Fatal Light Awareness

by John O'Neill

  Perhaps Mavis’ happiness was achieved through faith: every day she wore around her neck an unusual silver cross, a tiny writhing Jesus on a writhing tree, El Greco-like. And she always engaged with gusto in the recitations and responses at the school masses they were required to attend. But beyond this, she never talked religion, never referred to it when lending Leonard advice. Whatever affiliation she had with the church, aside from the job itself, was easy to ignore.

  Mavis had become something of a legend within the school, but a legend whose distinction was not trumpeted, but whispered in quiet moments among her colleagues. One story told how she’d once broken up a fistfight between two boys in her class. Amidst splattering paint and flailing arms, Mavis had wedged herself between the combatants, who continued to pound at each other around her. According to all reports, what finally stopped them was Mavis’ voice – she let out a deep wail that seemed to signal that she’d suffered a mortal blow. The sound was so rich and prolonged that the boys just fell away and stared at their teacher, whose face was streaked with tears, partly from righteous indignation that her classroom, her sanctuary for the contemplation of Art, had become a battleground, partly from how she experienced the pain of others in a profound way.

  This was the first part of the story. But the second was perhaps more indicative of Mavis’ personality. After the vice-principal had collected the boys and awarded them the standard three-day suspensions, Mavis had objected to the penalties. She argued that the sentence had become too predictable, as routine as the trip to the office, as the lecture given by the diminutive but robust VP Mr. Toomey. (In fact, some believed that students who desired a three-day sabbatical sometimes staged fights in order to give themselves more time to meet assignment deadlines).

  Eventually Mavis prevailed, managing to convince Toomey to circumvent board regulations. Instead of the suspensions, Mavis required that the boys receive extra art tutoring every day at three o’clock for two weeks (the equivalent class time that would have been missed), during which she had them sketch and paint, while also listening to her hold forth about art’s redemptive qualities. What was most unusual was how Mavis began to tell the boys stories of her own troubles, about the infirmity of her mother, about how she’d lost a little sister in a bizarre boating accident when she was their age. In a quiet classroom where the Christmas tree the class had built out of chicken-wire and tin-foil glittered in the corner, and snow accumulated on the second floor window ledge, crowding the bruised sky, these confidences made the boys feel, as they sat side by side at a long table that was set for possibility – pie-tin palettes, sticks of charcoal, rainbow pastels, cans filled with water and brushes, blank sketch sheets – that they’d shared an intimacy, a secret that somehow ennobled, and united, them.

  Upon hearing this story, the more cynical among the staff believed that the boys would have fallen to blows again outside in the snow had they not been worn down by Mavis’ relentless sincerity. But most admired, at least, the shape of her intervention. Leonard longed to see her, to tell her about the upheavals in his life. As the summer ended, Mavis, in his mind, began to take on the aspect of a redeemer, a title she would have found absurd, but the idea of which she’d tolerate as part of the vain melodrama of how Leonard saw the world.

  20

  STARWHEEL

  Leonard arrived home from his abbreviated evening with Alison at one a.m. He saw changes in the front lawn. The glowing lawn lights revealed it had been cut severely, and the bushes that lined the walls of their house were trimmed back. Branches sat in tied bunches like bales of hay spread strategically over farmers’ fields. The stacks of sticks, set out at five foot intervals, lent Leonard’s return a sense of occasion, as if the grooming was in anticipation of some ceremony.

  The night, too, had grown humid. Leonard imagined that the intensity of Alison’s passion, though brief, had given the night an injection, pushed up the humidex rating. As he climbed the steps, he saw that the back of his hands were dirty. He was unclean, unkempt, in contrast to the strict landscaping.

  Inside, the changes continued. Leonard entered a green-house. There were long trailers of what looked like grape ivy filling the foyer that competed with the upward spray of a ficus. Three plastic pots filled with violets crowded the dining room table, each in different shades of purple. Hanging before the window was an odd wreath made from vines. It resembled a skeletal arm. In the living room beside the couch was a tree in a large black pot, with pine branches that spread across the cushions. Also, a number of flowering plants on the coffee table, orchids in white, yellow and pink, forming a line parallel to another set in front of the window.

