by John O'Neill
Leonard moved to embrace her but instead, switched on the bedside lamp. When his mother did look at him, her eyes were blank, emotionless. She licked her lips. Her mouth, distinct in the light, was cracked and dry.
“Mom, are you thirsty?”
Her expression didn’t change. Leonard filled a plastic glass with water, and put it in his mother’s hands, helping her to close her fingers around it. But she didn’t raise it, just shifted her gaze from the glass to Leonard. Her eyes and mouth went sad, the dry stiffness of her lips broke and they quivered. Leonard brought the glass to her mouth and she drank, her arms rising in the effort, her whole body pushing upwards. When the glass was empty, she looked at Leonard. He filled the glass again, she drank again, then a third time, a fourth. Her breath became longer, easier. He went to talk to the nurse at the desk opposite the elevators.
Olive-skinned, high-cheek-boned, soft eyes with sprays of wrinkles around them. “Excuse me,” Leonard said. “My mother’s dehydrated. She’s not getting enough liquid. I just gave her three big glasses.”
The nurse rolled her eyes and slammed the book closed. “Which is your mother, sir? Which room?”
“Mrs. Edison, room 337.”
His voice was defensive. He couldn’t believe the annoyance she wasn’t bothering to conceal. He stepped back as she came out from behind her fortress, began to say: “I’m sorry, but I just noticed that she ...” But the nurse put up her hand to silence him, then sprinted down the hall.
When Leonard arrived, the nurse was lying beside his mother, cradling her head in her arms, saying: “Oh Margaret, my darling, are you all right? We’ll make sure you don’t get thirsty again, you can be sure.”
Leonard stood confused, but there was no irony in the nurse’s voice; she’d switched fully and completely into solicitude, surrender. She closed her eyes and remained there, and Leonard’s mother began to smile. Leonard felt an impulse to leave, to back away so as not to interrupt the tenderness of the scene. After what seemed like 20 minutes, the nurse gently extricated herself. She moved to the foot of the bed, touched his sleeping mother on the foot and made a solemn sign of the cross, came and took Leonard’s arm, led him into the hall. Her eyes were wet.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “We had an accident here couple of hours ago with another patient. Things got balled up. One of our staff on a family emergency. Your mom must’ve got neglected. That’s no excuse. I’m sorry.”
Leonard flinched at the nurse’s booming voice, how the woman didn’t hesitate to trumpet accident, emergency, neglected, despite the presence of other patients, visitors.
“No, no, I’m sorry. I’m sure you have your hands full.”
“It’s an effort sometime. But they’re blessed, every one.”
“She doesn’t know me.”
“Can you say anybody really knows you? Ha, but I know what you mean. Terrible when we disappear to each other. But she’s still there, you can be sure. We’re trying to keep her. She might not know you but she responds to touch. That’s how she knows. She responds to kindness. Everything else falls away.”
Leonard nodded. “Is there a vending machine here?”
“No, but there’s a plaza up the street.”
“Isn’t it dinner time here?”
“We pushed it back a bit. We couldn’t have got the patients down in time. You can have dinner with your mom, if you like. You can take her to the cafeteria.”
“I have to leave. Thanks so much.”
As he waited for the elevator, he felt as though the nurse was watching, her eyes following him with disapproval. Outside, Leonard pulled his jacket over his head against the rain. He’d escaped another transition point, his mother needing close care. Surely it was enough to endure her blankness, non-comprehension, but to have to attend to her raw physical decline was too much. To have to lift her skeleton out of bed. To pour liquids into her, scoop unrecognizable mush into her mouth.
Leonard loitered in the plaza drug store, examined the shelves of shampoos and conditioners, tried to recall the smell of Alison’s hair. Left when one of the employees, a woman with a long ponytail and noisy bracelets began to stock candy from boxes onto the Hallowe’en display (cardboard ghost rising almost to the ceiling) and kept looking at him. After, he stopped and had a maple doughnut and coffee in the plaza’s run-down coffee shop, sitting in a booth. His forearms stuck to the table, shoes to the sticky floor.
