Cluck

by Lenore Rowntree

  Twenty-one, he answers.

  He doesn’t know what the doctor’s nod means. Panic starts to rise from his stomach. He’s tasting it at the back of his throat, waiting for it to clear, when he notices the doctor looking impatiently behind him. He turns to see the same big-faced clock on the wall that they’d had in the classrooms at school. He knows then he’s no more important than the frog whose heart they had pithed in biology. Suddenly he is that frog who can’t talk, who barely has energy to breathe. The sound of Dr. Davis’ voice brings his focus back to the room they’re sitting in.

  Look I’m sorry, the doctor says, I have many other pressing appointments this afternoon. I’m happy to talk to either of you on another day. Call if things get worse.

  Henry and Alice leave the office, Henry with a pamphlet in hand and she with a prescription for a daily dose of something called chlorpromazine.

  When they get home, he opens up the pamphlet in the solitude of his bedroom. He smooths his hands over the folds as if straightening out the paper is going to make the reading easier. Even ordinary words like exercise, good nutrition, regular sleep, are frightening when they’re printed on a pea-green sheet folded in three with the title You and Mental Illness stamped on the front of it. He scans the leaflet looking for a few words of solace. Engage the family in the solution; that’s a good one — how do you do that when the only family member is the problem? The more he scans, the more he finds truly scary words, words that freak him out: bipolar, manic, psychotic. Then he reads about the anti-psychotics, how they don’t work for everyone and can take some time to kick in. He paces the bedroom before walking into the living room where Alice is planted in front of the television, knitting what looks to be yet another pair of pompom slippers.

  Mom, I need to know a few things.

  Like?

  Like who is my dad?

  She stares straight ahead at the television.

  Your father died in the war. You know that.

  Please, Mom. I was born in 1960. What war are you talking about?

  He lets a few minutes pass while they watch a rerun of a Carol Burnett show. At the end of the show Carol tugs on her ear. Henry knows this is Carol’s code for saying hello to her grandmother.

  Well what about my grandmother? he asks. Your mother, what was she like?

  She died before you were born.

  I know that, but what about her?

  She left us this house. She was a good woman.

  Mom, did she have depression or some sort of mental problem?

  Snip. Snip. Snip. Three new pompoms fall off a cardboard slat into his mother’s lap. She scoops them up and throws them into the air. She catches two and tosses them at him.

  Catch, lover. Let’s have some fun.

  He lets the pompoms fall to the floor. He hates it when she turns coy. A Pepsodent commercial comes on the television when she stands to retrieve the pompom she missed. She throws that pompom at Henry too and sings him the line, You’ll wonder where the yellow went, then blows him a good-night kiss and walks out of the room.

  Three weeks later, Henry comes home to a surprisingly clean kitchen. Alice sits with a pot of pink nail polish and a pile of freshly cut fingernails beside her. The drugs have kicked in, he thinks.

  I don’t know what I was thinking with that horrid purple polish, she says.

  Looks good, Mom. He moves over to the fridge and pulls out a few wilted carrots and a beef pot pie.

  I bought a bunch of spinach and some onions today, she says.

  Really? Good.

  After supper, while they sit in the television room debating whether to watch the Fonz or Meathead, she pulls out her knitting bag and hands him a pair of number 9 needles.

  I’m going to teach you to knit, she says.

  You did that already.

  I only taught you how to knit and purl. Tonight I’m going to teach you basketweave.

  He really isn’t interested, but knitting is something she’s good at, and it’s a focus they can retreat to when needed, so he lets her. While he casts on stitches she starts to talk.

  Dr. Davis called, she says. He told me I might be able to get a job at the Vancouver Courier.

  Wow.

  It’s part of a program.

  Good. What will you be doing?

  Bundling newspapers.

  Sounds okay. Does it pay?

  Of course it pays.

  Just wondering. You said it was part of a program.

  It is, but still they have to pay. I used to work at the drugstore you know.

