dealt “under the table” with painters or plumbers; always paid at the checkout for tiny items that could have easily been slipped into her bag, She confessed errors and made amends. She didn’t even colour her hair.
But Cynthia had a weakness: a weakness for purses, specifically red purses. On her lunch hour, she often visited Cloverdale Mall, a five-minute bus ride from the bank. Passing by Bentley’s without stopping to look at the purses was impossible. And if there was a red one, red leather or a synthetic that could pass as leather, she had to investigate. She would stroke the purse, try its zipper, inspect the lining. If it pleased her on all counts, she would struggle briefly. She had budget restrictions. Also two closet shelves crowded with red purses. She would buy it anyway.
To punish herself, Cynthia would forego lunch and finish the day on an empty stomach.
In the staff washroom, Cynthia studied her find—its artful drapery, its texture and the quality of its lining. The bag was perfect in every way.
After flushing the toilet and waiting a suitable interval, Cynthia checked that the coast was clear. She stowed the red purse in her locker.
When she returned to her post behind the blond desk, the lineup extended down the green carpet to the door. She dealt with deposits, withdrawals, transfers, money orders, exchanges for US dollars, rupees, euros, and yen, until, at last, Marietta slid the doors closed. Soon the customers were all gone. 6:06 p.m.
The staff room emptied quickly, except for Marietta, changing her heels for stout walking shoes. Cynthia dawdled in the toilet cubicle. She came out to find Marietta still puffing and tying. Marietta was trying to lose weight.
Today Cynthia was glad of this development in Marietta’s routine. They had always waited together for the bus and chatted until Marietta got off at the West Mall. But now Marietta was off to walk the two kilometers to her condo, and Cynthia had the staff room to herself.
She darted to her locker. The manager sometimes worked late and might make an appearance at any time. Once more in the cubicle, she struggled sweatily to force the purloined purse into her large black tote. No one would notice anything. She was used to being considered invisible, and it worked in her favour sometimes.
She slipped through the bank’s outer doors, brushing past a woman who carried a squalling infant. “Sorry, we’re closed “she flung over her shoulder and didn’t slacken her pace as she raced to catch the lumbering Forty-nine, which would take her to Kipling Station, the west end of the subway line.
On the bus, she closed her eyes in imitation of other exhausted workers. In reality, she was pumped, exhilarated by the success of her ploy, at the prospect of emptying the purse and making it her own. She considered its supple leather and finely crafted lining. It must have cost a fortune. Three hundred at least.
Cynthia pictured the babe that could afford such a purse. A careless babe, an empty-headed bimbo, probably a blonde. Somebody like Paris Hilton or her companion what’s-her-name. Has hundreds of purses. And shoes. Closets full of shoes. Would scarcely notice that she’d lost it. Wouldn’t worry about the stuff in it. More where that came from. By the time the bus reached Kipling Station, Cynthia had constructed a scenario that completely justified her theft. “Finders keepers” covered the situation beautifully.
Cynthia didn’t read or do crosswords on the train. She never picked up the free newspaper or a magazine at a kiosk. She was not illiterate, but had a pronounced gap in her reading ability that made reading a chore, something to be avoided if at all possible. She was daunted by close lines of text and her brain froze when she met a long unfamiliar word. She couldn’t deal with it.
* * *
September, 1982.
Cynthia Smith was a small girl in Grade One at Bellemere School in Toronto’s east end. She wouldn’t celebrate her sixth birthday until December 25.
Cynthia hid behind bigger children in the group sitting on the carpet in front of Miss Ashton’s rocking chair. If Miss Ashton noticed her and asked her a question, Cynthia was too shy to answer. But mostly, Miss Ashton didn’t notice or ask.
The teacher was young, pretty, inexperienced, and lazy. Cynthia adored her.
Miss Ashton had put today’s reading lesson up on the easel beside her chair. It was a large reproduction of a rhyme from the set of Xeroxed verses Miss Ashton had bought in the Teachers’ Store.
Walk, walk, walk to school,
Walk to school together,
Walk, walk, walk to school,
Walk to school together.
Miss Ashton decorated her chart with the cute line drawing copied from her source.