He returned to the nursing home and his mother’s room, but she was gone. He heard voices in the bathroom and knocked lightly. A tall, thin, tired-eyed nurse, sponge in hand, opened the door, but blocked his view of his mother, for which he was grateful.
She said, impatiently, but in a drawl and without looking at him, “We’ll be a few minutes. She’ll be gorgeous after this, you can take her to dinner.”
Leonard put out his hand. “Could I, maybe, help out?”
“In a few minutes.”
Leonard thought he saw the nurse roll her eyes.
“I’m her son. I’d like to help. Please, I’m sure she won’t mind.”
“I’m working. In a few minutes ...”
“I want to help. Let me do it. I’m sure she won’t mind.”
The nurse frowned, opened the door a little, turned and said: “Mrs. Edison, your son’s here. Do you mind if he finishes? If you don’t, it’s okay.”
Leonard didn’t hear his mother reply. The nurse handed him the sponge and let him move past, saying: “Tell me when you’re done, just her neck and back. Be careful she doesn’t slip and don’t let her stand. We don’t need an accident.”
“I’ll manage, thanks. Can you come back in a few minutes?”
Leonard sat down on the edge of the tub, reached out and took one of his mother’s hands. She was naked save for a long thin cloth around her neck. She sat on a little rubber stool, hunched forward, the water just above her ankles. Her expression didn’t change when she looked at him, though she did let go of the metal grip on the wall to put both her hands on top of his. He gently guided her right hand back.
“Hold on, just for a minute, Mom.”
He leaned behind her, dipped the sponge in the warm water, squeezed it over her back. He moved his eyes sparingly. As he continued to rinse her, concentrating on that repetition, leaning over, filling the sponge, emptying it again as he ran it from her shoulders to her bum, she squeezed his hand tighter but kept her head down.
“This is better, isn’t it,” he said, but wasn’t sure why. Better than what? He examined her back, saw that her flesh had collapsed in places, saw fissures and grooves. He wondered if this was from her long hours in bed. Or maybe she was vanishing a bit at a time, her body echoing her mind. But she didn’t complain, or show any discomfort when the soapy water flooded into, and spilled out of, each of the holes.
He thought of opening the door, shutting off the fluorescent light. He hated how bright it was, how oppressive, how all imperfections, material and physical, were obvious; the worn counter and dull sink, the floor’s cracked tiles and discoloured walls, little vines of yellow running through the off-white. He imagined they were being filmed, that the director’s intention was to show, in an uncompromising way, the ravages of age. He realized why his mother was hunched forward; she was protecting her face from the glare.
He thought: It’s Hallowe’en. I’ll go buy a black light.
He wondered what highlights of the room would appear then, and pictured his mother’s bones glowing, rising through her skin.
A liberation of sorts, he thought. Let her bones walk away before her body can fail.
Leonard looked at the water: drifting there, on the pale surface, dead and darkened pieces of skin. He decided he’d had enough. But, on the final rinse, he felt a twinge of happiness. As if prompted by this, though he’d given no outward sign, his mother straightened, leaned toward him and put her head against his chest, simultaneously letting go of the support bar. She spoke for the first time this day.
“Oh
James,” she said. Cupped one of her hands between his legs. Leonard put his hand on hers, shifted it away. He immediately felt bad, as if he should have allowed her this brief moment of romance, of intimacy, no matter how mistaken it was. But he allowed his mother to continue resting her head on his chest, her wet hair soaking through his shirt. Then he stood up, keeping one hand as near to her as he could while he opened the door, shouted for the nurse.
After the nurse left, and after his mother was dried and dressed and parked in a wheelchair, Leonard guided her into the hall. They were joined by a convoy of wheelchairs. The nurses and various relatives pushing the infirm were all smiling, acknowledging one another. When they entered the common room, he steered his mother to the end of the long table, away from the crowd. He locked the wheels of her chair, sat next to her. The woman sitting across from them was the singing bird-face, scooping what looked like turnips into what looked like her mouth. In front of her was a plastic tray and a plastic drinking glass, whose straw sported, like a tumour on its end, a large glob of turnip. Leonard searched the room, saw that the potato-head woman, she whose vitality had provided at least some entertainment, was absent.
