Rose Addams

1.

The guy is still there, hunched on the sidewalk a few feet from the entrance to the store. Dark hoodie, torn jeans. Cardboard sign with Homeless Please Give written in crayon. Rose does give, when she has spare change. Which isn’t as often as it used to be because, really, who carries cash anymore? He never looks up, but he acknowledges contributions by nodding and pressing his hands together in thanks.

“Namaste.”

She likes that. It’s what her yoga teacher always said at the end of a class; Rose assumed it meant “thanks” but it means more than that. According to Wikipedia, it means “I bow to the divine in you.” Which is nice.

She puts the car into reverse gear and wonders if she should give Charles a call before setting off, let him know she’s on her way. He likes to be kept in the loop. Charles is her husband of four decades—forty years exactly next May. He is her friend, her defender, and her support system, and, when she’s not wanting to strangle him, she admires his spirited approach to life and his sense of humour. She might have done so much worse; she’d never tell him that, of course, but she often thinks it.

Backing out of her parking space, she makes sure to check behind her for stray shopping carts. He’s still there, the homeless guy. The first time he said namaste she wanted to ask if he did yoga, but most likely he’d just picked it up somewhere and liked the sound of it. Homeless people don’t do yoga, do they? Where would they do it? And yoga lessons cost the earth. Morgan takes them three times a week at some studio in Toronto—twenty dollars a pop, if you can believe it. Still, if it helps her focus on her studies, it’s probably worth it. And Ian is paying for it, she says.

Ian. Now there’s a lovely man. And such a good family. Not rich or anything like that, just good, solid people who put their efforts into raising a good, solid son. It’s sad when you think of it, the difference good parenting makes. There’s Ian, Morgan’s fiancé, graduating with distinction from Brown, practically running a film company. And there’s that poor young man, standing outside a grocery store, relying on the kindness of strangers. A drug addict probably. A lifetime of poor choices learned from parents who made equally poor choices. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

He’d do better if he smiled, made eye contact. Even said good morning. It’s hard to ignore someone when they smile at you and say hello. Which is all they can do these days. They aren’t allowed to ask you directly for money. When did that change? Must have been a bylaw that came into effect when she wasn’t paying attention. This guy, anyway, isn’t the one who followed her home the other week. That one panhandles outside the liquor store in the village, a short walk from their house. He came right to her door and knocked and asked for a handout, if you can believe it. How did he even find her? She gave him ten dollars and a peanut-butter sandwich and he left. So far, he hasn’t come back.

The blast of a car horn directly behind her prompts her to slam down on the brake pedal. She checks her rear-view mirror, makes the nod-and-hands-together prayer gesture to the driver of an SUV backing up behind her. Sorry. My bad. The driver, a young guy in sunglasses and a beanie, doesn’t notice. He has his speakers on maximum volume; even with the window closed, the boom-boom-boom is deafening.

It’s a miracle there aren’t more accidents in these lots. People coming and going, no rules about whose turn it is. The polite ones wait till the coast is clear but nobody is polite any more. We’ve become a nation of pushy, entitled road hogs demanding the right-of-way.

And it’s all the fault of the internet—toot from yet another car, this one coming towards her and cutting into the space beside her. What the hell? When did the simple act of leaving a shopping mall turn into an exercise in military withdrawal? Half these drivers shouldn’t be on the road, of course. Too old, too preoccupied.

This time it’s the other driver, a woman, giving the apologetic smile. Okay, so it was her fault. And she’s sorry. There, you see, Rose? Not everybody’s an idiot.