by Pasha Malla
‘Go on.’
‘Remembering. Our sleepovers. When we were kids.’
‘Okay.’
‘Like the one we had in your dad’s yard, that last weekend before grade nine?’
Ash sat up.
‘Probably the best night of my life.’
‘Last night of my childhood, I’ve often thought.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘Remember how we built a tent out of ski poles and tarp? Your dad got all excited, started drawing up blueprints and everything.’
‘And then it rained.’
‘But before that, remember how we snuck out into the neighbourhood?’
‘Right!’ Ash chuckled. ‘And the barramundi.’
‘The what?’
‘You don’t remember? My dad called us into the TV room and was like, “Boys, look at these things. They’re born men and turn into women. Remarkable!” For the rest of the night we kept doing fish faces and in this bad Indian accent saying, “I’m a man…I’m a woman…Remarkable!” and laughing till we pissed ourselves.’
‘Was that jizz story for real?’
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘Was just trying to think of the last time I laughed that hard.’
‘Without drugs, you mean.’
‘Yeah.’ Matt got distant. ‘Wanna blaze one?’
‘Now?’
‘Might help you sleep.’
Ash was doubtful. Weed made his mind and mouth race, often into realms of the obnoxious. But he followed Matt outside all the same. And when the joint came his way he accepted it greedily.
‘That’s it, take your medicine,’ said Matt, leaning back and gazing up at the heavens. ‘Wow, it really cleared up. Lot of stars out here, huh?’
‘Cold, though. No cloud cover.’
‘Pass that?’ Matt smoked expertly, smoothly, making Ash aware of how self-conscious he looked sucking on one end of the joint while eyeing its blazing tip in faint terror. Matt cradled it backwards in his palm to shelter the cherry from the breeze, released the smoke as naturally as he would his own breath. An elegant performance.
Ash declined a second round, gazing past Matt out into the yard. The chalet was surrounded by pine and poplar, and the trunks seemed to jostle in the night like a crowd of onlookers. My dad is dead, thought Ash, and shivered, and hugged himself.
‘Crud,’ said Matt. ‘I nearly forgot: that lady, that old vixen who wants you to come to her book club? I told her we’ll be staying in Montreal tomorrow night. She said she could get her gang together to meet with you Tuesday morning.’
‘What are you, my agent?’
‘Does that mean I get a cut?’
‘A cut of what?’
‘Well, actually,’ Matt giggled, ‘I might’ve already took one.’
‘Oh god, what did you do now?’
‘What didn’t I do, is the question.’
‘At my dad’s funeral?’
‘I can’t help it! I’m only one man! And don’t get me wrong, I feel bad. I mean, considering. And we didn’t go all the way or anything—’
‘That’s Brij’s boss!’ Was, Ash amended, but didn’t say.
Matt blew smoke over his shoulder. ‘Hush now. You’ll wake up your sister.’
‘How the hell did you manage this?’
‘She asked me to show her the bathroom, but then she found out I was in school for massage therapy and she told me her shoulders were tight so I gave them a little squeeze and she pulled me inside and closed the door and was like, “I need to see your cock.” ’
‘This did not happen. How does this stuff happen to you?’ Matt finished the joint with two big sips, stubbed out the roach on a licked thumb, and pocketed it. ‘Nothing happens to me, bro. I make it happen.’
‘You sound like a serial killer. Or a despot.’
‘So anyhow, all’s I told her was, “You gotta show me yours first.” ’
Ash shook his head. Partly at Matt, but also at the jealousy flitting on the periphery of his disgust.
‘We didn’t blast, just a little…you know.’ A demonstration followed. But then his voice shifted registers. ‘I didn’t nut, or mean any disrespect.’
‘As long as you’re making memories, right?’
‘Barbara.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t want to forget. That was her name: Barbara.’
—
THOUGH HE’D DABBLED IN pretty much everything else, Matt’s drug of choice was weed. For nearly two decades he’d committed to a strict routine: bong hit on waking at noon, a few toots on a one-hitter over the course of the day, a joint in the early evening, and a nightcap with the bong at bedtime. Wake at noon and repeat, repeat, repeat.