After the teacher had read the rhyme to the class several times and invited the children to chime in, Cynthia found she could do this with ease. In fact, she could look at the ceiling and recite the rhyme.
Cynthia’s acute memory for the charted rhymes stood her in good stead for several months. When Miss Ashton tested her with letter-size copies of the rhymes, complete with the line drawings, Cynthia was word-perfect. The drawings were the only clue she needed to identify the rhyme. Miss Ashton thought Cynthia was a great reader, and Cynthia thought so too.
Things began to get more difficult when Miss Ashton expected Cynthia to read from books. But Cynthia had a backup strategy in her sister, Emily. Emily is two years older, and reads with ease.
Cynthia brought the school books home, and Emily read them to her. Words were, to Cynthia, funny shapes to be remembered, like pictures. So she remembered them without analysis. She was remarkably good at it.
With this idiosyncratic memory, Cynthia faked her way through the grades. If she could con someone into reading material aloud to her, she could get by. Her fear of reading aloud masked as shyness. She was constantly excused from trying. After all, her spelling was perfect, so she was judged to be doing OK.
Cynthia sensed that something was missing from her reading technique. She saw that other kids mysteriously knew the long words, the new words, any old words at all. She was exhorted by one old-fashioned teacher to “sound it out”, a phrase that merely scared her, as did that particular teacher.
In high school, Cynthia found it best to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. She wore grey tee-shirts with her jeans. She kept her head down and never made trouble. Her school abounded in kids who demanded attention and they got lots of it. It wasn’t hard to fade from the teachers’ views.
She excelled in math. She loved numbers for their clarity, their consistency, their utter predictability.
By running as fast as she could, Cynthia was able to keep a jump ahead of a failing grade. She graduated, grateful to put schooling behind her.
The bank training was largely verbal, hands-on instruction. She understood the procedures, was deft with the machines. Cynthia found her calling. She kept her reading problem secret.
* * *
An hour after she’d left the bank, Cynthia alighted at Kennedy Station. She still had a fifteen minute walk to her low-rise apartment on Thrush Road. The heat hadn’t abated; the sun burned the back of her neck.
When she saw her mother’s car parked in the tiny visitors’ area, her stomach contracted. Mom would have to be fed. She would need a listening ear. She might stay the evening, if she’s feeling depressed, which wouldn’t be unusual. Cynthia thought regretfully of the single serving of leftover spaghetti she had planned to microwave for dinner. Now she would have to cook.
Mom had taken to making these unannounced visits since Dad had left her without warning for a relationship with a lovelier, younger, altogether more enticing woman, who admired his mature gravitas and his connections in the inner circle of the hockey world. As the father of famous hockey twins, Louie and Larry Smith, he held a place of respect among the VIPs of professional hockey. Louie and Larry had enjoyed star-status careers as players and were now establishing themselves as coaches.
The hockey world held little appeal for either Cynthia or her mother. As a child, Cynthia had always felt overshadowed by her brothers’ rising stardom, her needs ignored in the furor of tight schedules and travel their success entailed. At one point they played on different teams, keeping the household in a constant state of chaos. Her mother had washed hockey gear and provided meals at any hour of the day or night. Cynthia remembered her spoon-feeding pudding to an exhausted brother after a game.
Emily was made of sturdier stuff than Cynthia. She was as dedicated to her own interests as her older brothers were to theirs. She pursued drama with intensity, dropping out of college as soon as she had shepherded Cynthia through her last year in high school (since Cynthia couldn’t possibly make the grade without her tutoring). After a failed marriage, she shook the dust of Toronto off her feet and headed for London, U.K., where she was now making a splash directing arty little films.
Cynthia planned an easy dinner as she ascended in the creaky elevator to the fourth floor. She had a frozen entrée of some kind available. They could share that. Add a salad and ice cream. It would be enough. Mom hadn’t much appetite these days.
They exchanged kisses and a somewhat clingy embrace. Cynthia deposited her black tote on her bed and closed the bedroom door. The red purse would have to wait.
They ate their meal seated on the sofa in front of the television. Cynthia never ate there.
