Seven Types of Ambiguity

by Elliot Perlman

  Sam is standing at the doorway. He stands in his pajamas and looks in at us. His mother looks up at him from the telephone. I hold out my arms. He understands that this is an invitation to run to the bed and jump up into my arms so that I can assure both of us that everything is all right.

  “Dad.”

  I hold him to my chest. My love for him is the only unequivocally good thing I know is always there inside of me. It is the reason I should be spared all that is coming, the only reason.

  “How’s my little man this morning?”

  Either way I lose. Either way I want to kill this Simon.

  Anna’s telephone conversation registers with me for the first time. “Well, you can,” she says into the telephone, “but we don’t know our plans yet, exactly.”

  She runs the fingers of one hand through Sam’s hair.

  “No, he’s fine. He looks fine. He’s had a good sleep,” she says, looking at him.

  She puts one hand over the mouthpiece and turns to me. “It’s your mother,” she says. “She’s read about it in the paper. Hold on,” she says, returning to my mother. “Hold on and I’ll get Joe for you.”

  In the paper. Which one? It would be a stupid question so I don’t ask it. It’s the only paper my mother ever reads. She reads it every day. I know her routine. On Sundays, for example, she picks it up after mass and goes home to make herself some toast and a pot of tea to have while she reads it. Then she goes to visit Roger. She has to take two buses. She can’t drive. They didn’t have the money for it to be an issue when we were young, and now she says she’s too old to learn. She’s too scared to learn. I have given her a cab charge card but she seldom uses it. “Save your money,” she says. She still thinks that the wretchedness of poverty can be mitigated by frugality. Even my father knew better than that. He just didn’t know what to do with the knowledge. But today, from her daily paper, my mother has learned something new. Her grandson was kidnapped last night. I read the same paper.

  “I don’t know, Mum. No, I’m still in bed. No, I haven’t read the paper, but I can tell you he’s fine . . . Well, how should I know? They don’t know . . . The police don’t know . . . Well . . . They didn’t say anything about that to us.”

  “What?” Anna asks in a whisper. I am listening to my mother telling me what a tabloid newspaper says about the theft of my son while he crawls headfirst under the covers to get to the foot of the bed.

  “Mum, I don’t know anything about that.”

  “What? What’s she saying?” Anna whispers again. I put my hand over the mouthpiece.

  “She says the paper says your Simon is a serial child stealer.”

  “Oh, that’s complete crap.”

  “How would you know? You haven’t seen him for ten years . . . Sorry, Mum, I got distracted . . . Sam’s . . . Sam’s playing cave explorer in the bed . . . No, he’s fine . . . Sure, I don’t see why not.” Again I cover the mouthpiece to speak to Anna.

  “She wants to see him,” I tell her.

  Anna closes her eyes in momentary exasperation before answering, “Whatever you want.”

  I arrange with my mother to bring her over to see Sam before taking her to visit Roger. Sometimes she wants to go there on a Saturday. There is nothing I can do. Anna isn’t happy about it but she knows that taking my mother out to visit Roger is the last thing I would want to do. Everything is surreal now. It doesn’t help having my mother in the house to check for herself that Sam is well no matter what was said in the paper about the alleged history of his kidnapper, her daughter-in-law’s former lover. Does the paper mention Angelique? What is she doing in all of this?

  5. Mitch kept talking to the buxom redhead. He was like a stock-market Scheherazade delaying the moment of execution, all on Sid Graeme’s tab. The redhead was quite sexy both in appearance and in the way she spoke. What made her all the more so was the fact that it was Mitch and not me that was talking to her, engaging her, flirting with her. I was close enough to be able to listen and observe the goings-on in the rest of the room. I found it exciting to see men and women discreetly leaving the room together.

  What I found was that the women there were, for the most part, pretty, sometimes quite pretty, and all, including the transsexual I had so quickly and instinctively banished, were in their own ways enticing. But none of them were, on close examination, what a discerning man would call beautiful. You would not necessarily notice them on the street.

  They had the prettiness of the flight attendant who stands out a little from her colleagues and is serving the people in the seats diagonally opposite yours. You notice her without really being conscious of it at first. Then you catch yourself hoping that your seat falls within her allotted area and being disappointed when it doesn’t. Is she really beautiful? No. Do you want her to notice you? For a hungry moment you want this more than anything else. Why do you want this? You don’t know. It makes no sense. You’re a number to this woman if you’re ever anything to her. You’re the chicken not the fish, you’re the guy next to the old lady with the extra blanket. You want her so much by the time the plane begins its descent and yet, by the time you’re removing your briefcase or jacket from the overhead bin, you have forgotten her. She is suddenly no more memorable than the safety instructions she and her colleagues issued at the start of your mind’s round trip from reality to her and back. You have forgotten her and have no appointment to remember her and you don’t. Until one night in bed, five or so days later as you listen to the sounds of your wife disrobing and abluting in the en suite, preparing for another night of sleeping alone beside you. Then you remember that airline stewardess and your favorite useless part starts to come alive.