The bird-face fixed him with a stare, swallowed what she’d been chewing, held her plastic spoon above her disordered head and said to Leonard, clearly, loudly, but without enmity, as if merely stating a fact: “You’re a fraud.” It was the first time he’d actually heard her speak.
She focused on her food again, scooping and pecking. Leonard smiled. Smiled until his face hurt. He looked toward the cafeteria entrance.
“I wonder when they’ll bring your food?” he said.
His mother looked at him. “Who are you?” she said.
Leonard looked from his mother to the large pumpkin cut-out on the wall opposite them. Decided he should buy a pumpkin this year and engage in a ritual that might connect him to his childhood.
12
SAILOR
When he got home, he found his sister Ruth at the dining room table, furiously hollowing out an enormous pumpkin, dumping the guts onto a newspaper.
“Hi Leonard,” she said. “Do you know where Ellis is? I can’t figure him out. I’ve been waiting all day.”
She put down the spoon, rested her orange fists on the table.
“Is that a mutant pumpkin?” Leonard asked. “We could live inside it.”
“I got it on the way from Kingston at a roadside stall. This was one of the smaller ones.”
“I don’t know. He was here last night.”
“Mom’s not doing well,” Ruth said, crumpling up the newspaper and carrying it into the kitchen.
“I know. I just came from there. Did she recognize you?”
“I think so, she wouldn’t speak. Leonard, she looks so old. Dad’s okay, considering. He didn’t want to see her today.”
Ruth asked Leonard if he wanted to draw a face on the pumpkin. He told her no, he wasn’t in a very Hallowe’en state of mind, would probably draw a sad, pathetic face, not a scary one. She told him how mad she was at Ellis, that she had to drive back to Kingston again that night.
“Why don’t you stay? Can’t Jack survive without you?”
“Are you kidding? He’s married to the computer. I never see him.”
Ruth began tracing an extreme grin on the pumpkin.
“But how are you doing? I can’t believe about you and Cynthia. You want to talk?” She took a steak knife, slid it through the pumpkin’s mouth, though she hadn’t yet drawn the eyes or nose.
“Not really. It’s complicated. It might be temporary. You know how it is.”
“You don’t know how many times I was this close to leaving Jack.”
Ruth waved the knife across her heart.
“Why didn’t you?”
She plunged the knife into the pumpkin mouth.
“Guess I never had the nerve. If somebody loves you, that’s a lot. I don’t know. I like routine. And Jack is so, I don’t know, innocent. I married him. He tried to be better after Ellis grew up.”
“Better? Better than what?”
“Had no idea about being a father. His father died when he was young. Raising kids can be so, I don’t know. Unfulfilling.”
Leonard smiled, nodded, tried to act as though he understood. That it was common to hear a woman say her motherhood was unhappy. But his falsely knowing smile turned genuine, because he felt consoled. It was nice that she was unhappy. Ruth returned to the pumpkin.
She finished carving the mouth, the eyes, improvising the shapes and pushing the chunks out, saying: “Do you have a candle? Let’s give it a test run.”
Leonard searched through the kitchen drawers, unearthing all kinds of odd items: utensils of obscure function, cellophane packaged toys from various fast-food outlets, a pinecone, some unopened electric and phone bills. A creased photograph of Ellis and Ruth and Jack standing on a windswept rock at Peggy’s Cove, from when Ellis was around four years old. Standing between his parents, smiling and saucer-eyed, in a little sailor outfit. Leonard decided not to show the picture to Ruth. Began to rummage around on the shelf under the sink.
Eventually found, among cleaning supplies, a votive candle. Ruth placed the lit candle inside and carried the pumpkin to the mantle above the fireplace. Drew the curtains, killed the lights. They stood and watched the pumpkin flicker, a huge, smiling, toothy mouth with two slits above. Leonard liked the candle smell, liked the look of the living room in shadow. They could be anywhere, now; in a cabin by the sea, or somewhere downtown; candles made every space equal.