Matt liked to say, with pride, that he didn’t drink. ‘I’m not supposed to,’ he’d explain, as if on medical advice—x-rays on the wall, cirrhotic guts revealed—rather than best practices after wayward boozy escapades had left him shamed or gonorrhoeal or jailed. (Though he did claim to have heart problems, too, something arrhythmic, some valve flapping the wrong way or jamming like a stuck door.) But of course he did drink, regularly, announcing each time, ‘Honestly, I shouldn’t be doing this!’ By last call, wallet emptied, he was either looking for a fight or a fuck or he had his arm around Ash, slurring into his face, ‘You’re my best friend, you little maggot.’
Sometimes he’d even consummate things with a kiss. Not really sexual, more as a misguided father might smooch his estranged, reluctant son. Though he kissed everyone, from lovers to co-workers. His mom had been the same way, insisting when she dropped him off at school on a goodbye kiss on the lips. This seemed beyond ridicule, into the territory of the incestuous, the unhinged, the possibly illegal. And yet there was something showy about it too, so once, at a pool party in front of a girl they both liked, Ash had teased him about it. ‘So my mom loves me!’ screamed Matt, and in a blind rage thrown all the patio furniture into the pool—and then chucked Ash in too.
Matt’s adolescence had been like an attack from within: he sprouted to six feet and began shaving in grade seven, lost his virginity at thirteen, the same year of his first arrest (for crapping into his math teacher’s sunroof). But his tempers had their maudlin extremes too. In grade eleven gym class, volleyball unit, he’d pounded a third consecutive bump into the ceiling and couldn’t take the razzing of his classmates. ‘I’m a frigging nationally ranked junior mogul champ!’ he’d screamed, tears running down his face, and gunned the ball as hard as he could into the crowd, breaking a girl’s nose. (He’d sent her flowers, they’d ended up dating, and then Matt had slept with her older sister.)
Another crying episode had occurred in English class, during debates. Matt did not care to be made to look stupid, and Ash knew this, and Ash liked getting laughs, and so during their discussion of Hamlet’s existential crisis he’d taken full advantage of the heckling option, parroting everything Matt said in the voice—half an octave up, interrogative—his friend affected for phone calls and friends’ moms. Matt lost it, punching him so hard in the shoulder that Ash couldn’t use the arm for a week. (Seeking redemption, Matt took him to Wendy’s: ‘Anything you want, bro. It’s on me.’)
These were Ash’s thoughts as he lay awake again, high, now, as well as heart-burned. Matt’s sleep machine wheezed and gasped. The hour ticked toward two, passed it, approached three. He’d always been ashamed of his insomnia, considering his dad’s medical speciality. Like the petty criminal son of a cop. Both Brij and Mona were sound and instantaneous sleepers: their heads hit the pillow and out they went. But not Ash. As a kid he’d spent too many nights staring wretchedly into the dark, dreading the morning with everyone burbling around the kitchen, bright-eyed and rested, while he blearily poured orange juice into his Cheerios.
Such a basic thing, sleep, into which lucky souls fell, as if each bedtime afforded some glorious accident. Yet for Ash the night offered nothing so passive as a dreamy tumble. It wasn�
�t sleep that echoed death: no, death was that purgatory of lying awake, forsaken, as the hours slunk toward the fresh hell of dawn. And now, with his sister sleeping, and her husband sleeping, and Matt sleeping, Ash felt like a ghost, abandoned and alone. He struggled to coax his mind into silence. But thoughts swirled and clanged, the pillow was too hot, the sheets twined into snakes that crept neckward to choke him.
At a quarter past three Ash got up to read. Into the Night seemed the perfect analgesic for a twitchy brain. He turned on the light over the dining table, reread the novel’s first sentence, hung his head, checked his phone—far too late to text Sherene, who slept the sleep of a dead and buried log—and, with a sigh like a desert wind rasping across the sands, continued.
The story unfolded more or less as expected, beginning with a prologue that detailed, in italicized and bludgeoningly lyrical language, a man building a cabin in the woods. Tearing out stumps, hammering, framing, sawing, whatever. The writing was manly. The man was manly. He cussed and roared and roasted shirtless under a blazing sun, hydrating with whiskey while his blood and sweat (no tears, never tears) pollocked the ground. The work was pure masochism; the suffering deserved. The past lives in the body, summarized the narrator, so it must be wounded free.
