A Hole in the Fence

“A Hole in the Fence”

Loretta Schiavo Smith

The year Manny dumped me, I rescued a mutt, moved to Beverley Street and met the woman on the other side of the fence. In that order. The mutt was Lady and the woman, who was no lady, was Opal.

In retrospect, I was naively and foolishly blind; the relationship had run its course…for Manny. For me, the unexpected assault arrived at warp speed.

 Christy and I lived in the same on-campus residence our freshman year. We called her NYC because she was born and bred in New York City’s Upper East Side.  Yes, I was envious of the New York girl who looked like a California girl with a lithe figure, long, straight blond hair and didn’t owe one red cent on a student loan. Her sparkling, billboard-perfect teeth, that must have contributed to her orthodontist’s home in the Hamptons or his trophy bride, only intensified my resentment and jealousy.

After I met Manny, I forgot all about NYC, rarely saw her on campus and felt more confident and relaxed. That all exploded when her naked body, yes, her breasts were round and symmetrical, walked out of my bedroom with Manny pressed tightly against her back. Through a haze of smoke, he dispassionately slurred, “Sorry Babe, it’s over. Time to move on. Christy and I are together now.”

When she sardonically smirked at me, I summoned the strength not to send her back to her orthodontist holding a handful of those pearly whites. I like to think my grandmother’s voice was whispering in my ear to have self restraint and pride. Who knows? As I reached the front door, I said with false control, “I’ll pick up my things tomorrow morning. Please don’t be here,” and left without slamming the door. Later, I’d come to learn that my moment of shame was to become one of victory.

 My friend Claudine offered her couch for the next couple of weeks. I had no luck as I scoured the local papers and examined bulletins tacked on neighbourhood telephone polls for a place to rent. Too far from campus, too expensive-no trust fund like Christy-and I wasn’t looking for a communal house of drugs and sex.  

The rainy, dreary Saturday, a week before Labour Day 1972, matched my spirits. Lying on her couch in my food-stained pajamas, drinking a pot of strong, bitter coffee and listening to mournful songs fed my self-pitying mood.

“Move your butt and get dressed. We’re going to the market. And introduce your hair to a brush,” Claudine said, dragging me off the couch and into the bathroom.

Reluctantly, I pulled the cart behind me while Claudine ran ahead to Netkins’ Fresh Produce. I continued along Kensington Market skirting puddle-filled alleys when I heard a pitiable whimpering and spotted a small grimy object in a door’s alcove. Poor thing was as miserable as me. The dog was so dirty it was difficult to tell its colour. Crusted blood, like mittens, formed on its paws. Without thinking, I took off my knitted poncho, picked up the scrawny shaking animal, and wrapped it while carefully placing it in the cart. I left Claudine, squeezing tomatoes and haggling with the grocer. “Going home. Taking the cart with me. Get dog food,” I yelled.

In the front window of the corner house at Beverley and Spadina, hung a For Rent sign. Scribbling the phone number on my palm, I returned to Claudine’s to tend to the creature in my poncho.

What was I doing? Now I had a dog and no home. I was rational, methodical, not impulsive. And yet, here I was with this bundle of sorrow searching my eyes for comfort and protection.

 Lady Macbeth, yes, that’s what I named her with her bloody paws, and furtive glances surveying Claudine’s house, allowed me to bathe her and tend to her injuries. I knew nothing about caring for a pet but she was now mine, this discarded mutt.

When Lady settled, I called the house for rent and made an appointment to meet the landlord later that day. Claudine entered just as I hung up.

“Ok girl. What’s going on? You leave with the cart and some obscure order about dog food. Things aren’t that bad that I have to resort to eating dog food.” Claudine was direct but never judgmental.

“Two things,” I said. “The second one first. I’m looking at a place this afternoon on Beverley. Yea. So, wish me luck! The first,” I hesitated before adding, “I have a dog. An injured, abandoned dog. Named her Lady Macbeth.”

Claudine walked away in silence, put the grocery bags in the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Chianti, a corkscrew and two glasses. “Let’s see this Lady,” she said.

The flat was perfect. Furnished one bedroom first floor with a fenced backyard and clothesline. And best of all, I could afford it with a bit of scrimping. Mr. Marino, the landlord, lived in the second and third floor with his wife Lena. This middle-aged man with the tobacco stained mustache and generous spirit said I could pick some of the tomatoes and green beans from his garden. “No bugs, no rats here. I keep a clean house,” he assured me. “She,” gesturing to the yard next door, “likes flowers… can’t eat flowers.” Lady Macbeth and I moved in the following day.

As I drank my morning coffee and fed Lady, I spotted her through the kitchen window at the rear of the house. Short and shaped like an eggplant, she limped through her perennial beds caressing the flowers and whispering to them. A peaked fisherman’s cap sat atop her braided silver hair which lapped the back of her paint splattered overalls. She hobbled up the stairs to her concrete porch and slumped into a tattered wicker chair. Everything about her seemed worn and tired.

“Hello,” I sang as I offered her a mug of coffee over the chain link fence that separated our yards. She turned, nodded and accepted the coffee without responding.

“My dog, Lady Macbeth, and I just moved in yesterday. Hope you like dogs. I’m a student at the university and the location is great for me,” I prattled on like a magpie as she sipped the coffee and stared at me expressionless. When she finished, she returned the mug and went into her house. That was my introduction to the woman who was to pierce my soul.

Most mornings, the pattern repeated: coffee, nattering, silence. When I met Mrs. Marino in the basement a few days later, feeding her sheets through the ancient wringer washing machine, I asked her about our neighbour. She shrugged. “She’s strange, that one. Heard bad things happen in the war…Who knows? We suffer too. One day I tell you.”

In late October, just before Halloween, Lady was missing. Chest tightening panic gripped me.  Putting my hands on my hips, I bent over and took deep breaths when my flat’s bell pinged twice.  She stood on the front verandah holding Lady Macbeth under one arm, her cane in the other.

“Your dog crushed my flowers,” she said. “I heard them crying. Ya best get Marino to fix that hole in the fence.” When she handed Lady to me and turned to leave, I thanked her and hesitantly asked her to come in.

 “Only if you have something stronger than coffee,” she answered in a low-pitched gravelly voice.

 I drank beer. Opal finished off my bottle of rye and the rest of her pack of Gitanes while Lady slept in her lap. When she was about to leave, she muttered, “I like your dog. You…well, we’ll see.” She smiled. A smile of missing and broken teeth entered my house and life that night.