  Yeah. Yeah. I know. Shhhh, the Fonz is on.

  He’s relieved she’ll be working. If she’s working, her curiosity about his job will wane, and she won’t have the time to follow him to the office. Which is good, especially now. He really couldn’t take her showing up at work, what with his new responsibilities and all.

  On September 12, 1981, the Federal Government had installed a fax machine. To most people the machine is a miracle, and Henry — the only one trained to change the heat-sensitive rolls that allow the text to travel — is treated like a miracle worker. Everybody is in love with the technology. Lunch orders are faxed to restaurants around the corner, confidential medical information is sent all over the Lower Mainland, and smoochy love messages are sent everywhere. Henry knows who likes pastrami on rye, whose gum disease is becoming an issue, and who’s having a romance across town. It’s been terrifying and exhausting. He isn’t used to having so many people around, sometimes he can’t breathe properly, and if there are too many in the queue at once his heart races. To get through it, he focuses on the piece of paper and not the person handing it to him, especially when the paper has eye-popping words like rectal and vaginal prolapse. Even though he’s figured out the woman who gave him that message was actually reporting on a herd of cattle, he still can’t look her in the eye.

  At first HR tried to control the crush around the fax machine by issuing an office-wide memo saying Henry was to be responsible for recording the number of pages and the nature of the information contained in all the faxes. He was relieved; this meant he could spend part of his time alone figuring out which of the HR categories — commercial, medical, family, or other — the various messages fit into. But what to do with the order to a florist for a dozen red roses going to a Dr. Ulla Martine, veterinarian, with a note that says Until your chickens grow new feathers? When he asked, even HR couldn’t decide which category that one belonged in, and after debating whether they should create a multiple category, the powers that be decided to outright ban all personal faxes. But by then everybody had gotten to know Henry and the title Fax God had pretty much stuck to him. And he doesn’t mind the machine so much anymore because it’s through the fax that he’s met the chief poultry inspector, a man everybody calls Chief.

  Chief likes that Henry has a nickname too, and calls him Fax God every chance he gets. Henry likes the way Chief says Fax God, and he’s begun to think about how he might work up the nerve to tell Chief that what he really wants to be is a poultry technician and go out on inspections. Rows of blinking hens and collections of eggs just seem so right to him. Something indescribably soft and ordered overcomes him when he thinks about the chickens. He knows not all of them will be like the chocolate-brown hen in his Farm Folk set, but thinking about this job does remind him of a time when his mother used to be easier and he had a friend next door. A time when he fantasized about turning out cool like Tom. Perhaps it still isn’t too late to learn to move with precision and athleticism instead of being clunky, stunned Henry.

  One evening, after Alice has been working at the Courier for a few weeks, she and Henry are in front of the TV trying to decide whether to watch Three’s Company or Different Strokes. Lately he hasn’t cared what they watch because his mother has been calm and just lets him sit and veg after supper. He’s been allowed to let his mind drift to whatever he feels like, which mostly has been a lot toward Kitty, the girl he met at the Arbutus Mall, the one he sti
ll can’t believe actually talks to him. So it’s really upsetting that on this evening his mother is agitated again. She’s already asked him three times why he can’t get her some more glamorous work at Agriculture Canada, and she is going in for a fourth.

  Well why, Henry?

  Why what?

  Why can’t you at least ask if there is a job for me?

  Because we don’t bundle newspapers.

  That’s not all I can do.

  I know.

  I could run a fax machine. I could have glamorous work too.

  It’s not that glamorous.

  I’m the mother, I’m the one who should have the better job.

  Your job is good, Mom. It’s right in the neighbourhood.

  It’s so dirty, and that awful noise.

  Henry has heard it all before, but doesn’t dare say it’s the noise that makes it work for her — the printing machines are so loud everyone wears earplugs and no one can hear what anybody else is saying. He can see she’s going to keep at it unless he does something to stop her. So he lies.

  I might be fired next week, he says.

  Because of a girl?