She turned on “Hoarding: Buried Alive”, a show her mother tried not to miss. Cynthia hated it. She would have preferred to wash the dishes and have her kitchen tidy before the nine o’clock movie. Her mother’s kitchen was never tidy. She had given up on it in the days when she was in constant serving mode and now kept it just one jump ahead of squalor. Cynthia supposed that the hoarding show gave her the satisfaction of watching people who were ever so much worse than herself.
They watched the show without comment. And the one after that. The mother bestirred herself to get up and dry the dishes as Cynthia washed. “We’ll be selling the house,” she said. “Your dad has contacted a real estate agent. Somebody he knows.”
The finality of it shocked Cynthia. “You’ll have to move!” she said stupidly.
“That’s fine with me. I’m sick of that house. I did everything to make a good home for him there and he just spits on it. On me too. For a slut.”
Cynthia had heard it all before and grunted her agreement as required. She understood her mother’s point of view. She despised her father for what he was doing. Still, she dreaded the obvious: that she should invite her mother to come and live with her. They were both lonely. Virtually friendless. Why not? There were so many reasons why not.
Her mother took her leave with heavy sighs and a prognostication of more hot, humid weather. Cynthia walked her to the elevator.
It was 9:45.
Cynthia’s skull was throbbing with one of her headaches. Not quite migraines, they descended on her with a debilitating ferocity for at least a couple of hours. The only cure was to lie down immediately with a cold compress and two painkilling tablets.
Before lying down, she pulled the red purse from her tote bag. In the darkness, she fingered the soft leather. It would have to wait again.
* * *
Marina clutches the baby and pounds on the bank door. She shouts, “Let me in. I need to get in.” But no one comes. She turns away.
She tries to remember what’s in the purse. The US dollars. She can get more from a money machine in Boston. If she can find one. The e-ticket for the flight. Will that be essential? She doesn’t know. Her passport? Is it there, or is it at home?
She’s hurrying home now. Larissa’s screams seem ever louder. A passer-by stares. She’s shocked to find that she’s gone out without locking her door.
Larissa won’t take the breast. She’s colicky, not hungry. Marina tries to comfort her and at the same time search for the passports. They’re not in the pile of documents on the table, stuff she hasn’t got around to yet.
She sits on the floor, rocking the baby and weeping.
* * *
Cynthia awakened in the dark. Looked at the clock. 2.07 a.m. Her headache was now a minor throb, almost pleasurable, it was so much milder than the initial attack. She got up.
Now. Now she can empty the purse. Destroy the contents. Take it over. The prospect pleased her.
She found a black garbage bag under the kitchen sink. Took it and the purse to her long, teak coffee table in the living room. She dumped the contents of the purse on the table, intending to sweep it all into the bag in one powerful motion. She pictured the distress of the rich, careless babe with satisfaction.
Her sweep failed. Left on the table were two items: a yellow square plastic-wrapped packet and a pink plastic nipple—a baby’s soother. The packaged menstrual pad smote her sleeping conscience. She was hurting a sister. Another woman. Spoiled heiress, bimbo, whatever. One of us.
The soother was the clincher. This woman has a baby, a little girl. The fantasy of the careless bimbo crumbled. Cynthia struggled for breath.
What should she do?
She slid the contents of the garbage bag onto the table. She began to sort the mélange. Tissues, lipstick, nail file—the usual accompaniments of a woman’s life. She shoved them aside. A cellphone. A brown envelope of US bills. Startled, she saw her own initial on the bank form inside. Folded documents, probably important. And two dark-blue hard-covered booklets—Canadian passports.
The photos show a young, dark-haired woman, pretty, even in the sober passport picture. An infant like other infants except for a slightly misshapen forehead. The names: Marina Aghajanyan; Larissa Aghajanyan. Cynthia approximated the first names as Mary and Lara. As for the surname, she didn’t bother to try.
There was a small, red notebook. Cynthia leafed through a few pages, but the notes were in a strange script. Something Cynthia didn’t recognize. Nothing useful there.
She unfolded the documents. A printed form from Boston Children’s Hospital. She could see that it was an appointment for surgery at 13.00 hrs. July 13. Tomorrow. No, today. For Lara. Dr. Abram-something. “Craniosynostosis” stumped Cynthia completely. Also the few words describing the procedure, perhaps.
