by David Bergen
Girlie wanted to bet a dollar on each game and by the end Leo had lost three dollars though he didn’t mind because with each strike Girlie did a little dance. After, they went for beer at a bar down the street. It was ten o’clock. Leo asked, “What about your boy?” and Girlie said, “He’s with my mother for the night.” She had her elbows on the table and her arms were folded.
Leo said, “I’ve got a boy who’s six. Eric. And one more, Scott, who’s sixteen.” Leo looked at Girlie’s face and then at her hands. He folded his own hands, as if praying, and said, “And there’s Marianne, I’m married to her. Though she’s leaving me for a Russian doctor.”
“I’m not stupid,” Girlie said. “I talked to Don.”
“Well, that’s good,” Leo said. Then he said it again, “That’s good,” as if everything were clear and fine and motives were obvious and they were, just the two of them, walking hand-in-hand down a road with their backs to the troubles behind them.
“Don said you were an inventor,” Girlie said.
Leo tapped out a cigarette and offered Girlie one. She accepted and he lit a match and reached across and she held his hand and bent her head towards the match. Her fingers dragged across his thumb as she pulled away and exhaled.
“I was,” Leo said. “But then I’ve been many things. Salesman, garbage collector, taxi driver.”
“So what have you invented?”
“A pot.”
“Yeah?”
“For mountain climbers. It’s cone shaped so it uses less fuel and heats water faster.” On a napkin he drew the design and labelled it.
“From here it looks like a dunce cap,” she said. Then, seeing his face, she took his hand and asked, “And you sold this, this pot?”
“I tried. Nobody wants it.”
“That’s amazing,” Girlie said, “It’s like you’re a poet or something. You know?”
“That’s nice of you to say. Marianne, my wife, sees my inventions as shit.”
“Oh, she doesn’t.”
“Yes, she does.”
“Well, I don’t,” Girlie said, and she raised her glass and drank and Leo saw, through the bottom of the glass, her open mouth, her teeth, the tip of her tongue and later, in bed beside her, he remembered that image and placed his finger gently under her top row of teeth, said, “Bite,” and she did.
They had walked, after leaving the bar, up the sidewalk slowly, prolonging the evening. She said, at his motel, “Can I?” looking at the door and back at him.
Perhaps it was loneliness, perhaps need. He did not think, he just said, “Are you sure?”
She said, “I’m thirty-five and you’re forty-three and my mother doesn’t baby-sit often and I’m not gonna wait till you divorce your wife and besides I’ve been thinking about this for the last week, so how about it?”
“That’s a great speech,” Leo said and he took her into his room and made coffee while Girlie explored the bathroom and looked out the patio doors to the alley. She turned and said, “I love hotel rooms. Our family could never afford them.”
“This one’s a motel and it’s cheap,” Leo said.
Girlie made a little noise in her throat. She sat on the bed and took off her boots and socks and stood and slipped out of her jeans. She sat again and bounced on the edge of the bed. Her legs were thin and white. Leo watched. The coffee gurgled through the maker. She shrugged off her tank top. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her breasts were small and she bounced again and her chest barely moved and she said, “Come on, Leo Fisher. We’ll drink coffee after.”
Leo went to her. He said, “I’ve never done this before.”
“You want to stop?”
“No.”
“Then, can I ask you something?”
“You can.” Her hands were locked at his spine. He could feel her ribs with his own hands.
“Could we pray first?”
“How’s that?”
A car passed in the alley. The headlights scraped the curtains and then passed on.
“Come,” she said and she kneeled by the bed and Leo kneeled beside her and she said, “Dear Jesus, here I am. This is Girlie. I want to thank you for Leo. I’m so happy that he came into my restaurant and sat at a table where I was serving. It’s like you reached down your hand and guided Leo my way. Amazing. I want to say thanks for sex, too, for the joy of horniness, for how I feel right now. Wow. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.”