  When Leonard moved deeper, he saw another potted plant, this one extending halfway up the far wall. The collection of family photos, including an elaborately framed portrait of him and Cynthia on their wedding day, appeared to be suspended from its sword-shaped leaves. Beside this, suspended from the ceiling, was a fixture with fluorescent tubes, hung low over a metal cart with three shelves of plants. Each of the dining room chairs supported a cactus. There were smears of dirt here and there on the hardwood floor, and the couch was newly discoloured in places, as if Cynthia had spilled mulch-y water. Green had taken the place over, and Leonard felt intrusive and afraid, as if he was about to be devoured by a giant Venus flytrap, or some other exotic and omnivorous garden thing.

  In the kitchen was a new compost container, an industrial strength model as large as the dishwasher. The kitchen table was obscured by a string-of-beads plant in a wide planter, whose vines were draped over the backs of the two chairs. They also encircled a bottle garden, a fishbowl that contained baby rubber plants and a little ceramic castle. The side door that led to the backyard was open. Moths pressed against the screen door, including a particularly large red and black one that was making a ticking sound.

  Through the window above the sink, Leonard could see his wife in the backyard, hunched over in the garden, the few plants around her liberated from darkness by the headlamp she wore. Insects swirled in its beam. Her arms were moving but he couldn’t tell what she was doing. And he knew she had to go to work in the morning.

  Leonard wanted to check for messages, found the phone on the kitchen table under strands of plant beads. Saw a sheet of paper inscribed with big blocky letters amidst some Rorschach blots of dirt. The note read: LEONARD TWO MESSAGES PLEASE ERASE. He picked up the receiver with the tips of his fingers, punched in the appropriate code. The first was from his sister Ruth, telling him that she’d found a new residence for their mother, a full-service nursing home that was attached to a small apartment complex where their father could live independently, but in close proximity to her. Ruth explained that the move was urgent, mother isn’t eating, and that Leonard needed to be available on the weekend. She’d taken the liberty of hiring movers, but packing needed to be done. There was an edge in her voice, annoyance at the fact that Leonard hadn’t pulled his weight, that she alone had located a nursing home and done all the preliminary work in scrutinizing their parents’ financial circumstances with some sullen input from Dad. He also sensed she was annoyed at the timing of his separation from Cynthia, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, but, that she felt it was selfish of him to jeopardize his marriage when mother was in such obvious distress.

  The second message was another from Alison’s father: Mr. Edison, this is Frank Corvu. Please return my call. Is that your wife on the answering service? Does she know you’re seeing my daughter? 416-531-2223. His tone was calm, deadpan. The flatness of his voice subtly threatening. He knew he was inflicting injury.

  Leonard began to punch the numbers to respond, ready to tell him to stop calling, that he should fuck off and leave them alone, that he had no clue about Leonard’s situation, that he had no right to judge. But in the instant before Frank Corvu’s phone began to ring, Leonard hung up. The moth’s ticking on the screen door had grown into a heartbeat, a spinal throb. Leonard held onto the kitchen table. Then he yanked
one of the strings of beads from the plant on the table, snapped it against the wall.

  He went into the backyard to talk to Cynthia. He felt he should comment on the changes to the house, work his way into the phone message. The strangeness of it all unnerved him, including the sight of Cynthia rooting around in the soil so late at night. To her right was a pile of stones, to her left a shovel stabbed into the ground. Most of the backyard had been turned over, a black hole. When Leonard spoke, Cynthia continued digging. She kept the headlamp beam in front of her.

  “Cynthia, what’s going on? It looks like the Amazon inside.”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Kind of late to be gardening.”

  “Too many rocks here.”

