Thursday Inventory
The Danish butter cookie tin sits on apartment 4B's kitchen counter at 1247 Pembina Highway. Royal Dansk, the kind with the pretzel-shaped ones nobody actually likes. Inside: three keys to doors that no longer exist, a hospital bracelet reading KOWALSKI, HELEN 05/23/2019, and forty-seven Canadian pennies, which stopped being legal tender in 2013 but Marion's mother kept saving anyway, dropping them into the tin with the specific clink of obsolete currency finding its purpose.
Marion counts the pennies every Thursday at 9 AM. Always forty-seven. She arranges them by year. 1987 has the most—eleven pennies. She does not remember what happened in 1987 worth saving eleven pennies for, though she has theories involving her fifteenth birthday, a Tears for Fears concert her mother wouldn't let her attend, and the door she slammed so hard the frame cracked and stayed cracked for twenty-three years.
Her daughter texts from Vancouver: "The renovation guy needs to know about the bathroom tiles. Cream or white?"
Marion does not respond. She is arranging pennies. Also, she has developed a specific method for not thinking about her daughter's bathroom when her mother will never see it finished.
The bracelet still holds the shape of her mother's wrist. Smaller than Marion remembered, like everything from childhood that turns out to be ordinary-sized when encountered as an adult. The plastic has yellowed where the adhesive gathered. The barcode remains scannable, probably. She considered testing it once at Shoppers Drug Mart, holding it under the red light just to see what would happen, what price might appear. Unit 3, Bed 4. Her mother inventoried like furniture, like something ordered from a catalogue that might need to be returned.
Thursday means the Filipino grocery on Sargent Avenue has fresh pan de sal. $4.99 for six, though Tony always throws in an extra one, saying "Seven for luck" in a way that makes Marion wonder if everyone gets seven or if she looks particularly unlucky. She buys twelve (which becomes fourteen), freezes seven, eats one in the car with margarine from the tiny containers that come from the hospital cafeteria. She has 247 of these containers in her freezer, organized by month. February has the most—twenty-eight containers, one for each day her mother ate breakfast before stopping.
The renovation guy texts again: "Also, subway tile or hexagonal?"
Marion deletes it without reading past "Also."
At Value Village on Ellice, Marion finds a brass door knocker shaped like a hand. $7.99, which seems expensive for Value Village but reasonable for the ability to hold someone else's attempt at entrance. The fingers curl to knock. The brass has worn through to base metal where the knuckles would strike. Someone knocked on someone's door enough times to wear through brass, which Marion calculates would take approximately 47,000 knocks, assuming average force, or about seventeen years of daily disappointment.
She brings it home. Adds it to the tin. It doesn't fit properly. The hand reaches up through the pennies like something drowning in copper.
Her neighbor, Mrs. Chen, is reporting the streetlight out to 311 again. She does this every Thursday with the dedication of someone who believes systems can be fixed through proper documentation. The light has been out since January. It is now October. Mrs. Chen records each call in a notebook she bought specifically for this purpose. "Report number 2024-10-3847," she tells Marion. "Forty-second report." She has started adding subcategories: weather conditions during report, hold time, name of representative, whether they sounded like they were working from home.
Marion thinks about telling her the light will never be fixed. Does not. Mrs. Chen's faith in complaint procedure might be the only thing holding the building together.
The kitchen tap drips every seventeen seconds. Marion has counted, using her mother's method: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, up to seventeen, then the plink. The landlord sent someone in August who said the whole fixture needs replacing. The landlord said wait until spring. By spring, Marion calculates, the tap will have dripped 892,800 times. She wonders if there is a number of drips that transforms a tap from broken to simply alternate, the way pennies went from money to memory without anyone asking permission.
She arranges the pennies again. Chronological this time. 1967 to 2012, Canada's entire penny history except for gaps: 1969, 1973, 1991, 1994, 2005. She does not know why these years are missing. Her mother was alive for all of them. Possibly these were the years nothing needed saving for, or everything was too expensive for pennies to matter, or her mother was looking away when small things accumulated into absence.
Her phone buzzes. Renovation guy directly now: "Your daughter gave me your number. Really need tile decision today."
Marion looks at the text. The hospital bracelet. The pennies arranged by year like her mother arranged medications by day, everything in its container, everything counted. The door knocker that knocked through brass.
She texts back: "White."
Then deletes it. Types: "Cream."
Deletes that too. Her mother would have known immediately. Her mother would have said, "Cream shows dirt but white shows everything else," which was both practical advice and philosophy.
Goes to the Danish butter cookie tin. Removes the hospital bracelet. The plastic crackles where it has stiffened, sounds like Tony's bakery bags, like promises about to break. She puts it in the garbage under the coffee grounds so she will not retrieve it, though she knows she will retrieve it, probably around 3 PM when the apartment gets too quiet and the sun hits that spot on the wall where her mother's dialysis chair left a permanent depression in the carpet.