Leo was watching Girlie. She was naked except for her panties and he listened to her pray and looked at her thin shoulders and the curve of her spine in the dim light and he thought laughter might be a good remedy here but he didn’t laugh because Girlie had opened her eyes and was looking at him.
“You just talk?” he asked.
“I do.”
“And someone listens?”
“Of course. Do you want to touch me now?”
He had not held anyone for a long time. With Marianne in the past year there had been very little sex and when there was she masturbated him, lying like a clinician beside him, dreaming, he imagined, of vodka-induced hard-ons, and so, when Girlie slipped a condom on him and put him inside her, he entered a strange and unknown country, a place where Girlie’s hands ran rivers along his back and her legs clamped him to the heart of a vast plain. The journey was dark and simply strange and the clouds above were harmless.
After, she got out of bed and went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet and he saw her through the doorway, sitting primly, hands folded in her lap, and as she peed she tilted her head and after, wiped herself delicately, studied the paper, and dropped it in the toilet. She came back to him, hopping once like a child. He covered her with the blanket and she fell asleep, her mouth against his neck. After a bit he rolled sideways and climbed out of bed and sat at the small table, smoking and watching her. Much later he slid in beside her and she reached out a hand and held his hip as he fell asleep. In the morning she was gone.
On Saturday Leo drove to Winnipeg to see Eric and Scott. He took them out to the Dark Zone and then they went for a late breakfast and he sat across from them and told them about the house he was building, that it had six bathrooms and an indoor pool and an outdoor pool, a Jacuzzi and two kitchens. Leo drew a picture of the house and walked Eric through it.
Scott huddled against the window and watched the street. Leo asked him how school was.
“It’s okay.”
“I always hated school,” Leo said.
Eric watched him, wide-eyed, his mouth full of pancakes.
“Oh, not like that, Eric. I was just kind of a sad student. Not very good at it.” He poured cream into his coffee. Said, “So, everybody getting along okay at home?”
Scott looked at him, and then away.
Eric said, “Ivan has a dog. A bit pull.”
“Is that right? This dog’s living at the house?”
Eric nodded gravely. “In the basement at night. He barks and barks.”
“How ’bout you, Scott?” Leo asked, looking for an entry into this boy, but thinking about a big ugly dog messing up the basement he’d renovated.
Scott looked him in the eye. “Ivan’s a prick,” he said.
“Huh,” Leo went, pleased, thinking that his eldest son was an astute evaluator of people.
Eric began to cry.
“What, what?” Leo said. He looked at Scott, who shrugged and said that Eric cried a lot these days. For no reason. Watching TV, eating dinner, he just started to cry.
Leo wiped Eric’s eyes and nose. He kissed his head. On the way back home he said that he would take the boys up to Kenora and they’d go fishing. “In an eighteen-foot aluminum boat we’ll wind our way through the Lake of the Woods,” he said.
Neither of the boys answered.
At the house, Marianne was working in the flowerbed along the sidewalk. She was we
aring shorts and an old T-shirt and when she saw him she waved and came towards him. She leaned into the window. Her mouth had always been a little crooked so that it appeared as a sneer and today the sneer was more pronounced. Leo said, “God, you’re beautiful.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“I was thinking that we should try to work things out. That the boys would be happier with me than a guy called Ivan.”
Marianne shook her head. “You always try to be funny, Leo. Especially when something bad has happened. Besides, there’s a lot of things that would have to change.”
“Make me a list. I’ll start on it today.”
“Don’t do this, Leo. You’re just killing yourself.”
Leo tapped the chrome on the window of his Riviera and looked out at Eric, who was sitting on the front step, waiting.
“Eric started crying,” he said.
Marianne’s voice went soft. “I know. The psychologist says he’s figuring things out.”
“The psychologist? You’re sending him to a fucking psychologist? Jesus Christ, Marianne. Who do you think we are?” He lifted a hand and went ahhh and then he said, “Ivan’s paying for it. Isn’t he?”
“Actually, yes. And I think it’s quite wonderful.”