The Air Canada e-ticket was easier. The 07.40 flight to Boston, arriving at 09.13.
Also the instruction to check in three (3) hours before international flights. Cynthia had traveled to Florida. She knew the security drill.
Cynthia constructed a new picture. The owner of the red purse is a young immigrant woman. Traveling alone to Boston for her baby’s operation. She has to do it herself. Cynthia wasn’t surprised at that. Her own mother had handled all Cynthia’s and Emily’s medical emergencies. Cynthia added an uncaring husband to her picture.
The cellphone buzzed and tinkled a silly little tune. Cynthia didn’t have a. cell and had no idea how to use one. She looked at it in something close to terror. She managed to flip it open, but by the time she saw the green symbol and guessed its purpose, the ringing had stopped.
She couldn’t think what to do. The need to hide her felony. confused her consideration of alternatives She searched for a way to return the purse without exposing her lack of common decency.
She could take it back to the bank and leave it exactly where she had found it. She could try to phone Mary She might pretend she’d found the purse on the subway. They could arrange a meeting place somewhere on the Bloor line. How late did the subway run?
It was 2.27a.m.
* * *
Marina’s sobs ease. Larissa calms at last. Marina considers phoning Tigran. Just to hear his voice. Just for encouragement. It’s an early morning hour in Gndevaz. He would be awakened from deep sleep. Phone connection with his remote, mountain-ringed village was iffy at best. How could she explain everything over a crackling line? And what could he do? Send her a kiss?
She resolves to try to make her way without the passports. She has her citizenship card and Larissa’s Canadian birth certificate. A credit card. Her debit card. She could get more cash for the taxi. She would cry. She would plead. She would tell them to call the Boston hospital to confirm Larissa’s appointment. She would get through somehow.
Marina’s mind clears. She sees what she needs to do and starts to do it. While she is packing a small bag for herself, she remembers her cell phone. Somebody, somewhere has her purse with the cell phone in it. Or, if it’s still in the bank, a cleaner might be working there. Might possibly pick it up.
She calls her cell number on her land line. She holds her breath The ring-tone repeats uselessly.
She sets the luggage in the front entrance beside the baby’s cumbersome “travel system”, a sort of cart with stowage below and extravagantly padded carrier basket on top. She thinks of the precious minutes that will have to be devoted to folding and stowing this behemoth. She finds her big shawl from home and fashions a sling. She will keep Larissa close to her heart.
She orders the taxi.
It is 2.30a.m.
* * *
The headache was coming back. It threatened to dizzy her, make all thought and decision impossible. Cynthia struggled to control panic, the rattling panic that would jar her out of her senses.
She turned on the TV. Something to still her racing thoughts. She surfed past the talky stuff to find a show with lovely scenery and a subdued voice-over. The show was soothing for a time, until the voice-over grew dark with threats. Ecological disaster awaits. Logging, mining, dams, even wind farms doom all the loveliness. Cynthia muted the sound, but the harrowing devastation of clear-cuts, slag heaps, tailings ponds, filled the screen. She had wasted half an hour without relief. She turned the TV off.
Distractedly, she turned over the stuff on the coffee table: the documents, the passports, the brown envelope. The e-ticket consisted of three pages: the first with the flight information, a second of fine print that Cynthia supposed gave the rules and regulations—the kind of stuff people never read anyway. A third page had one clear thing at the top, something to do with the credit card. A familiar street address. Mill Road. The street where she always caught the Forty-nine bus after work. A house number.
She had a name. She had an address. She could phone.
No. She would go. Wear a scarf to obscure her face. Hand over the purse and be done with it.
She thought at first she would take the subway. She always used public transit. She regarded a taxi as an outrageous luxury, used only for very special occasions. But it was already close to three o’clock. The last train had likely gone. She wasn’t sure, and she couldn’t take the chance.
Cynthia had eighteen dollars in her wallet. Not nearly enough for a taxi to the far side of the city. She had a credit card, though she wasn’t sure taxi drivers accepted them. If she had to, she would use some of Marina’s cash. Quickly, she stuffed Marina’s belongings back into the red purse.
