Morning Coffee
BY RACHEL FULFORD
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast . . .
—Robert Frost
It’s an unusually warm, sunny morning, near April’s end. As Lucy staggers out of bed, overheated and sweaty, she wonders if this powerful warmth is yet another sign of climate change. For the last six weeks, she’s felt a deadening blend of panic and boredom that she’s never felt before.
Now, she’s one of millions in confinement. And that doesn’t help. There’s nothing to make her feel special. Glassy-eyed with fear about how long this could possibly go on, she stares at the walls of her modest house. She wonders why in God’s name she never thought to paint the place. The previous owner’s eggshell white blinds her, and makes her feel like she’s living in a hospital, or an institution for the criminally privileged, ungrateful and numb.
She likes to grind her own coffee beans in the morning with a Black & Decker gizmo. Through its clear dome, she watches the carefully-harvested, ethical beans pulverize into brown snow. This gives her a sense of power and self-sufficiency.
Jake, her husband of four years, claims he never hears the horrible grinder sounds; they don’t disturb his overlong sleep. Lucy isn’t sure; she’s taken that claim as a challenge. She grinds away, without muffling the roar with a tea towel, filling the air with the sounds of destruction, whirring and chopping blades.
Lucy doesn’t pause to smell the fresh, powdery grounds before dumping them into her stainless steel Bodum, adding boiled water and stirring until gasoline-coloured bubbles form at the surface. She toasts two slices of Ezekiel freezer bread, which, when slathered with natural peanut butter, constitute her daily indulgence. She feels some anticipation which she recognizes as pleasant. She’s been thinking about her neighbour Gord for some time, without realizing that she’s looking forward to having breakfast in parallel with him. No one in her family, or Jake’s, is involved in mathematics or science in any way, so she considers Gord, and his actuarial job, a bit exotic.
During the pandemic, the unrelenting focus on numbers, charts, tables—even something called an R-number (Reproductive Number)—makes her feel insecure about her education and unprepared. The digits cross her eyes and hurt her head. Combined with a longing to sit beside the wall with Gord, as she has every morning for the past few weeks, is a wish that he could interpret numbers for her. As if he holds the key to her language-based brain that could allow numbers to enter, be understood and digested as easily as an Anita Brookner novel.
Slipping on her cardigan, she carries the French press and milk-filled mug in one trip, the toast and cloth napkin in another. She sits on her saggy outdoor chair near the little wicker table, plunges her coffee dust down to the bottom, extracting all life, and pours the nearly-black liquid into her cup till it achieves that perfect dark-beige tint.
Three years ago, Lucy and Jake bought their first home, this duplex on the west side of Howland. It shares a porch with a neighbour to the north. The wooden wall that divides it runs from the fat white pillar at the top of the steps to the red brick of their home. This partition blocks sun and breeze from the left of Lucy’s heavily-mortgaged porch, and the right of Gord’s fully-paid-off porch. It does not block sound. The gaps between the horizontal slats, painted a dingy grey on Lucy’s side, are tiny but existent. These gaps have become especially obvious to Lucy during the pandemic. As winter sloughs off its rough edges, she spends more and more time sitting out front.
After a few sips and bites, she pauses and listens. She takes a slow breath and wonders if Gord is awake and outside. At this point in her morning ritual, she imagines herself an explorer, a naturalist, like Jane Goodall approaching a chimpanzee – don’t be too wary of him or he’ll sense your fear; be too forward and he’ll stay hidden. Just go about your business as if you don’t care, and he’ll make himself known to you.
Lucy pauses, facing the street, and imagines her ears dilating. She wishes she could tilt them to the north like dish antennae. Is Gord alive, awake, and sitting on the porch just like her? He’s an early riser too, someone who savours his coffee in the fresh air and seems to enjoy good conversation.
She hears a throat being cleared. He’s been there all along, which makes her smile.
“Hi, Gord.”
“Good morning, Lucy.”
She takes another sip from her travel mug that doesn’t travel any further than this porch anymore.
“How’d you sleep?”
She likes that he remembers her telling him yesterday that she hadn’t slept well.
“Not bad,” she lies. She’d doom-scrolled her phone till well past midnight, Jake snoring away beside her.
“How’s work?”
“It’s OK. Getting used to everything online,” says Gord.
“That’s good.”
They pause.
“Gord, do you see many people? Face-to-face, I mean.”
“No. My brother and his family are steering clear, and, you know, I’ve been getting groceries delivered.”
“So, no visitors?”
“No visitors. You’d have heard them come and go, it’s so bloody quiet on the street these days.”
“Yeah. Me too. It’s just me and Jake. No visitors, no going to visit.”
“Same.”
“So . . . the chances of either you or me having the virus at this point is . . . what?”
“Low. Quite low.”
His answer made the distance between them seem greater, the barrier unnecessary. It seemed like ages since she’d had any real contact with another human being. How long since she’d been held in someone’s arms? She felt she wasn’t much more than a piece of furniture to Jake. One that made dinner, did research for him from time to time and watched Netflix beside him on the couch.
“Gord, can I ask you a question?”
“Another one? I don’t know . . .” Lucy could practically hear the grin on his face. “Sure.”