“Wonderful?” Leo said. He blew up his cheeks and exhaled and then honked his horn and called out the passenger window, “Hey, Eric, give your Dad a wave.”
Eric lifted a hand. Moved his fingers slightly. “Love you,” Leo called. He turned to Marianne and said, just before he backed out of the driveway, “Get the fucking pit bull out of my basement.”
For the first half hour, just before he slipped the Buick into cruise control, he was quite happy, very pleased to have gotten in the last word, to have made a statement about his rights, to have sent a minor message to Marianne. But then, near the Steinbach turnoff, he felt a heaviness enter his chest and by the time he passed Richer he was disgusted with his actions and his anger and he thought he should call Marianne and apologize. But, he didn’t.
When he got back to Kenora, he walked over to Canadian Tire and bought himself a pair of workboots and on the way home he passed a bar, so he went inside. He sat by himself and drank and watched the strippers and thought that everybody wanted something and then there were those few who wanted everything. Several times that evening he told himself to go home but then another drink appeared and the time passed and tomorrow seemed far away. Around midnight a man with a ponytail and a wide forehead sat at the table next to Leo and asked for a cigarette. Leo held out the pack. The man took a cigarette and lit up. He looked at Leo and said, “Four years ago there was this man, Leonard Minaruk, who went out in his boat. Out into the lake among the islands and he got lost. Never came back. Last year a fisherman found his skeleton hanging from a tree. People figured Leonard was lost and what with winter coming on he was about to starve to death and instead of dying slowly he hung himself with the lead from the boat.”
Leo was watching the man. He waited for more but the man had stopped talking. Leo cleared his throat. “That it?”
“Pretty much.” The man shrugged. Took another cigarette and then stood, shook hands with Leo and said, “Nice meeting you.”
“Same,” Leo said.
“Do you need help?” the man said. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m walking,” Leo said.
“Walking’s good,” the man said. “It clears the head.” And he disappeared.
Half an hour later, Leo left the bar. He stood on the sidewalk for a long time and looked left and then right. He looked straight ahead and went over to the curb and sat between two parked cars. Time passed. He lay back against the concrete and watched the sky. He fell asleep and was woken by the man he’d met in the bar. He was standing over Leo, telling him to move or he would drive over his legs. Leo lifted his head and looked down at his feet on which there was a pair of workboots that he did not recognize. He called out to the man above him, “It’s okay, those aren’t my feet.”
In the morning he woke in his own bed and he lay there trying to recall how he had come to this place, but he could not remember. He arrived at work in the afternoon. Ron did not ask where he had been, just sent him up to the roof. He worked well through the early afternoon and then, just after coffee break, he fell. He was up on the trusses, near the peak, nailing in the ridge pieces. He ran out of spikes and was going back to the ladder, using the trusses as stepping stones when his foot slipped and he fell between the twenty-two-inch space of the rafters. He managed to hold on to a truss long enough to rip the palm of his hand open and then continued his fall to the second floor, landing on the hammer that had stayed in his apron. He tried to get up but fell back and looked up at the sky beyond the rafters. He swore. Ron appeared.
Leo looked at him and said weakly, “I’m a bird.”
Ron and Jem helped Leo down the ladder, one on either end. Ron put him in his pickup and drove him to the hospital where X-rays showed no bones broken, only a bruised hip. Leo went back to his motel room, swallowed some Tylenol 3, and climbed into bed and slept till it was dark. He woke, in pain and disoriented. He focused on the window, heard the traffic pass, and remembered where he was.
Girlie called.
“Ron told me,” she said.
“Don’t come over,” Leo said, “I’m useless like this.”
“I could rub lineament on you. Feed you.”
“I’m fine,” Leo said.
She came anyway. She brought soup in a Thermos and egg salad sandwiches and coffee. He ate sitting up in bed while Girlie held his knee through the cover of sheets. She said, “I’ll do your laundry.” She gathered his dirty clothes and put them in a bag. Carried them out to her car and disappeared. When she came back his dirty dishes were lined up under his bed. He’d crawled to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and crawled back. She bent to kiss him and he smelled the outside air on her, summer, things green.