  You would know what to do with it if only there was time. You think that there might be time, and you start. You need this time. You remember the way that woman helped someone with his pillow and how it could have been you if you’d played your cards right. But this is all right. This looks as though it’s going to have a happy ending. You’re thinking about that uniform, how she had to put it on and would have to take it off. You think you can remember her breasts. And everything is going to be okay. You’re going to be free, and no one will ever know. But then the light changes in the corner of your eye. It’s over in the en suite. Your wife is back. You’re not finished but you have to pretend you’re asleep. You can’t even exhale as deeply as you would like in your own bed. This is what it’s come to. And through small tears that have replaced the light in the corner of your eyes, you thank Jesus there are places you can go and pay for the airline stewardess to set you free.

  I think I chose Angelique because she didn’t choose me. She was sitting at the bar talking to the bartender or the security guy or whoever he was, and she really wasn’t interested in meeting me or getting her cut from making me feel nineteen again. When Mitch finally went off with the buxom redhead, probably choosing her because it would have been impolite not to after talking to her all that time, I went up to the bar and interrupted the conversation Angelique was having because I was bored, embarrassed, and in a place where women just could not reject you. Every woman in the place was attracted to me by market forces and so I chose the one who seemed to most approximate the outside world, the one with her back to me. In this respect she could have been my wife. And in another respect too.

  She was by far the prettiest woman there, pretty enough for me, under other circumstances, to have wanted to see her in my real life. When she took me upstairs she seemed in complete control. Having satisfied herself through the intercom that I wasn’t required to hand over any money, her demeanour changed and she started to talk to me like a woman, albeit a young woman, that I would perhaps want to talk to when this was over. She asked me what I did for a living. I hadn’t expected this. She spoke with an engaging confidence, friendly without being sycophantic, like someone I could meet through work, at a meeting or a conference. I remember that after I told her what I did she asked me whether she should put her money in stocks
or property. Then I saw her naked.

  I don’t see Anna naked anymore. I can, but I have to arrange it. This is not something she has commented on. She might not even realize it, but she’s taken to dressing and undressing in the bathroom if I’m in the bedroom and in the bedroom if I’m in the bathroom. All of this began even before Sam was born. If I’m going to be honest, it happened after the first one and before Sam. We had a baby, a boy who died on the seventeenth day of his life. They don’t know why so they put it down to SIDS, which is an acronym for “we don’t know why your baby died but it did and you’re on your own now.” Anna took it worse than I did and then, for a time at least, seemed to hold that against me, the fact that she had taken it worse than me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t devastated by it because I was. But she’d carried him for nine months. It was she who was breast-feeding him, she who was watching him for most of her waking hours during those seventeen days. I was back at work. It was she who discovered him. I had gotten up to go to work while both of them were still sleeping. I thought they were both sleeping. At nine-thirty she called me. She called me. She called her parents and her sister. She called an ambulance. In panic she even called the police. Our son is dead. I was just coming out of a breakfast meeting. I can’t underestimate what it must have been like to find him. She must not underestimate what it’s like to run around a school yard at dusk screaming till you’re breathless, screaming the name of a son who is a little person, a perfect little boy you’ve known for six years. Then I found out her ex-lover had taken him.

  There’s more. To be honest, there’s more. The baby we lost, I don’t know why now, but at the time I thought maybe there was something wrong with him. I hate saying it but he looked a little odd. There was something funny about his eyes. It made me think of Roger. I didn’t say anything about Roger when I mentioned it to Anna but she was furious anyway, wouldn’t hear of it. I wanted her to reassure me. I was his father.

  We had some counselling for a while afterwards and we took a holiday to Fiji. After that, no, it was on the holiday, during it, she started being . . . what? Reticent. She said it was too soon. I could understand. It got a little better, not much. It didn’t really improve until she got pregnant with Sam. She said some outrageous things before she got better, things she should never have said. I can’t help Roger. I couldn’t help the way the baby looked. Sam is all we have in common now.

  Sam is six years old, almost seven, and already he’s learned to humor my mother. She’s brought him hard candy and, as he did the last time she brought some hard candy, he’ll have one in front of her and leave the rest. Confectionery grows up as you do. As you progress through your youth it takes more to satisfy you, and the manufacturers seem always to be able to deliver. They work hard to increase your expectations. At least that’s the way I remember it. I remember wanting more than just the hard candy and I remember remembering when she would reward us with hard candy and it was fine. It was enough. There were other times, as I got older, when, just for a moment, I felt cheated. Had she never heard of chocolate? Had she never heard of nuts, caramel, nougat? Small and round, you know where these hard candies would fit?

  Sam is following Anna around. His grandmother has lost his attention. The hard candies sit there on the coffee table. My mother looks at them for a moment before turning to look at her spotted hands nervously playing with the metal clasp on her handbag, fake crocodile, opening and closing it.

  She still feels uncomfortable in a house like this, even though it’s her son’s house. She used to ask all the time whether I had paid it all off yet. She sits in it uncomfortably. She acts like it’s stolen. Anna offers her food and something to drink but my mother says no. We had better be going. Anna follows my mother and me to the front door. Sam has his arms around Anna’s thigh. There’s an unfinished jigsaw puzzle in front of the TV. Somebody had him last night. I can’t stop thinking about it. Anna says something to him about the puzzle as I’m closing the door. She is good with him. Sweet Jesus, we’re never going to be able to clean this up.