Then the novel proper began. Or rather backtracked to life before the fall—a wife, a child, a dog: the man had it all. But tragedy loomed. He’d been a soldier, he’d beheld horrors and maybe committed some too. And it haunted him. As time passed the man’s behaviour turned erratic, his thoughts became paranoid. Convinced that spectres from his troubled past were planning to kidnap his wife and son, the man locked his family in the cellar and headed off to hunt down his demons. Except there were no demons to be found, only whiskey, and when he returned, the house with his family trapped inside was engulfed in flames. The man sank to his knees there on the lawn in the shuddering glow of his own ruination and watched the last embers of his dying world scatter off into the night and no, no, no, what had he done?
And here Ash cried.
Just a little. A tear or two, easily wiped away.
Down on the floor, Matt rolled over, grunted and groaned.
Ash froze, waited. Smeared another stray tear from his cheek to his ear.
And Matt began rasping away again.
Ash dog-eared the page and flipped the book. The Behemoth stared unflappably from his author photo, a man who’d waded into an abyss of hard truths and emerged to tell the tale. A man with such clout and power, and in such high demand, that there was no rescheduling his interview, tragedies be damned. Ash felt bullied. What might Sherene have planned for Tuesday? What might he ask the author of this dreck? There were no revelations here, just manipulations and make-believe. The abyss was the guy’s own creation, its battle-won wisdoms self-serving and contrived: it was no great trick to build up a hard man only for the tear-jerking purpose of making him fall. This wasn’t a novel, Ash thought, blowing his nose softly into a napkin. It was a con.
—
THE NEXT MORNING MONA, upon waves of morning sickness, walked in on Matt shaving his crotch with what seemed—though she didn’t look long or close enough to confirm it—to be her razor. She slammed the bathroom door moaning, ‘Ew, ew,’ fled downstairs with her hand over her mouth and unleashed a torrent of vomit into the kitchen sink.
After bleaching the drains clean, Ash joined her and Harj on the couch.
‘He was all hunched over and gross,’ she explained, ‘washing his pubes down the drain. Why, Ash? Why would someone do that?’ She lowered her voice, pressed her face into Harj’s chest. ‘How long is he going to be here?’
Ash resisted mentioning that, having known them all for twenty-five years, Matt was more family than Harj, now cooing like a mother bird into the top of Mona’s head.
Brij had always claimed to like Mona’s husband, called him ‘thoughtful and kind,’ though Ash felt that he mostly appreciated having another doctor around to talk shop. Sometimes they’d even switch to Hindi, which, after decades away from India, Brij spoke haltingly, deferring to his son-in-law for pronunciation and vocabulary.
‘What about a bath?’ Harj asked Mona, nuzzling her neck. ‘Shall I bathe you?’
Ash fled to the kitchen to scramble some eggs.
But then Harj appeared in the doorway. ‘Are those farm fresh? Free range? We’re trying not to feed the baby any GMOs.’
Ash knocked the eggs around the pan as if searching for incrimination in their midst. ‘No idea.’
‘I’ll make Mona some toast then.’
‘No, that’s fine. I’ll do it.’ Ash brandished the spatula like a cutlass.
‘We brought our own bread—’
‘The gluten-free stuff. In the freezer. I know.’
Still Harj lingered. Ash busied himself with breakfast preparation. Finally he turned and met his eyes.
‘Oh, Ash,’ said Harj. Was this pity? Ash felt an urge to hurl something at him, a steak knife or a fridge. ‘Your friend—don’t let him bully you.’
‘Sorry, what? Bully me?’
‘Ash, please.’ Harj stepped toward him. He wasn’t speaking so much as purring. ‘For too long white men have been emasculating us, feminizing us.’
Ash laughed. ‘They have, have they?’
Harj nodded. His hand was on Ash’s shoulder now. It felt like a blessing. ‘The history of colonialism is exactly this: they ridicule our manhood with their version of what it means to be a man. They say we’re not man enough, they make us feel small.’
‘And this, you’re saying, is playing out in my dad’s living room.’