At night he woke and stood by the window and looked out at the night. A vehicle passed down the alley and he saw within the car the shapes of two people, one large, one small. He thought of Eric and Scott and saw that no amount of back-pedalling could change who he was as a father. He went back to bed but did not sleep until dawn and when he woke again it was noon and a jar of flowers sat on the bedside table.
On the third day after his fall, he rose and showered, dressed and walked down to the docks and sat and watched the gulls. He drank coffee and then walked back to his room where he found his door open. Fletcher and Girlie were sitting on the bed, his freshly folded laundry between them. The sight of the laundry depressed Leo. He hobbled over to the chair.
“Look at you,” Girlie said. She stood and took his hand, as if shyness were something she’d just learned, and she looked up at him and smiled stupidly.
“Happy, happy,” Leo said. He sat down. “Hiya, Fletcher,” he said.
Fletcher rolled onto his back and held his hands over his eyes.
Girlie sat down beside Leo. Held his arm. He could smell her and he imagined little squirts of cheap perfume landing on her body, up her legs, between her breasts.
She bit his neck.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
So the three of them walked up to Boston Pizza, the place through which Leo had first entered the town, and they sat and drank beer and ate garlic toast and watched a tennis match on TV while Fletcher drew on the placemats. Girlie took Leo’s hand and said, “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Girlie cast her eyes about. Said, “I was thinking about you. I’m very happy you know.”
“I can see that.” Leo studied her hands, the veins in her forearms, her chapped elbows. Fletcher had slipped off the chair and was sitting under the table. Leo said, “I’ve been thinking about my boys. I’ve got two hands and they’re both full and I just don’t know how to pick up or ev
en hold onto someone else.”
Girlie blinked. “You talking ’bout Fletcher? This is what you’ve been worrying about?”
“Sometimes.”
“Fletcher’ll be fine. Children can wade through almost anything.”
Leo shook his head. “No, they can’t.”
And then he went, “Ahh, never mind. It’s probably my fall. I feel like a boat out on a sea, and holes get punched in the sides, and then it sinks.”
“I could pray for you. Would you like that?”
“Prayer doesn’t work.”
“Oh, it does, Leo. If you try. It won’t give you things or fill your pockets but it feels good.”
Her belief was infectious, but it left him sad. She said goodbye to him at his motel door, kissed him on the mouth and walked away, holding Fletcher’s hand, her shoes clacking out a code and then fading.
During the night he woke from a dream in which he fell again and again from a high place. He held off sleep for a long time, afraid to return to that dream. He turned on the bedside lamp and his arm appeared, a stick that belonged elsewhere. It was grotesque, too thin, the bump at the wrist seemed to grow. He drew the arm close and smelled it, discovering his own scent.
In the morning he phoned home. The phone rang and rang and he let it ring, thinking how he would tell Marianne that he had fallen off a roof, just slipped between the rafters, and dropped like a rock. But then he’d bounced back and he was okay.
He waited for Marianne to pick up. Or someone.
Man Lost
The boy was six when his father first took him out beyond the lip of the reef to fish. They left at dawn and returned at dusk with red and black snappers and five good-sized tuna and a barracuda bigger than the boy himself. The snappers were pulled from the deep deep, sometimes three on one line, with bulging eyes and stomachs stuck in their mouths. The barracuda put up a fight and for a time the boy had held the rod, his father’s arms around him, and the boy could feel the strength and the power and the wildness, though at that age he would not have known that particular word, and it was his father who called out, as the fish drew near to the boat, “Lookit the wildness.” And his father had bent to retrieve the grappling hook and speared the barracuda, and still it fought. And then his father picked up a small wooden baseball bat, and he clubbed the barracuda over the head, once, twice, three times, until the big fish stopped moving. “Here,” his father said, “You have a go,” and he handed the bat to the boy and the boy took it and leaned over the gunnel and hit the fish on the head, once, and then again. The fish was already dead.
