by John O'Neill
She turned to Leonard, without taking her eyes from the girl’s pale face and bulging eyes, and said: “Mr. Edison, could you shut the door, watch my students for a bit?” Leonard went out, waved the scattered groups to the hall’s far end. As they shuffled along, Leonard saw none of them were disturbed or even curious. He soon gleaned that the crow girl was suffering from one of her regular anxiety attacks; one of the boys told him this was the third time since semester began that Joy had had, as he called it, a fit. Leonard heard another say: “Why doesn’t she get a shrink?” Someone answered: “Maybe she could use yours.”
Leonard asked the students to lean up against the lockers for when the paramedics would arrive, and, again, the students co-operated, though none of them pressed too closely to the metal walls, some of the lockers kicked in, or coated in greasy film, or randomly decorated: wads of gum and smudged cafeteria food and old birthday wrapping and torn pages from returned writing assignments that were bleeding red and black ink in equal proportion.
After a few minutes, the paper-clip girl reappeared, but with the school VP Mr. Toomey. Toomey stopped and told Leonard he could dismiss Mavis’ class. Then he and the girl went into Mavis’ room.
Leonard followed them and watched from the door. The paper-clip girl was sitting beside the crow girl, holding her hand, talking very close, while Mavis and the VP stood behind the desk, their backs to the classroom, speaking quietly, urgently.
“We can’t call an ambulance every time,” Toomey was saying.
“I don’t care, remember when she passed out ...”
“I know, but, Mavis, she has a history ...”
“She still deserves our care. We have to take responsi-bility. I know what I have to do. And we shouldn’t be discussing it here.”
Leonard, afraid that they might move into the hall, walked away. Went into the staff bathroom, feeling hot, annoyed, and rinsed his face with cold water. Found there were no paper towels, cursed, went and unrolled a mound of toilet paper, dabbed it around his face. Headed back to Mavis’ classroom, passing Mr. Toomey, whose face was tight. Found Mavis once again holding the crow girl’s hand, the paper-clip girl gone. Mavis spoke very softly; he could only make out the words painful and yourself.
Leonard approached their table and asked, in the most solemn tone he could manage: “Mrs. Grace, can I do anything?”
Mavis broke from her focus on the girl, looked up. Her face was steely. The girl’s cheeks were streaked with black mascara. Her face was a prison cell.
Not quite looking at him, Mavis answered sharply: “You could leave us alone.”
Leonard had been implicated, somehow, in Toomey’s insensitivity. Perhaps, Mavis had recognized his disingen-uousness: Can I do anything? He felt his old desire for her stir. He left the room as the bell sounded. Instantly, the hall was packed with bodies and Leonard tried to move quickly to an exit. But the students were everywhere, and most walked slowly. Or they fell into fevered conversations with their friends, blocking his path.
Leonard squeezed through, walloped by backpacks and shoulders and basketballs and elbows, yelling: “If you move any slower you’ll be going backwards, we need to give walking lessons in this school.”
Ignored, Leonard finally made it outside. He watched a group of boys go through a game of between-classes football, the ball repeatedly curving up into the air, falling, curving up into the air. For a moment, he was soothed. He decided he’d talk to Mavis later that day, when she’d calmed. He’d begin with an apology for interrupting, and would thereby elicit an apology from her: “I’m so sorry, Leonard, I was so rude to you, I was tense, Toomey’s an asshole.”
At the end of the school day, an interminable 90 minutes later, Leonard returned to Mavis’ classroom, but she was gone. The Hungarian supply teacher was there, vigorously scrubbing paint off one of the tables. Her huge, garish bracelets were rattling and her bun of hair, pierced through with a stick, jumping up and down, resembled a stabbed, suffering bear.
When he asked: “What happened to the regular teacher?”, the woman straightened up, walked up to him and said in a hushed tone: “Tink she went home, some ‘mergency.” Then she reached out and said: “Forgive me,” picking something off Leonard’s face. “You have toilet on your skin.”
She flicked the little bit of tissue away, went back to scouring the tables.
“Downtown,” Leonard said to himself.
His desire needed broader strokes, larger gestures. He was reminded of some of the paintings in Mavis’ room, their smallness, tentativeness, and how she’d been telling her students: “You need to let your personality flow, you need to paint bigger, make statements, don’t be subtle, you’re young, you need to go the distance, explore.”
