Free Remote Control by Cheryl Kaye Tardif Page A

want her to ask why he's been taking a hundred dollars out every week. "You have faith in me, dontcha?"
    Beatrice returns to her ironing with a loud sniff. She's annoyed. He can tell.
    "It's gonna happen soon," he says, more to himself. "I can feel it. My luck's gonna change, and when it does, you'll be sorry for doubting me." He laughs. "And I'll say, 'I told you so.'"
    He pushes the nearly empty popcorn bowl onto the end table beside his recliner and leans forward, grunting and shifting, trying to right the recliner. Finally, the footrest kicks into place. Then, with a deep breath, he grasps the arms of the recliner and throws his body forward and upward, and― ta-da! ―we have lift off. Harold Fielding is standing.
    With huffing breaths, he lumbers toward Beatrice.
    * * *
    "He's one step from the grave," her mother had told her just last week. And Beatrice has to agree.
    She hears his heavy breathing moving closer but doesn't want to look at him. She doesn't want to see her reflection in his eyes, to know that her dull brown eyes rested in emaciated pits of shadowed skin, caverns that bespoke of countless sleepless nights.
    It's Harry's fault. He snores loud enough to wake the dead. Sometimes he stops breathing for so long that she holds her own breath so she can listen. Is he dead? And every time, she jerks when a gasping, strangled choke rises from the depths of Harry.
    She lifts her chin and finally looks at him. Her husband. The man she married over twenty years ago. 'Til death do us part.' She scowls. Well, how long is that going to take? And as quickly, she takes it back.
    Harry wasn't always like this. When she had married him, he had a bright future ahead of him and plenty of plans. They were going to build their own home, have three children and live in style. None of these dreams have come to fruition. The house they started building collapsed into a sinkhole when it was nearly completed. They had one daughter who moved out the day she turned eighteen and is now backpacking across Europe with a known drug dealer named Felipe. And as for living in style…?
    She glances around the sad looking room. The sunflower wallpaper―circa 1970s―is peeling in long banana peel strips from the walls in the kitchen area. The dinette set is something they found on Kajiji.com, purchased from a couple who were moving to Toronto. Harry has already broken two of the four chairs.
    In the living room, the matching couch and armchair in pastel periwinkle sink so low to the ground that it looks as if they will get sucked into the floor and earth below. Another sinkhole perhaps? A wayward spring sometimes jabs Beatrice in the thigh when she sits in the armchair, and the cushion is as flat as a pancake. Harry's girth has taken care of that.
    As her husband approaches, his massive belly flops over his pants and appears below the hem of his t-shirt. The waistband of his dirty track pants disappears beneath the drooping mass of dough-like flesh that hangs below his crotch. Oh, and there's his bellybutton. You could hide a bar of soap in that .
    Harry's limbs are short and thick, tapering at the wrists and ankles, then flaring out into misshapen hands and feet that are always swollen and red. He scuffles and shuffles rather than walks, stopping to catch his breath every so often. Think of a gigantic Galapagos tortoise moving across the sand and you'll get the picture.
    "Our savings is nearly gone," she says softly.
    * * *
    The only sound in the room is a ripping fart that Harry forces out as he passes her. He's been into the mini pepperoni sticks again, with a platter of eggs, it seems―by the noxious potpourri that simmers in the air.
    "Maybe you can teach some extra classes at the college," he replies.
    Beatrice bites her tongue. She already works full time teaching at an elementary school, plus she teaches the occasional adult class at Grant MacEwan. The college is already booked for courses for the next six months.
    "I really think