Mad Mabel: A Novel

In the year she's lived on the street, I've never heard Joan speak. Not a word. Each time I shout, "Good morning," she scurries away like a rat in a sewer. I suppose Joan is more of a pen pal than a neighbor.

"I wonder what I've done this time?" I say.

"Perhaps she's discovered our cannabis racket?" Daphne muses.

"You don't think she knows a lawyer, do you?" We chuckle wickedly.

I shuffle toward the door, thinking this will make for most enjoyable conversation while we have our afternoon cuppa. I might read out the letter using a voice akin to the Queen's to make Daphne laugh.

Daphne laughs easily, a grossly underrated quality. Also grossly underrated are the bizarre outfits she wears. Today it's a magenta T-shirt with a bedazzled Eiffel Tower on the front. The rims of her glasses are magenta, just like her shirt. Daphne has always been quirky but it feels more pronounced somehow now that she is an old lady. The comfort she brings me, too, feels more pronounced. If my life is a jagged graph of highs and lows, she is the thick, solid line right down the middle. Not a black line either, nothing as dull as that. Daphne's line is magenta.

I bend to retrieve the note, supporting my temperamental lumbar spine. I'd planned to wait until I was sitting down to open it, it's folded in half, but as I straighten, it opens itself, having not been folded with enough passion along the line. Arthritis playing up, is it, Joan?

I lift my glasses from the chain around my neck and perch them on my nose. It's a photocopy of an old news article. A very old news article. It must have been copied many times because much of the font is blurred, impossible to read. I can make out the headline, though, clear as day. The sight of it makes me feel lightheaded, like I might faint.

"What is it?" Daphne asks.

I turn the page around to face her. She reads the headline slowly, her mouth bending around each word silently as she squints at the page. Finally, her lips stop moving and her eyes find mine.

 

"Someone knows," I say unnecessarily. "Someone knows who I am."

This is a love story, by the way. It may not seem like it, what with all the blood and guts and murder, but nevertheless, that's what it is. And there is no greater love story than that of platonic female love. The kind of love I have with Daphne.

We aren't lesbians, before you start. Frankly, I find it appalling that people would assume such a thing—not that I take issue with lesbians, each to their own, I say, but because people have so little regard for female friendship that they can't fathom a closeness such as we have without the romantic element. More fool them.

There will be those who disagree with me, of course. People who say romantic love trumps platonic female friendship. Or parental love. Or love of self. Those people are just giving away the fact that they've never experienced true platonic female friendship. The kind of friendship you'd do anything to preserve—fight, steal. Even kill. Here's a little-spoken fact for you: Friends are like oxygen. If you've been blessed enough to have always been surrounded by friends, you might think I'm overplaying this. I don't blame you. If you'd always been surrounded by air, you wouldn't think to credit it for your very existence either. But I've spent much of my life gasping for breath, so I promise you, it's true. Friends are like oxygen.

And the only reason I'm still alive is Daphne.

 

CHAPTER TWO

When you are as ancient as I am, the days are predictable. Early each morning, for example, I know I'll hear a few crazies singing as they make their way home from a night out at the bars. I know I'll see Mrs. Nguyen from two doors down scurry past my window on her way to the nail salon. I know I'll hear Nugget, Ishaan's godforsaken Chihuahua, yapping for her breakfast. And so on and so forth. A lot of people think old folk find comfort in such sameness, and perhaps some of them do. Not me. I like change. Usually. Then again, the arrival of the enfant terrible Persephone on the street is one change that has me yearning for days of yore.

"ELSA!"

I should, I suppose, take my share of responsibility. After all, I leave myself open to this sort of harassment by choosing to spend time on my porch of a morning. Unfortunately, as quaint as my terrace home is, it is measly in natural light and a woman has to get her vitamin D from somewhere.

"It's Elsie," I tell the child. "Else to my friends, which you are not. Elsa to no one."