by Wayne Grady
Nathan shrugs. “It happens,” he says. “You’d be surprised.”
Just then he hears Simon calling him to come say hello to Dorothy. But not, he remembers, putting his plate on the mantel, before Dorothy says hello to him.
“Thank you for coming, Harry,” says Dorothy. Her round face is framed by dark, straight hair cut to just above her shoulders. There are streaks of grey in it, but otherwise she looks as young as she must have when she and Bernie started dating in high school, back when dating meant going out on dates. She’s wearing a black jumper over a grey sweater and charcoal tights. He can’t see her shoes but assumes they are sensible. “Bernie always spoke fondly of you.”
“I’m sorry about…all this,” he says, making a small circle with his wine glass.
“Yes, so am I. Simon tells me you brought Bernie back to life the day he died?”
“I…what?” Harry looks at Simon, who nods as if contemplating something that defies ratiocination. “That was Sheldon. He performed CPR.”
“Don’t you remember, Harry?” Simon says. “Bernie collapsed on the court and we all thought he was a goner right there, and then you—”
“Oh, no, Simon, it wasn’t—”
“—and you came over while Shellfish was working on him and not getting anywhere, and you touched Bernie’s hand, and you said, Wake up, Bernie, and he jumped up like you’d put one of those, what do you call those things they put on your chest to make your heart start up again?”
“Dorothy,” says Harry, “that’s not true. I was just feeling for his pulse.”
“Defibrillators,” Dorothy says.
“Right,” says Simon. “You defibrillated him. He was down for the count, man, you put the touch on him and he was up, just like that.”
Dorothy looks from Simon to Harry. He turns to her, ready to apologize, but sees that she is smiling, even beginning to laugh. “Bernie would love this,” she says. “He’d ask where you were later that night. What’s that called, Simon? Black humour?”
“Gallows humour,” says Simon. “Galgenhumor.”
“How long do you sit shiva?” he asks Dorothy.
“Seven days,” she says. She looks down at her knees. Harry notices a rip in the hem of her skirt. When she looks up again she is smiling. “I think a week is long enough, don’t you, Simon?”
“Plenty,” says Simon. “God created the entire world in less time than that.”
“I have to get back to work,” she says.
“Are you researching something?” Harry asks.
“Yes, I’m working on Egyptian funerary rites,” she says brightly. “Talk about gallows humour. There’s an exhibit coming in a few months, Egypt in the Fifth Dynasty. I was just reading about a ceremony called the Weighing of the Heart. Have you heard of it?”
“No, sorry.”
“The Egyptians believed that evil deeds you commit during your lifetime add weight to your heart. When you die, the gods take out your heart and set it on a scale, and if it’s heavier than it should be, you’re denied entry to the afterlife.”
“How heavy should a heart be?” Harry asks.
“No heavier than a feather,” says Dorothy. “Literally. Osiris puts a feather on one side of the scale and the heart on the other, and if the heart outweighs the feather, he tosses the heart to Ammut, who tears it apart and eats it, and the person ceases to exist.”
“Really?” says Simon. “That must have kept the afterlife population down. Whose heart is lighter than a feather?”
“Mine was, I think,” Dorothy says. “Yes, I’m pretty sure mine was.”
“It should be the other way around,” says Harry. “People with heavy hearts should be allowed into the afterlife.”
Dorothy looks at him. “That would be something,” she says. “Bernie had a heavy heart, but it wasn’t from doing evil. It was more from seeing the evil that other people did.”
“I always thought he was happy,” Harry says.
“He was happy. But he cared about things,” she says, looking over at Nathan. “Deeply.”
“What sorts of things?” he asks.
“Oh, you know, the things we all care about. The kids, the house, the future. He and Nathan were estranged. He cared about that.”
Such an odd word, “estranged.” Rendered strange. That is what Daphne has done, isn’t it? Gone into voluntary exile from her family. A deliberate act.
“And you,” says Simon to Dorothy. “He cared deeply about you.”
“He was a worrier.”