‘The legacy of colonialism runs long and deep.’ Now Harj had Ash by both shoulders, nostrils flaring with each breath. Distantly Ash was aware of his eggs scorching. ‘But the secret is to embrace what they deem feminine. That’s how we beat them.’
‘Go team,’ said Ash.
Harj, oblivious to his sarcasm, added something in Hindi or Bengali that Ash had no way of understanding. Before a translation could be requested, Matt came thumping down the stairs and interrupted Harj’s and Ash’s strained embrace. ‘You guys slow-dancing?’
‘Give us a minute,’ said Harj.
Matt pushed between them. ‘Is there coffee?’
‘I thought you weren’t supposed to have caffeine,’ said Ash.
‘True.’ Matt turned to Harj, tapped his chest. ‘On account of my heart.’
‘We were talking,’ said Harj, looking to Ash for solidarity.
‘Honestly?’ said Matt. ‘I doubt Ash wants to talk to you. He doesn’t even like you.’
Ash grabbed Matt by the back of his shirt, pulled him away. ‘Seriously?’
‘Well, you don’t.’
Harj stared hard at Ash and, with a shake of his head, slipped out of the kitchen.
‘Come on,’ Ash called after him. ‘We’re family.’ But his words sounded weak.
Before Harj was out of range Matt lifted a leg and farted. ‘That’d be all those sandwiches yesterday,’ he said, wafting. ‘What do you think, Doc? Can you smell the egg salad?’ He let go another one, a greasy squeak. ‘And there’s the ham and cheese, too.’
—
‘THAT GUY HAS GOT TO GO.’
‘Harj?’ said Ash. Having dispatched her husband for groceries Mona had brought Ash up to the master bedroom to go through Brij’s clothes. Matt was out back chopping wood and every thirty seconds the whack of the axe echoed across the yard. ‘If you say so. Shame he has to leave so soon.’
Mona kept balling loose socks, dropping matched pairs into a garbage bag at her feet. So dutiful, such resolve. But there was fragility about it too, a slight tremble in her hands.
From outside sounded a great crack of split lumber.
‘Matt means well,’ said Ash. ‘You know that, right?’
Mona looked up. ‘Does he? Aside from the fact he’s disgusting and takes up half the space in the house? That he threatened my husband? I don’t trust him. Never have.’
&
nbsp; ‘Threatened? By gas attack?’
‘And, really, Ash—means well? This is the person, remember, who used to steal wallets from the change rooms at Thompson Arena during family skate.’
‘He’s here for us.’
Thock, sounded Matt and his axe from outside.
‘Wrong.’ Mona moved to the dresser. ‘He’s here for himself.’
Dimly Ash watched her manoeuvre an armload of sweaters to the bed. The previous night’s lack of sleep was catching up. He felt sludgy and detached, and his sister’s purposeful sorting and stacking made him feel especially peripheral to the whole affair. All he’d contributed so far was dumping a drawer of his dad’s briefs onto the floor. But then what? Kicking them into the donation bag was surely wrong.
‘It’s just like when he was a kid,’ said Mona. ‘Always hanging around our house. No family of his own so he adopts us. Or pretends we’ve adopted him.’
‘His mother killed herself!’
Mona looked up sharply. ‘Don’t use that. Don’t let him use that as an excuse.’
Ash escaped into the walk-in closet. Surrounded by a dangling army of empty suits, he was overwhelmed by the smell of his father: coffee, mothball, a vaguely fecal musk. Brij had boasted about not needing deodorant (true), though his breath had borne the reek of death. Once, returning home from vacation, Ash had discovered a sludge of rotten kale and furred yogurt in the trash that recalled his dad’s mouth-smell exactly.
Ash emerged from the closet with six hangers of pants. ‘Well, you’ll be rid of us soon enough. We’re going to Montreal tonight. Matt and Chip planned drinks.’
There was a splintering sound from outside, and a shout—‘Frigging cripes!’—and then silence.
‘Did he cut off his hand or something?’ Ash moved toward the window but Mona straight-armed him back. He’d forgotten how strong she was, still very much the older sister who’d dragged Ash’s sixth-grade bully around by the ear before dumping the kid face-first in a puddle.