  No. Why would you think that? Just because.

  Oh, she says. That’s not good. But maybe a job will open for me.

  Mom! We need the money from my salary.

  This works. She leaves the subject — perhaps she’s even a little worried for him. For a time they sit in front of the television knitting. Things stay peaceful enough through the beginning of M*A*S*H that he can even allow his mind to wander back to Kitty again. While Radar and Hawkeye bicker about who should go first in the canteen line, he starts detailing in his mind what has gone before with her. He hopes by going over it he might come up with some new strategy he can use to push things forward.

  They met in the lineup at the Woodward’s Food Floor. He was in front of her, his cart full with a week’s worth of groceries. She stood behind him with nothing.

  Want to go ahead of me? he asked.

  That’d be great, she said. I only need to buy a pack of cigs.

  It was a tight squeeze for her to get to her Winstons, and when she pressed by him he smelled tobacco on her coat, and something else indescribably arousing. He was scared to go back the next week — What if she was there? But what if she wasn’t? — so he took a line with him he’d heard one of the guys in research use at the office. It was simple, just a few words, but the potential for him to mess it up was high. He would just have to stay relaxed, not let that nervous snort happen or anything else stupid like his hands flying up in the air, which had started to happen lately whenever he got nervous.

  So when he arrived, and she scooted in behind him again with no food cart, he could hardly believe it. He turned sideways and showed her the way.

  She nodded and said, You.

  How goes it? he said.

  He got it out. He used the line from the guy in research, and it worked. He was actually looking at her and he could see she was going to answer him.

  Good. Good. And you?

  Oh you know. What goes comes back.

  What? she laughed.

  This is where he knew to disengage as he couldn’t necessarily handle correcting himself, but he didn’t want to blow it either, so he looked down like he was working the fax machine and everything just sort of flowed. He could hear her talking.

  I’m gonna get a coffee after I buy some smokes, she said. Want to join me?

  He didn’t like coffee but he was happy to order them both a cup from the thatched-roof Koffee Kiosk in the middle of the mall. On the counter there was a basket of cookies and Nanaimo bars, but when he turned to ask if she wanted one she was inhaling so deeply on a cigarette he decided not to interrupt her. She didn’t look like much of an eater anyway.

  They sat on the benches by the simulated indoor park with its Astroturf, potted plants, and giant playjungle. He had bought vanilla-flavoured which turned out to be a mistake as she took her coffee black and strong, but he sort of liked it and she drank hers anyway while she finished her Winston. Normally smoke bothered him, but her cigarettes were American and smelled exotic, and he was glad when she decided to have another. While she finished her third, she said she’d like to stay and chat, but she had to get back on shift at the dry cleaners.

  See you next week maybe, she said.

  Hope so.

  Back home, his mother threw a small fit when she smelled cigarette smoke on him. But she calmed down after he explained he hadn’t been smoking, he’d been sitting beside a woman at the mall who smoked.

  The second time he came home smelling of cigarettes, Alice asked, Were you sitting beside that girl again? When he said yes, she smiled and asked, Did you get her name? He mistook the smile as encouragement.

  Her name is Kitty, he said. She works in the dry cleaners at Arbutus Centre.

  It worries him now how much he has told her, but it was fun at the time to share the news with someone and a sheer pleasure just to say Kitty’s name out loud.

  By the time the M*A*S*H theme song “Suicide is Painless” is playing, Henry is in a state of deep regret that he told his mother anything. He’s not sure what she might do with the information. His anxiety spikes when he notices that instead of knitting pompom slippers, she’s knitting what looks like a female voodoo doll. He wonders if there is going to be a burning Kitty effigy in the middle of the night. She is busy stuffing the small knit figure with cotton batting when he asks, What is that?

  It’s dead, she says.

  Who’s dead?

  Alice Parkins. Me, she says.

  She gets up from her chair and retrieves a magazine from the stack in the corner of the room. She sets a Woman’s World in his lap. The cover shows an array of cheerful knit figures with the caption, Make your own Mexican Day of the Dead Fiesta.