Ah, Harry thinks, a worrier. He knew that about Bernie. As his accountant, Bernie worried about Harry’s business. But Harry hadn’t connected worrying with caring. He thinks his worrying about Daphne is separate from his caring about her, almost the opposite. He cares too much, that’s his problem, and in her eyes worrying about her cancels out the caring. Or at least masks it. Something like that. If he really cared about her, she would say, he wouldn’t worry.
“Perhaps things have changed since the Fifth Dynasty,” he says.
“I guess I’ll find out when I go back to work.”
* * *
—
On Monday, Harry finally decides he’s waited long enough to hear from his doctor about the colonoscopy and calls her office, convinced that she’s written him off and has transferred her attention to more hopeful cases.
“We need you to come in for more tests,” Dr. Beattie says.
“What?” he asks her. “Why do I need more tests?”
“Apparently the ScourPrep didn’t do its job thoroughly enough. The colonoscopy was inconclusive.”
“You mean I have to do the whole thing over again?”
“No, the gastroenterologist just wants some bloodwork. They biopsied some of the polyps.”
“Polyps?” he says. “I have polyps? What are polyps?”
“Small clusters of cells that grow on the colon lining. Some are potentially cancerous, but most aren’t. Have you noticed any blood in your stools lately?”
“No.”
“Well, can you come in this afternoon for some bloodwork?”
“So soon? Is there a hurry?”
“Might as well do it while we’re thinking of it.”
“What about the gastroscopy?”
There’s a pause. “What gastroscopy?”
“They did a gastroscopy at the same time. That’s why they put me under.”
“There’s nothing in the report about a gastroscopy. Are you sure?”
“No, I was unconscious. But that’s what they said they did. They gave me a general anaesthetic because they were doing both procedures at the same time.”
“They gave you a general?” she says, her voice rising. “That’s…unusual.”
“Jesus.”
“They probably didn’t give you a general.”
“I went out like a light, and woke up in recovery.”
“They probably just gave you propofol. It induces what we call twilight anaesthesia. Sometimes it causes syncope.”
“Causes—?”
“Loss of consciousness. Not enough oxygen to the brain.”
“Jesus!”
“I’ll call them. Come in and leave some blood. I might have an answer for you by then.”
Bernie’s death has tightened his nerves. He’s always been highly strung, less so since he stopped teaching, but this has definitely put him up an octave. He hears again the thud of Bernie’s limbs hitting the gym floor. Elinor is gambolling about the South African countryside with Sandy Headstrong or Heartworm or whatever her name is. Millie hasn’t come back. Daphne hasn’t called. Then there’s Kronkman threatening to throw him into some secret Gitmo. And now this mysterious gastroscopy. So many worries. So many cares. So much weight on his heart.
Without putting down the phone, he s
tarts to tap in Daphne’s number. No, he’ll pour himself a glass of wine first, then they can have a long conversation about his colon. There’s a Burrowing Owl he wants to try. He notices the battery icon showing red; how much juice does he have? Four percent. That’s the question he should have put to Dr. Beattie: How much battery have I used up, Doc? Eighty percent? Ninety? She wouldn’t have seen the humour in it. She would have laughed in that hollow way doctors and lawyers do when they’re asked questions they aren’t going to answer. What? Oh yes, ha! He’d like to have a long, leisurely chat with his daughter without having to worry about being cut off by a dead battery. He would like that, but he suspects it’s never going to happen. Nathan said he and Bernie were estranged for years. They have gone beyond mechanical obstacles to their relationship.
He walks around the house in a daze, vaguely looking for his charge cord, the way he looks in the fridge when he’s hungry. He finds cords for everything else: an old adding machine he doesn’t use anymore, his computer, cords he doesn’t recognize for devices they haven’t owned in a decade, Elinor’s BlackBerry cord. What? What’s it doing here? Is that why she didn’t call, because she forgot to pack her BlackBerry cord and her phone was dead? Of course, at a psychologists’ conference, BlackBerry cords must have been as plentiful as Sigmund Freud ties. Ah, here’s his cord on the night table, where it’s supposed to be. He plugs in his phone and calls Daphne’s number, hitting the keypad hard as though that will make her phone ring louder. When his call goes to her answering machine, he hangs up without leaving a message. He’s done with leaving messages. It’s time to be proactive. He looks up the number for the University of British Columbia’s English department and calls that.
