On a Thursday in October, both envelopes arrived at once.
She tucked the letters into the drawer with the unpaid hydro bill. The enough wasn’t money. It was the inhaler. The muscle relaxants. The tiny crack of light through a door that had almost slammed shut. odsp and cpp
Marta looked at the letters. Then at her curled hands. Then at his open, hopeful face. On a Thursday in October, both envelopes arrived at once
Marta knew the forms by the shape of their water stains. The ODSP – Medical Review sat on the left corner of her kitchen table, a thick beige mountain. The CPP Disability – Application lay to the right, a slimmer, grayer peak. Between them was a valley of cold coffee and unanswered phone calls. It was the inhaler
Zero dollars. But her son’s asthma inhaler would be covered. Her muscle relaxants, too.
“Yeah, bud,” she said, folding the papers into a neat square. “We won enough.”
She sat at the table, the two letters side by side. The CPP was a thin raft—enough to keep her from drowning, but not enough to reach shore. The ODSP was a ghost boat, there in name only, its hull eaten away by the clawback.