At the very least, Leonard had to push things, could only accept Alison’s rejection if that rejection was full and complete, shouted in his face. Things were still not clear to Alison, how he felt. And Leonard knew, as he stared into the congestion on the Don Valley Parkway, that Alison’s father had much to do with their estrangement. He sounded his horn at the crawling lines of cars. The sky angered him, the half-light of dusk set against the taillights. Even the approach of Hallowe’en supported Leonard’s resolution to force a sort of showdown with Alison. It had been a favourite ritual of his childhood (his mother would lead him and Ruthie through mysterious suburban neighbourhoods, it was perfect, a pillowcase of candy in one hand, his mother’s hand in the other) but he decided that the falling temperatures and the late October donning of costumes and masks forced the acceptance of a more severe, bracing reality.
“Jesus, she’s not here.”
“Look, Beverly, I don’t know you, but I think there are big things at stake, but not about me. This isn’t about me. It’s about Alison and her father. That’s what I need to talk to her about. I think you should really be concerned. I think her dad is really hurting her.”
“That’s up to her. None of your business. Really, I’m sorry, but you gotta relax, you’re not the first guy in the world to be rejected ...”
Leonard saw an opening, put on his best wounded dog face, nodded yes to her statement, noticed that she’d turned her slippered feet in toward each other.
“I know, you’re right, you’re right,” he said, softly. “It’s just painful. Hard to let go. You’re right. But I’d just like to hear Alison say it. ”
“Not a good idea. Leonard, go home. Really, she’s not here, she’s out.”
Another opening: she’d used his name.
“I know this is hard to understand, but, I can’t leave till I talk to her.”
“You’ll wait all night. Look, I can’t tell you where she is, ‘cause I don’t know. She’s involved in a Hallowe’en event, projecting. I don’t know where. Honestly. Do yourself a favour. Go home. Go home.” And she gently closed the door. Gently turned the lock.
14
THE STRONG ONE
When Leonard got home, Ruth’s car was in the driveway. He was surprised she’d returned so quickly; she’d driven back to Kingston the day before last. Ellis’ non-response to her phone calls had probably rewarded her with sleepless nights, bad dreams, forebodings. Leonard realized he should have phoned her to say that Ellis was alive and well, though married to a sinkhole, practicing a new style of invisibility.
Ruth was vacuuming when he entered, pulling the thin blue machine across the shag carpet. She saw Leonard, turned it off and walked toward him. Something had happened. Her mouth, he couldn’t say how, looked different.
“Leonard, Mom died today. I just came from there. Dad’s with her. They said they’d wait to pick her up in case you wanted to see her. I phoned you at school. Ellis isn’t home.”
They sat together on the couch. Leonard stared ahead. Ruth continued. “She died in her sleep. This morning. They called me in Kingston. Told me on the phone it was serious, but wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I should’ve called you right away. When I got there, Dad was there. We waited for you. I came back.
I wasn’t sure if. My son, I’m going to kill him. We have to go now if you want to see her.”
“Just a minute.”
Leonard went into Ellis’ room. Yanked back the quilt and sheets. The nest was empty. Joined his sister again, who was writing another note.
“Ruth, I’ll drive,” Leonard said.
The olive-skinned nurse came from behind her desk when they stepped off the elevator. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Leonard and put her arms around him.
A full minute passed before she let go. “She went peacefully, I’m sure your sister told you. I went to see her, and she, poor darlin’, was gone.”
Inside the room, their father sat beside the bed, their mother looking as if she slept. Leonard walked to the foot of the bed. His father was staring toward the window, looking like he was trying to remember something. When Leonard moved between him and the window, James didn’t acknowledge his son’s presence, even when Leonard said: “Dad, sorry.” Ruth put her arms around her father’s shoulders and he turned in his seat to receive her. They both began to cry. Leonard had the sense that Ruth and her father had bonded in their mourning, had already struck a sort of private father/daughter grief pact, in the short time they’d sat by the body, in the time he’d been downtown, chasing his lust, chewing his own tail. He would now, and forever, be outside this experience.
Leonard fought back, began to examine his mother’s face. He was reminded of a dry candle he’d seen in a church in Venice, her wrinkles like the hardened ridges of wax. He listened to his father sobbing, his sister snuffling back tears. She was struggling with the notion she should be the strong one. His father was accepting this arrangement. Leonard looked up to see the nurse in the doorway and could see that her cheeks were wet with tears, too. Leonard turned away. A little grin arrived on his face, as if it’d been placed there, like the mouth on Mr. Potato Head. He thought to himself: The only people in the room who aren’t upset are me and Mom.