“Can I speak to Professor Curtis, please.”
There is a slight delay, then a man’s voice. “Winston Curtis here.”
“Professor Curtis, my name is Harry Bowes. I’m Daphne Bowes’s father. I believe she’s a student of yours.”
“Daphne. Yes, of course, she was one of my best students. How is she doing?”
“Oh, well, I was hoping you could tell me. I haven’t heard from her in a while.”
“Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that. I haven’t heard from her either. She didn’t finish her second year, I’m afraid, and I haven’t seen her at all this term. I haven’t really been in touch with her since last March. I thought she’d gone back to Ontario.”
“She was here during the summer for a short visit, but she said she was going back to Vancouver to go into third year. Something about doing an undergraduate thesis with you.”
“With me? Well, that certainly would have been fine with me. She’d have to finish second year, of course. But I’m afraid I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her.”
“That summer visit was the last time we talked.”
“Let me take your number. I’ll make a few enquiries. I’m rather swamped with end-of-term papers at the moment, but I’ll do what I can.”
“Thanks, Professor Curtis. As you can imagine, I’m quite worried.”
“Yes, indeed, I understand. As am I. I can’t promise much, but I’ll get back to you when I have news.”
Sitting at the kitchen table, he feels his insides roil and sink. His mind fills with familiar images of car wrecks, shallow graves, only this time they have more substance. Daphne isn’t missing only from him.
He calls Daphne’s number again. This time, when he is shunted to voicemail, it feels more ominous. She’s no longer just not returning his calls, she’s drifting away from him, possibly against her will. Is this Paul guy a control freak? A cult leader? Is he listening to Harry’s messages and not passing them on to Daphne? Maybe the word “estrangement” isn’t what he should be worried about. Maybe he should be considering the word “rescue.”
Like an automaton, he fills a bluebox with recyclables, including the empty ScourPrep container and four wine bottles, and carries it out to the alley. He puts the plastic container in his own bin and the wine bottles in his neighbour’s. Elinor will be home tomorrow. Back inside, he pours another glass of wine and decides to go out to look for Millie again before drinking it. He wants as many family members around him as possible. The alley is deserted and smells of garbage fermenting in plastic bins. He calls Millie so softly he can barely hear himself. He thinks about the Weighing of the Heart ceremony. He meant what he said to Dorothy. If it were up to him, he’d let everyone whose heart was burdened by the weight of the world into the afterlife. Not the actual evildoers, but people like Dorothy and Bernie. Elinor and himself. Daphne. He’s not sure about Simon, but why not? And Millie, of course, if she isn’t there already.
* * *
—
The clinic is at the corner of St. Clair and Yonge. He parks below the building and takes an elevator up to the seventh floor. The examining rooms all have magnificent views, but the waiting room is windowless. He thinks about the symbolism of that while flipping through a two-year-old Maclean’s magazine. He had a few articles in Maclean’s back in the day: one about a sports-clothing manufacturer who set up shop in a decommissioned air force base near Foymount; another about the annual Emancipation Day celebrations in Owen Sound. It’s strange to think that people may have read those articles in a room like this one, waiting to find out how long they had to live.
“Harry Bowes?”
Dr. Beattie’s nurse takes his blood. He remembers her name: Naomi. She has apparently been instructed, on pain of dismissal, perhaps disbarment, to give any but the most noncommittal answers to his questions.
“Does this mean there’s a chance I have cancer?”
“We won’t know until the results come back.”
“Were some of the polyps malignant?”
“Dr. Beattie will call you when she receives the biopsy report.”
“She said she might have the report today.”
“I don’t know why she would say that. Biopsies usually take time. If the tests are positive, she’ll phone you right away.”