“You’re an actuary; you look at numbers all day, right?”
“Well, I guess that’s one way of putting it. I mean, I talk to people a lot, but numbers, tables, they’re a big part of the job.”
“OK. So when you look at the virus numbers, what do you think?”
“What do I think?”
“Yeah, what do you think about . . . the future? Like, how are we doing, as a society?”
She hears a bird off in the distance. Or is it a cell phone?
“That’s a serious question.”
“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have put you on the spot . . .”
“No, that’s ok. Well—it doesn’t look good.”
Lucy holds her coffee still in her hand.
“It doesn’t, does it?”
She could hear Gord scratching his balding head. Hadn’t Lucy heard somewhere that balding was a sign of virility in men?
“Not really. Unless you look at the numbers from the perspective of the virus. In which case, the numbers are looking mighty good indeed.”
Gord half-snorts at his own joke. Lucy can feel her cheeks redden and her eyes fill with tears. Thank God he can’t see much through the slats. Taking another sip, she clears her throat.
“I’m asking because I’m trying to figure out if this is the right time to . . . never mind.”
“The right time to what?”
“I wanted to ask what kind of future you would predict for a child born during this pandemic.”
Lucy glances north, to the Casa Blanca Apartments on the hill at the top of her street. The Casa Blanca is a glamourous 50’s low-rise, its name mounted in black modernist font against yellow brick. Its sign perpetually reads No Vacancy, and it gazes down with disdain at Howland Avenue with its starter homes in varying states of decay and renovation. Lucy used to love seeing the Casa Blanca when she drove home from work. It seemed to wink at her, promising a gathering of architects and designers with dry martinis, laughter and scintillating discussions. Not tonight, she’d think, so sorry, as she parallel-parked in front of her house, preparing to reheat a dull dinner for her and Jake.
“Gord, it’s just, I’m wondering if now might be a good time. But I can’t tell. You work with statistics all day. I thought you might have some insight. I just don’t want to make the wrong choice.”
“I can crunch the numbers for you, but I’m not sure if that’s the soundest basis for a decision.”
“Oh really? What do you think the soundest basis would be?” Lucy hears her voice getting squeaky. This was not how she pictured her porch time going this morning.
“I don’t know, exactly but . . . are you pregnant, Lucy?
“No. No, I’m not.” She swallows some coffee to prove her point.
“Ok, that’s good. I mean . . . I don’t know what I mean exactly.”
Laughing a bit, relieved that he’s admitting he doesn’t know something, she says: “That’s OK, I know this is a weird conversation for first thing in the morning.”
“As long as we both know it’s weird, I guess my next question would be: does Jake know you are thinking about this?”
Lucy sighs. She realizes that Jake isn’t a factor in her equation. The baby in her thoughts, in her imagination, isn’t his.
“Jake . . . no. He and I haven’t actually talked much lately. Which is so strange because we’re together all the time?” She imagines Gord nodding sagely. “I wanted to get the numbers from you first. Before I make any decisions.”
“I see.” She can hear him taking his own sip of coffee, and putting the mug back down on his table.
“Gord, do you regret not having married or had children?”
“That’s one hell of a question.” His voice constricts, gets quiet. “I guess I don’t spend time regretting things. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other.”
“You know, that’s why I like you so much,” she says, brightly. “You keep moving forward. With Jake, and his interminable PhD, it seems like we’re just going round in circles.”
An ambulance drives down the street with its sirens off. Lucy visualizes herself getting up and saluting it as a gesture of respect, but it’s out of sight in no time.
Once the motor sounds die down, Gord clears his throat. “I don’t know what to say about that. But thanks for the compliment.”
They drink their respective coffees.
“Just last night, I was thinking that probably the best thing to come out of this goddamn pandemic is getting to know you, Lucy.”
She holds his words in the gaps between them. She’s unfamiliar with male compliments and has been for some time. Lucy notices her own heartbeat. It seems loud all of a sudden. She has to say something or she’ll burst.
“Would it be ok if . . . I bring you a cup of coffee tomorrow morning?”
Gord’s pause before responding almost kills her.
“A cup of coffee?”
“At this time tomorrow, I’d like to bring a cup of my famous French press to your porch. I know it will beat your drip coffee hands down. I’ll wear gloves and tie a scarf around my mouth, after washing my hands a thousand times of course.”
“I see.”
Lucy took a deep breath and added: “I’d like to sit on your side of this wall.”
“Are you asking or telling?”
“I might lose my nerve by tomorrow, but right now I’m telling.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
She thought she could hear him smile.
“Yes,” says Gord. “Okay.”
“Great. See you then.”
Lucy rises, trembling a little, and clears the table like a good wife. She steadies her shaking hands, lifts her head, wills herself to put one foot in front of the other, and walks back into the house. When Jake wakes up, he’ll find her inside, her damp grounds dumped into the compost, her Bodum rinsed and dried, as though her morning coffee never took place.
RACHEL FULFORD is a Registered Psychotherapist in Toronto who graduated from the Centre for Training in Psychotherapy in 2017. Previously, Rachel worked in scripted TV development. At present, she is at work on a novel that explores intergenerational trauma.