  6. Why does my mother have to sit in the front passenger seat like she’s never been in a car before? I’m looking at the road but I know she’s holding on to the handle on the inside of the door. I’m not even driving fast. I should have said no to this. I can’t see Roger today. I can’t face that place.

  “Is this the car you always had?” my mother asks me.

  “What?”

  “Is this the same car you always had?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “When did you get it?”

  “The car?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve had it . . . I don’t know . . . six months, maybe.”

  “What do you call it?”

  “What do I call it?”

  She closes her eyes. She might be crying. “You know what I mean, Joe.”

  “It’s an Audi, Mum. An Audi TT Roadster.”

  I used to go with her on the bus to see Dad, a bus to the city anyway. We all went, but I went the most. I’m the oldest male, the only male with an IQ over sixty. The parking lot here always reminds me of those visits to my father. We always did as we were told, presenting ourselves at the south gate at Urquhart Street. My mother would press the buzzer. At the counter you gave them the name of the person you had come to visit. You were asked to sign the visitors’ book and identify yourself. You were given a card and had your hand stamped. All your personal belongings were placed in a locker. We were directed to proceed through a security metal detector doorway and asked to follow a straight continuous blue line until we reached the visit center. At the visit center you were asked for the card that had been handed to you previously. You were asked to identify yourself again, and, after being entered in a visitors’ register, you were directed to the actual place of the visit within the visit center. Then you saw your dad.

  I never got to see where he slept, so I didn’t know what he saw at night when he was thinking about us. He said he thought about all of us at night. What did he think about in the days? We brought him photos. I wanted to see them at subsequent visits. I remember that. I was afraid someone was defacing them. I don’t know why. It just occurred to me one night. I brought him my Little Athletics ribbons. He wasn’t allowed to keep them. He told me to have pride in myself.

  “You’re not ashamed, are you, Joe?” he asked me at one of the visits, holding my face between those two great hands. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. As long as you tried. You did your best.”

  “The ribbon’s blue, Dad. I came first.”

  “As long as you don’t lie down. Can’t change anything if you lie down. You’ve got to have the courage to strive for what you want. I wasn’t afraid to go for it. I gave it a damned good shake. That’s how I manage to hold my head up, even here.”

  We would take a streetcar and a couple of buses home to the blocked-up plumbing and the neighbor’s stomping on the ceiling. We would take turns polishing his boots. She made us do it as part of our chores, even though he wouldn’t be home for another three years. He was holding his head up.

  I’ve seen where Roger sleeps. When we see him today they’ve got his hair parted recklessly near his left ear in a manner calculated to make him look as far from anybody’s measure of normal as possible. He is sitting on a chair, in a brownish-orange fleece-lined lumber jacket, staring at other people sitting on chairs staring at people. Children can be very cruel to people like this. Roger has grown to my father’s height. Here they are all “clients” now. How’s Sid Graeme going to make a buck out of this?

  We walk into a large, open room—the day room, they call it—past all manner of intellectual impairment and psychological dysfunction. A man is smoking a cigarette and rubbing himself on the back of someone else’s chair. My mother greets him. She comes here every week, usually having just thanked the blessed Virgin before waiting for the first of the buses.

  “Hello, Leon,” she calls, and then to me: “That’s
Roger’s friend.”

  Roger is smiling when he sees us.

  “Hi, Roger-Dodger,” I say to my brother, shaking his hand. Someone stole my son last night.

  There are people here who look like horses. Some are staff, some are clients, patients, inmates. We trust Roger to their kindness. We have no choice. Not for a moment will Jesus let my mother wish my brother had never been born. “Do you want to hear the radio?” I ask her on the way home.

  “I don’t mind. Whatever you like. If you want,” she says.

  With one hand on the wheel I play with the radio dial, searching for a station she might like, easy listening, hits and memories, syrup, schmaltz. It can make you want to kill. We must be about due for a retrospective of the Ray Conniff singers. My mother joined the World Record Club many years ago. I remember the shiny catalogues on the kitchen table. I don’t ever remember her not being a member of it. She must have cut out a coupon from a magazine before I was born and filled it in. The Ray Conniff singers, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, and Al Martino; she got them all for a little bit less. And she got those round, colored, tasteless hard candies.

  “Joe, is he the one who stole that Eloise and the . . . the Chinese girl? That’s what the paper said.”

  “What? What did the paper say?”

  “They said the man who kidnapped Sam might’ve been the same one who took those other kids.”

  Matt Flinders is singing “Picking Up Pebbles.”

  7. When we get back to her place she asks me to stay for a while but I can’t even go in. I can’t go home either. I have to stop off somewhere. Anna’s parents are coming over. Or is that tomorrow? They’ll come and they’ll talk dago when they think I can’t hear and they’ll never leave. Do I want a coffee? I want a coffee or a juice. I wish someone would tell me. There’s a place on Chapel Street with incredible waitresses. One of the guys at work was talking about it. What was it called?