“By positive, I suppose you mean negative, right?”
“What? Oh, yes. Ha.”
* * *
—
When he wakes up on Tuesday morning, the blankets and sheets on Elinor’s side of the bed are as flat and undisturbed as an alluvial plain. Even the sham is still in place. He must have slept without moving a muscle, even though he feels as though he’s been tossing and turning in a clothes dryer all night. He’s angry with himself for not having succeeded in getting through to Daphne. There must be something he could do. Maybe he should call her mother to get her cell number. He scowls at himself in the bathroom mirror, decides not to shave, to hell with it, then remembers Elinor is coming home that afternoon. He fills the sink with hot water and starts to shave. He doesn’t want to run into Kronkman at the airport looking like he hasn’t slept since their phone call.
He takes his coffee into his office and opens his laptop to Elinor’s email, to double-check the time of her arrival. He reads the curt message again. “Hi Harry, sorry not to have written earlier, but the Wi-Fi here has been down.” Couldn’t she have picked up a telephone? Or gone to an Internet café? “The hotel kept promising it would be fixed that evening,” she wrote, “then that evening they said it would be fixed the next morning, then the next evening…” All right, but still, after a few days of that you’d think she’d have figured something else out. Gone out to a Starbucks or something. He googles “Wi-Fi” and discovers that the word is short for “wireless fidelity,” a meaningless term invented to invoke the warm, fuzzy image of “hi-fi,” a word he never found particularly warm or fuzzy. His parents had a hi-fi. He doesn’t remember them ever using it. Maybe they waited until he was out. He ponders the word for a moment. Does no Wi-Fi mean wireless infidelity?
The salient information is that her plane gets into Pearson at two forty-five. She’s probably in the air now. She and Sandy. He’l
l drop into Lutello’s on the way and arm-wrestle with Gaspard about the wine tasting. Gaspard and Manon are always there by ten, baking the day’s bread, topping up the sauces, cold-prepping the lunch salads. He envies the regularity in their lives, always knowing exactly what they’re going to be doing and when, the same thing day in and day out. All their cares confined to the restaurant. Or so he imagines. Of course, they must have worries outside the business, like everyone else, sick relatives back in France, children who don’t want to be restaurateurs, their own sudden middle age, all the things that add weight to a person’s heart. Manon has been looking overworked lately. She sits at the cash when the restaurant is quiet and stares off into space, like a character in a French film. Perhaps Gaspard isn’t an easy man to live with. But it must be satisfying to know that at nine o’clock every morning you are going to put three dozen baguettes in the oven, and at eleven thirty you will unlock the front door and let people in, and you will serve them thick slices of warm baguette with butter, or chicken breasts, or salmon filets, whatever. And that when one bottle of the house wine is empty you’ll simply reach under the counter and take out another, and that this routine will go on and on, baguette after baguette, bottle after bottle, year after year, for as long as you want it to.
That’s what he should say to Gaspard, and Elinor, and Daphne: lose the continuity and you cut yourself adrift, you lose your connection to your past, to the history of all the bistros and all the lovers and all the daughters that have ever existed. You will wallow in uncertainty. Customers don’t want to have to ask what wine is on the menu that day, they want to go in and order a half-litre of the house red and not know or care what they’re getting, as long as it’s the same as the wine they had the last time. This is the crux of his objection to Elinor’s plan to quit the university and go into private practice, which, since Daphne’s disappearance, he has forgotten to worry about. Whatever else the university represents, now that she has tenure and as long as she doesn’t sleep with a student, her continuance there is guaranteed for the rest of her sentient life. Longer, if what she says about some of her colleagues is true. Whereas in private practice, there’s always the worry that people will stop coming in to complain about their parents or whatever it is that keeps them from leading the deeply fulfilling lives to which they believe they are entitled by virtue of having been born. They may turn to drugs instead of going to a counsellor, or simply stay home and find themselves a life coach on the Internet. Look at his wine practice, if she wants a glimpse of the drifting life. No one wants to drink the old wines anymore.