Forty-seven pennies. Three keys. One door knocker. One receipt she will add later. This is what remains. This is what Thursday holds.
Her mother would have chosen cream tiles. Her mother is not choosing tiles. Her mother is at Brookside Cemetery, Section 7, Row J, Plot 14, where Marion planted plastic flowers because real ones die and she cannot watch anything else die, not even things meant to die, not even things that die beautifully.
Marion texts: "Whichever costs less."
The daughter texts back immediately, like she was holding the phone, waiting: "They're the same price, Mom."
"Then it doesn't matter."
But they both know it matters. Everything matters when nothing matters anymore.
Thursday at 11 AM Marion makes tea. The tap drips into her cup while she waits for the kettle, a percussion she has come to depend on. She counts: one Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Loses track at thirty-seven. Starts again. The number thirty-seven has begun appearing everywhere: channel 37 is always playing her mother's shows, she got thirty-seven dollars back from Manitoba Hydro, thirty-seven emails in her inbox she will never read.
Mrs. Chen in the hallway with her notebook: "Report number 2024-10-3848. Forty-third report. Today I emphasized the safety hazard."
The streetlight will never be fixed. The tap will drip 892,800 times by spring. The pennies will always number forty-seven unless she adds one, which she considers sometimes, buying a penny on eBay for twelve dollars just to make it forty-eight, just to change something that refuses to change.
Marion opens the tin. Arranges pennies by shininess this time. The 1987 ones are darkest, oxidized beyond recognition. She does not remember what happened in 1987. Probably nothing. Probably everything. Probably her mother was forty-three and Marion was fifteen and they fought about curfews and Marion slammed her bedroom door hard enough to crack the frame and her mother said, "Doors don't heal themselves," which turned out to be true about everything.
That door no longer exists. She has the key. She has all the keys to all the doors that no longer exist, a keychain to nowhere, a way into nothing, which might be exactly what she needs.
The bathroom tiles arrive in Vancouver. Marion never asks what color her daughter chose. The daughter never tells her. This silence becomes its own communication, a frequency only they can hear.
Thursday ends when Marion returns the door knocker to Value Village. "Didn't work out," she tells Gerald at the donation door, who says, "Nothing wrong with trying!" with an enthusiasm that makes Marion understand why some people commit crimes.
She keeps the receipt. $7.99. Adds it to the tin. Next to the receipt from last Thursday's door knocker. And the Thursday before. She has been buying and returning the same door knocker for six weeks. Gerald hasn't noticed. Or has noticed and chooses not to notice, which might be its own kind of kindness.
Next Thursday she will count forty-seven pennies and wonder about 1987. She will eat pan de sal with hospital margarine. Tony will say "Seven for luck." Mrs. Chen will file report number forty-four or forty-five or fifty, subcategorized by the phase of the moon, the government in power, the exact shade of darkness the broken light creates. The tap will have dripped another 60,480 times.
The hospital bracelet is in the garbage truck now, compressed between coffee grounds and whatever Mrs. Chen threw away (everything labeled, everything documented) and the weekly detritus of 1247 Pembina Highway. Heading to Brady Road Landfill where Marion has actually been, once, looking for her mother's cardigan that she threw away too quickly. She didn't find it. Found seventeen other cardigans. Considered taking one. Didn't.
Marion sometimes thinks about driving to Brady Road again, to see where things end up. To find Section 7, Row J, Plot 14 of the landfill, where Thursday's grief gets Tuesday's compression, where everything becomes nothing in orderly rows.
Opens the tin. Counts. Forty-seven.
Wonders if forty-seven means something. Decides it means forty-seven. Decides that's enough. Decides that's everything.
The tap drips. She has lost count. Good.
Starts arranging by circumference, though all pennies have the same circumference, though she pretends some are worn smaller, groups them by imaginary difference, by the fiction that things change size through use, that love makes things larger or smaller depending on the angle of observation, depending on the time of day, depending on whether it's Thursday.
The door knocker wore through brass. Someone knocked that many times. Someone opened or did not open. Both happened. Neither mattered. The knocking wore through anyway. The hand kept its shape. The hope maintained its form even as the form wore away, which might be the only thing Marion needs to know about continuing.
She closes the tin. Royal Dansk. Butter cookies her mother bought every Christmas, saying the pretzel ones were her favorite, which Marion knew was a lie, which was the kind of lie that holds families together.
The tin holds what remains. Forty-seven pennies that buy nothing but cost everything to count. Three keys that open nothing but lock everything in place. One receipt for trying to add something that wouldn't stay. One receipt for returning it. One receipt for trying again.
This is what Thursday is.
This is what continues.
The tap drips. Marion stops counting. Starts listening instead.