  Cynthia leaned forward again, yanked a head-sized stone from the hole, dropped it on the stack. Stood up, groaned at her stiffness. Turned to face him. The skin between her neck and the top of her sleeveless blouse was smeared with dirt, and there were streaks on her cheeks and forehead. She wore rubber boots, and baggy khaki shorts that blended with the mud on her legs. Her huge gardening gloves made her arms appear thin, and she was clutching a trowel in her right hand. Her hair was tied back, but strands had worked their way free, hanging over her eyes. Her lips appeared swollen, too, bruised and in full bloom. She looked as if she’d been born of the soil, had been generated, like the plants, from the dark tumult of the earth. But he saw a benevolence in her expression; some of the severity had gone, as if washed away by dirt, cleansed by contact with the humid ground. Leonard, awkward at this evidence of forgiveness, felt desire stir – he was tempted to invite his wife back to their bedroom, thinking it possible to reclaim the physical part of the love they shared. In the interval, he looked at the sky. His mouth opened, closed. There, above the hedges, above the garden, above the broken ground, above his wife, was the pattern that he’d recognized in the moles on Alison’s back: the constellation Cassiopeia. Its tilted W-shape of stars was bright and distinctive. Alison’s back was the night sky in negative; in negative the night sky was Alison’s back. It was as if, with Cynthia facing him, generous, weary, soft, Alison was at that moment turning away, articulating refusal, marshalling the dark. Cynthia saw his distraction, misread it.

  “Sounds like your mom’s doing poorly. I’m sorry. When did you see her last?”

  Leonard undermined Cynthia’s kindness by lying.

  “That’s where I’ve been spending my time, mostly. I saw her today. Ruth is right. She is bad.”

  Doubt touched Cynthia’s face. Leonard watched her ignore it.

  “She’ll be better off with close supervision. So will your dad.”

  “Yes.”

  Leonard was enormously grateful that Cynthia didn’t mention the other phone call. This, too, was evidence that she’d turned some corner, that she had decided that gentleness and perhaps resignation were the appropriate responses to the situation. Meanwhile, as this idea occupied him, filling his head while the constellation Alison filled his eyes, Cynthia moved back to the garden. Leonard imagined her vanishing between plants, stepping onto a staircase into the earth.

  Then Cynthia, crouching down over the hole she’d made, said: “Leonard, you’re in for some terrible pain.”

  Unable to think of a reply, and with a last look at the sky, he went back into the house. The big moth had disappeared from the screen, but he could still hear it ticking, somewhere near.

  It flutters before my eyes, zig-zags away and disappears at the top of the carpeted stairs. I follow, wondering if it was me who let it in, up past wide oak doors, carved with leafy shapes, and into a hushed, also carpeted room. People in small groups converse. All of them, men and women, are dressed formally, in black. I catch the glint of a polished shoe, flash of a bracelet. Enclosing us are four oak-panelled walls, and on each, in the same enormous gilded frame, the identical painting: a northern forest, genus European, expansive sweep of dark trees, but with a single element interrupting, just off-centre: a male figure half concealed by a trunk, face lit by a beam of light. Expression: fearful, hunted. I move between the clutches of bodies but can see no faces. As I approach each group, their bodies shift. Their wide shoulders exclude me. But I take pleasure in the impeccable grooming, pants with exact creases and the shapely backs of the women; the rises of their buttocks in black dresses, calves of their legs, pushed up in velvet pumps. I’m hit, then, with a foul smell – like wet dog, pungent and unnoticed by the others, olfactory contrast to the combed, starched formality. I see it. In a corner of the room, neck chained to a colossal bolt on the wall, foam bubbling along the cage of its teeth and its blunt head attached to the floor by long, glistening ropes of drool: a Rottweiler. When I turn to locate its owner, or to discover some clue as to its presence in the room, I see, along the same wall, pressed in on three sides by sprays of flowers, a coffin. Its lid is open, but the face of the deceased is obstructed by four mourners. As I walk around them, I hesitate. The coffin is unusually long, twice the normal size. When I clear the group of mourners, I stop again. In the open coffin, its face almost princely, its black nose and brushed snout elegant against the white satin interior, and with a rosary strung over its modest rack, is a deer. I cross myself, kneel on the padded stand alongside, whisper a quick Hail Mary (thinking there must be some more deer-appropriate prayer) and move off toward the open doors and the stairs. I can feel the dog’s red eyes following me. I suddenly have the sense that someone has freed the animal. I move quickly down the stairs, the dog’s hot breath on my ankles, burst through the funeral home doors, find myself tumbling through space. Below me, above me, everywhere, are stars, but they lend me no purchase, their light useless in my headlong plunge.

