Gavin Kayner
Gratitude
Gertrude Hinklemeyer lived in a two-story bungalow on a crowded block in a crowded city—surrounded by humanity but utterly alone.
No one knew her name.
No one, in fact, cared to know it.
She had a husband, a son, a cat. Once-upon-a-time. But the husband played dead and was carted away only to be resuscitated by a female impersonator whose best work involved Judy Garland and a cigar. Sonny boy had facial reconstructive surgery and changed his last name to Smith in repudiation of his heritage. Repudiation of her. The cat gave up after only three lives.
And yet, Gertrude persevered.
That’s what life does, despite the odds.
Most of the time.
Angular, gaunt, hooked-nosed, and pointy-chined, the dear woman resembled a stork or some maligned creature from a grim fairy tale.
Children egged her house on Easter and smashed pumpkins on her doorstep on Halloween. The 4th of July, Labor Day, and so forth had their own particular desecrations.
For that and the fact of her singular life, the holidays dismayed Gertrude.
When she went out for her morning constitutional, folks crossed the street to avoid sharing the same sidewalk.
While shopping, hourly help ridiculed her visage with snorting commentary amongst each other.
As these and other large and little cruelties accumulated, they formed a callus on her soul which protected her against debilitating despair.
Up to a point.
Income from a trust fund protected Gertrude from abject poverty, also up to a point. The fund kept her in tins of tuna fish and baked beans.
And an occasional pair of pre-owned shoes.
And not much more.
At night, she kept all the lights on in the house. Even the ones in the closets. Especially the ones in the closets. That’s where the persistent memories hung out. The regrets and rejections. Without the lights, they’d swarm the rooms like rabid bats squeaking for their bloody feast. Sucking her dry.
Desiccated-she’d collapse into dust.
Dust the final anonymity.
Gertrude perused the Romance Novels in her local 2nd hand shop—Starting Over. There she could buy a basketful of titillation for less than ten dollars.
At home, in her highbacked, claw-footed chair, she feasted on such pulp ravenous for unbridled passion, musky sex—a human touch.
But never took her own pleasure. That constituted a sin. According to her childhood prurient priest.
She lingered over the novels’ smouldering covers. Those hunky men with taut stomachs, broad hairless chests, square chins, requisite piercing blue or green eyes. Seeking redemption.
From implausible gods in a godless universe.
Her husband had been a dough-boy, not a stud-muffin. Nevertheless, Gertrude missed the idea of him. His palatable presence. The rattling of newspapers. The ‘Did you read this, Gertie? A man robbed a bank with a bar of soap. I guess he won’t be caught red-handed.’ The tittering laughter as he admired his witticism.
Such as it seemed to him.
She missed the boy who went from eating Play-Doh to modelling it into voluptuous figures which he used to create pornographic content for certain malleable websites.
She missed the cat who disdained petting and hissed and raked her hand with its fierce claws whenever Gertrude reached out to seek comfort in its silky black coat.
The house reverberated in silence now. Not even the floorboards creaked lest they disturb the weighty quiet surrounding Gertrude like a thick cloak into which she burrowed having no other choice.
When she did attempt to seek refuge in the radio or television, either only served to accentuate her isolation.
One dark, but not so stormy night, a good deal of time after the cat had expired from ennui, Gertrude, absent the presence of any sort of animate being, finished reading Secret Rendezvous and luxuriating in the exquisite consummation of the heroine’s climatic ending, had an epiphany. She said into the hum of solitude, ‘Other people read these books. But no one lives these lives. I’m not alone in my longing. Surely.’
At this point in the story, you’d think this revelation would serve as an incantation, perhaps inviting a romantic hero, a stock character from a well-used, fifty-cent potboiler clad in suggestive jeans and unbuttoned shirt from the ethereal to make an appearance as the material.
To lighten the tale and give us hope.
But no.
This is fiction, not fantasy.
Instead, Gertrude took the revelation as a final condemnation of her and humanity’s futility and rose from her chair, donned her forest-green parka, stepped out into the cracking cold, and walked right out of her life.
She passed houses grave and dark as tombs. Passed lit windows framing solitary figures clinging to porcelain cups as if it kept them afloat. Passed the homeless huddled on their cardboard beds in dank door wells. Passed the man at the burnt-out street lamp, the red flare of his cigarette—a warning or a plea.
Passed broken junkies hunting their temporary fixes. Midnight riders sombre as morticians. Strangers as ghost haunting the grim witching hours.
Passed the alarming carnival of police lights splashed across the grimy facades of soulless high-rises.
Passed the pitiable plight of the human condition.
When she arrived at the river, starlight dancing on the murmuring current, she stopped and considered her options. The immensity of time and space. The insignificance of being.
The unbridgeable chasm between existence and meaning.
Her own bleak life.
An indifferent night mocked her poor philosophizing.
And the river offered no solace being too shallow and near at hand.
A battered truck rumbled across the bridge where she stood.
One hundred feet beyond Gertrude, the pick-up’s brake lights flashed on and it stopped. The engine went to idling. An elongated minute ticked over before the driver-side door yawned opened, illuminating the interior. A shadowy figure eased from the vehicle. It turned and faced Gertrude.
Two incidental lives were about to intersect.
The moment vibrated with possibilities.
Gertrude awaited whatever might happen next with gratitude. AQ