Ruth walked up to the pumpkin face, put her face close to it, said: “Do you know where my son is?” Then: “I better go. Be back in a few days. I’ll let you know. Tell Ellis to phone me. I left a note on his bed.”
“You didn’t carve a nose,” Leonard said.
After his sister left, Leonard went into Ellis’ room to see if he could find a clue to his nephew’s whereabouts. There were changes from the previous night; the empty deodorant containers he’d tossed on the futon were standing in a row on the floor, and the dirty sheets and quilt were back, partly tucked in. And the large note that Ruth had placed on the bed: Ellis, phone me, worried, I love you. It was written in blue crayon, with a little stick monkey drawn above the last word. Leonard thought about the photograph he’d found.
Ruth’s note jumped, slid off the quilt. Leonard started, stepped back.
“Hey, what’s happening?” Ellis mumbled, his head, like the business end of a toilet brush, appearing from beneath the quilt.
“Jesus Christ, Ellis. Your mom just left. She said you weren’t home. Didn’t you hear her? She was here all day.”
“Thought it was you. I haven’t been sleeping.”
“What happened to your bed?”
Ellis had pushed back the covers, and was sitting on the futon’s edge. There was a pronounced indentation in its centre, in the shape of a body in foetal position. It looked like a question mark. Leonard then noticed, on the other side of it, a tangled wad of cloth and stuffing, like a giant hairball. Ellis had chopped out a portion of his futon, so he’d fit like a puzzle piece.
“I couldn’t get comfortable. It’s old anyway. It stinks. Gonna get a new one.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“You like the lawn lights?”
13
JOY
During his prep period, Leonard went to see Mavis. Though she was in class, he knew she could spare a couple of minutes, the students under her guidance always occupied, Mavis acting as side coach, offering suggestions and encouragement, soft versions of the truth. Leonard wanted her to see his despondency, that he was beaten, profoundly hurt from his last contact with Alison, with her father, and over the state of his mother. He was haunted, suffering. And, to deepen the sense of pity she’d feel for him, he’d inquire about her suffering, the illness of her daughter. But try as he might, Leonard couldn’t remember the girl’s name.
It was the Monday before Hallowe’en and th
e students were free to wear costumes, provided they each contributed to the upcoming Christmas drive. The majority took the opportunity to dress down, arriving at school in jeans and low-flying pants and bandannas and t-shirts, advertising their affiliations, what they believed were symbols of their individuality (Leonard had to send a boy to the office for his t-shirt, which sported two pictures; one of the recently re-elected U.S. president, with the words “Bad Bush” and, next to this, a close-up of a woman’s panty-ed crotch with the words “Good Bush.”) In Mavis’ art room, the students were in varying degrees of undress (the room was exceedingly hot, the ancient basement boilers malfunctioning again), and Mavis was leaning over a table at the back, a stick of charcoal in her hand, sketching something on brown paper for the benefit of the four boys who sat there, all of them grinning. Each wore, despite the heat, a toque pulled down to the brow, pushing their eyebrows into sullenness. The combination of sullen eyes and grinning mouths gave them an air of dumb menace, of moronic derangement. Even from the front of the room, Leonard could see why they were smiling. As Mavis leaned over to work the charcoal into the paper, her cleavage was visible, the cross she wore glinting between her breasts. He was about to go to the back to interrupt, but a stir at another table drew his attention.
A wispy girl, thin as a paper-clip, stood up from her table and said, loudly, Mrs. Grace, then stared straight across from her, where another girl, with crow-black hair, black eye-shadow, black nail-polish, palms down on the table, jaw opening and closing, was hyperventilating. The class went silent, and Leonard felt himself go faint at the sound of her short, gasping breaths.
Mavis was instantly beside the girl, had put her arms around her shoulders, said to the wispy girl: “Joyce, call 911” – and then shouted to the rest of the class: “Everyone into the hall.”
In a remarkably smooth transition, the students stood and filed out, none casting even a backward glance. Leonard hovered near the inside of the door. Mavis was now sitting next to the girl, holding her hand and rubbing her back.