  21

  ROT YOUR SOCKS

  Their father seemed pleased with his new, more compact apartment, particularly at how the television had grown in prominence. Mother, though, was bewildered. When she was led into the elevator and up onto the third floor of the facility, she began to make the spitting noise that Leonard and Ruth would always associate with her decline; screwed up her face when she saw the room she’d be sharing with three other women. “Where’s father going to sleep?” she asked, looking at her husband.

  When Ruth explained how they’d be living in separate suites in the same building, their mother shook her head and looked from Leonard to Ruth and back again, and said in a rough voice: “Wouldn’t that rot your socks off?” None of them grinned at the familiar phrase, one that usually elicited good-natured laughter.

  Their mother’s shared room was large, but with the spareness of a typical hospital room. Ruth announced that she’d construct a collage of photographs to hang above their mother’s bed. They’d hoped to introduce their mother to the three women she’d be rooming with, but two were missing and the other was asleep. Her form under the taut sheets was small as a child’s.

  While their father stayed with their mother, reassuring her, Leonard and Ruth went about setting up his new apartment. With the use of a kitchen and private bathroom, James could still be largely self-sufficient, but could have some of his meals with Margaret in the cafeteria. In the nursing wing, his mother would receive more complete care: she’d be regularly fed, bathed, walked, undressed and dressed again. Though their father was stoic throughout, and they knew he was relieved, as co-habitation with mother had become intolerable, they also knew something was lost, irretrievably. Their parents had lived together for more than half a century. One of their prize possessions was a certificate from the premier of Ontario, congratulating them on their 60th wedding anniversary, which their father had had matted and framed. Before Ruth and Leonard left, their father said to them that the move was a necessary step. His children both nodded, thinking they knew what he meant.

  Then he added, before returning to his wife’s room: “It’ll help me get used to being without her.”

  Leonard and Ruth rode the elevator in silence. When the doors opened on the main floor, they were confronted with a convoy of wh
eelchairs, an army of the infirm returning to the upper floors after lunch. Nurses and orderlies began to steer their charges onto the elevator before Ruth and Leonard had time to vacate. Leonard froze, paralyzed by the sad parade of hollow chests and dropped shoulders and sunken eyes. And a rancid smell as if a whole graveyard had yawned open under the banks of fluorescent lights. He noticed, in the wheelchair closest to him, an ancient woman who with her slightly prominent nose, kind green eyes, and small puzzled mouth, had an uncanny resemblance to his wife. Here, clutching her blanket, was Cynthia as she might be in 30 or 40 years. The feeling was one of horror rather than compassion and Leonard hesitated to breathe until they reached the parking lot.

  Still in the unsettled rhythm of transitions, Leonard moved some of his clothes and belongings that night to his new residence, his nephew Ellis’ house. It occurred to him, as he carried a tangled bundle of clothes into one of the spare rooms that he, like his father, was moving into an indeterminate space, that he might lose his wife forever. And though he knew that this change carried the disagreeable whiff of inevitability, he also knew that he was exercising a choice, and the same couldn’t be said of either his parents. This thought did not cheer him.

  22

  THE VALES OF LAKERIDGE

  Ellis’ house was a large split-level near the intersection of Kingston Road and Eglinton, part of a new development in the shadow of numerous high-rise apartment buildings. It was close to Leonard’s marital home but farther east. Ellis had bought the house with his share of a winning 6/49 lottery ticket, a five-hundred-thousand dollar portion of a three-million dollar prize that was split between six winners. With financial help from his mother, Leonard’s nephew had been renting the basement of a bungalow just a couple of blocks away and had seen, in the weeks leading up to his lottery win, the colourful billboard advertising The Vales of Lakeridge, Luxury Lakeside Homes. The houses were not lakefront, however. One would have to negotiate six-lane Kingston Road, then spend at least 20 minutes walking between gated properties, and down through a steep ravine, before reaching the water.