It was 3.03 by her watch when the ratty-looking taxi pulled up to her lobby. She slid into the torn leather seat, reached for the seatbelt, and finding none, concentrated on keeping steady while clutching Marina’s purse. The journey took seventy-four minutes by public transit. She hoped the taxi could make it in an hour.
She didn’t drive, so had only a vague notion of the route the taxi should take. The driver used a quaint combination of poky side streets to reach the highway, then drove like a maniac on the nearly deserted expressway.
He was chatty too. Complained about the condition of the streets and blamed it on City Hall. Commented on the mayoral candidates, saying they were all a bunch of idiots. Recounted the details of the previous evening’s ball game—how two Jays’ outfielders and the shortstop managed to miss a routine fly ball, falling all over each other like bush leaguers. “Oughtta fine them for that. Or bench them for a coupla weeks.”
Leaving the highway, the driver meandered on strange, dark streets Cynthia, acquainted only with her little corner at Bloor and Mill, was quite lost.
She braced her legs, still clutching, wishing he would shut up, wondering where on earth he was taking her, counting the fleeting minutes.
She was shocked when the taxi pulled up at a townhouse on the corner where she always caught the Forty-nine. Bloor and Mill. Across from the little plaza.
She paid off the taxi with her credit card.
She mounted the steps, rang the bell, waited.
It was 4.05 a.m.
* * *
Marina startles from a light doze. The door chime doesn’t register immediately. It rings again.
She supposes it is the taxi. Shaking her head she makes her way to the door. A dark figure, face hidden in a loose headscarf, stands on the doorstep.
A voice rasps, “Here’s your purse. It’s all there. I didn’t take anything.” The person thrusts a red purse at her, turns back down the steps, and flees round the corner out of sight.
Marina barely saves the purse from falling. She catches it to her and starts to follow the stranger. But the stranger is gone.
She stares at the large, red, bag. Its softly draped leather. Its pretty braided handle. She’s still staring when a Lincoln purrs up to the curb. It’s her taxi.
As the taxi merges on the airport road, she reaches round Larissa in her lap to wrestle the zipper open and finger the contents of the purse. In the darkness, she feels the stiff covers of the passports, the folded documents, the crackly envelope. Silent tears flow. She whispers a thankful prayer to the hooded stranger, God, St. Christopher, whatever beneficent force that has brought her to this moment.
They would be all right. She and Larissa would get through this day and they would be all right. Silent tears fall.
* * *
Cynthia saw the Lincoln turn the corner to stop at the townhouse and watched it sift away towards the highway a few minutes later. There was nothing to do now but wait for the first eastbound Forty-nine to take her home. She went into the all-night McDonalds to order a coffee, sit, and wait. She chose the most secluded booth. She clasped the coffee in her two hands which were suddenly chilled. On her face too, silent tears run down. Regret, repentance, relief.
It is strange to ride the subway eastbound at 6.30 a.m. Few tailored jackets, stilettos, business suits or laptops. Workboots whitened with concrete dust. and worn, gaping flats. Tee-shirts, jeans, soft, old, patterned skirts, lunch boxes and totes, the accoutrements of people who start work at seven or eight. They sleep, and wakening just before their stops, push their way out the sliding doors.
Cynthia stayed awake. She watched the sleeping workers and reflected that she knows only a tiny sliver of her city. The bit of Scarborough where she lives, an even smaller bit of the area where she works. Knows only one way to get from one to the other.
How wrong her facile equation of a luxurious purse with a careless bimbo!
She does not quite know what to make of these musings. But she knows there’s something she should do differently.
At home she calls in sick and goes to bed.
* * *
A few weeks later, habit took her to Bentley’s on her lunch hour. A gorgeous red bag lay on the shelf. A bag of soft, artfully draped leather with a pretty braided strap.
“Isn’t it awesome!” said the salesgirl. “These man-made leathers are just so-o-o good. You wouldn’t ever guess it’s a knock-off, only $60.”
Cynthia smiled, a little sadly. She said, “Yes, it’s lovely,” and turned away.