  Why are you making these? he asks.

  Why not?

  We’re not Mexican.

  Immediately he knows he should not have said this. She holds her hand to the side of his face. Her fingernails press into his cheek. The message she is giving him is that nails as weapons can return at any moment. This makes him want to ask again about the mental health of his father and his grandparents, but the timing is definitely not right.

  Later, when he tries to sleep, the knitted dead figure and the fingernails keep him awake. He imagines nails pressing through the flesh on his cheek. Every time a nail penetrates, psychedelic colours flash in front of his eyes. His heart races as he tries to figure out whether these flashes are hallucinations marking the beginning of his own mental illness. He turns so many times in the bed the sheets are a twisted mess and eventually he can’t lie there any longer, so he snaps on the light and searches in his desk drawer for the green pamphlet. The words You and Mental Illness burn through his fingers as he reads that an hallucination is a sense of perception for which there is no external reality. His mother’s threats with the fingernails are real and the colours have disappeared with the light on. This calms him enough that he can continue reading, believing for the time being anyway that he does not have a mental illness, though he concludes he does have a problem. He reads with renewed interest the line about involving family in the solution.

  After about an hour, when he hears his mother’s deep drug-induced snoring, he creeps into her room. One by one, slowly and carefully, he opens her dresser drawers until he finds the little book in which she keeps handwritten addresses and phone numbers. Under the hall light, he flips through the pages. He’s surprised to come across an old calling card from a talent agent named Bob Toronto, but he keeps thumbing until he finds his aunt in England. He met her once but remembers little about her except that she’s his mother’s older sister and his only relative.

  Next day at work, he searches through the pen and elastic collection in his desk looking for enough quarters to make the long distance call from the payphone outside the lunchroom.

  Hello, it’s Henry from Canada. Is Esther there?r />
  Who?

  Esther.

  This is Esther. Who’s calling?

  Henry. Alice’s son.

  The line is silent for so long, he thinks it’s broken.

  Hello, are you there? he asks.

  What do you want?

  My mother, she’s not well. Is there . . . Well, is there any history of illness in the family?

  We’re all dead or dying. Who isn’t?

  I mean any history of . . . I don’t know —

  Henry feels ridiculous. This is his aunt he is speaking to, and he can’t even say the words he needs to say. Can’t spit out mental illness, craziness, nuttiness, or any variation. Surely she knows what he’s getting at. But if she knows then it must be true, and he doesn’t want to hear that either; he so much doesn’t want to hear it, he holds his breath for fear of it. He nearly drops the handset into the wastebasket when she starts speaking again.

  What do you think? his aunt says. She’s nuts just like my mother. Your grandmother was nuts, you know. But your mother’s the one who got the house and all the money, and I got nothing. So she can’t be that nuts. She even took my husband. I got absolutely nothing. Be grateful.

  Click.

  The line is dead. He knows she’s hung up, but he tries to reconnect by jiggling the coin mechanism. He didn’t even get to ask about his father and now he has to wonder if his aunt’s husband might be his father. Who is or was his aunt married to? He uses the remaining quarters to call again. He listens to the strange double burr of an English line, but no one picks up. After three tries, the phone does not return the quarters and he has to give up.

  He walks back through the lab to his cubicle to find a stack of reports for faxing. In a strange way he’s relieved by the amount of work piled on his desk. He likes work.

  He’s good at it, it’s his oasis. He picks up the first report and reads 47 hens kept caged on slatted floor, all hens have extremely long nails that are used as weapons.

  Jeez, he mutters.

  Henry’s in a good mood on the Saturday morning as he readies to go to the Arbutus Mall. Things seem back to normal with his mother after the incident earlier in the week, and he’s since learned they weren’t even as out of whack as he’d thought. It turns out she’d been told that day her work program was going to end, so it wasn’t entirely crazy to be asking him to help her find work.