He smiled more broadly now, imagining this was a joke he was sharing with her. At that moment, his sister Ruth opened one of her arms to include Leonard in the little grief circle, saw her brother’s dry smiling face and quickly shut off the entrance, committing both her arms to their father again.
Leonard suggested that he should go home, try to locate Ellis. He left Ruth with their father. He thought about going to his former residence, to tell Cynthia that his mother had died, but felt he should move forward, take a step into the future. After all, a new strategy had presented itself in his mission to force a response from Alison.
15
A GOOD MAN
He found himself at his marital home. Numb, he’d let his hands go free, and they’d steered the car onto his former street. Cynthia’s car was gone.
He let himself in, called his wife’s name. But the feel of the place, how it had been further invaded by plant life, a new spray of purple gladioli just inside the door, dulled the tenor of his voice. He stood for a moment in the green riot, in the strange web, then retreated to where he hoped he’d find familiarity. The bedroom. Stood for a moment in the hall, aware something was different, some new absence; realized that Cynthia had removed even her precious bird portrait, the family of warblers she’d photographed near Rattlesnake Point eight years before.
The bedroom, though, looked the same. The bed was unmade, a swirl of blankets and sheets. There were shoes scattered across the floor, in a rough line toward the closet. On the dresser by the window was the usual mess: Cynthia’s necklaces, earrings and rings (her wedding ring not among them), her powders, perfumes, oils, sprays. And new, a portrait in a tiny frame; her mother Candace, her smile, as always, tentative.
Most conspicuously, a large notepad propped up at the back. On the top sheet one sentence, written neatly in ink in Cynthia’s hand, but broken up and covering the whole page: she used to / be glad / used to / be mad / but her husband / went gone. It seemed to be the first stanza of a poem his wife was writing, the beginning of Cynthia stepping outside herself. Or, perhaps the words were just a reminder, in cool third-person, in case she should lapse into wifely habit. They were a protective measure, a buffer to raw contact, like the jewellery, the lotions, the rings, all the things that dressed up, that altered, reality.
Leonard opened the closet door and stood before his wife’s clothes. Realized that even when he’d lived here there’d been few signs of his presence, his clothes mostly shoved to the closet’s sides, and his t-shirts, socks, underwear, restricted to the dresser’s bottom drawer. This was probably true of most men, that the women in their lives needed to employ a larger arsenal of things in order to keep the world at bay. And, ironically, that the world they tried to hold at some distance, that threatened to injure, now included Leonard.
A weakness went through him, a shiver that started with his feet. He stumbled forward, put his arms around his wife’s clothing, hugged her garments together. He smelled her, squeezed tighter, thought of a dream he’d once had, a dream that had made him push up against her as she slept, but that he’d forgotten by morning, and that he’d forgotten until now: he was a single passenger in a small boat, on a slate-grey but foamy sea, nearing a crowded shoreline. He knew he had died, was about to be let off among legions of the dead. All of them inclined toward him, as if each was anticipating the arrival of someone familiar, valued. Once he’d stepped off the boat, the crowd fell back in disappointment, then lurched forward again, awaiting another new arrival. Leonard, absorbed, anonymous, began to move through the throng, knowing, somehow, his wife was among them. But he couldn’t find her. Now, embracing her clothes, he felt the same desperation as in his dream, the same acrid sadness. That he was condemned to an eternity among strangers, who knew nothing of his history. The garments he embraced were the clothes those strangers wore. Leonard let go, collapsed onto the bed.
He could smell Cynthia there, too, but there was a metallic tinge to it and he coughed, as if he’d inhaled particles, shavings of magnetic filament. He lay with his shoes on the bed, his head between the pillows. Cynthia hadn’t given up his pillow, although the pillowcase and the sheets were new. He let his arm dangle over the side, scooped up one of her shoes, a simple black one with a single strap. He tucked it under his face, cupped his hands around it, pulled his legs up. Fell asleep. Was awakened by the phone. He didn’t think of answering it, but replaced Cynthia’s shoe, went into the kitchen, listened to the message. It was Candace, Cynthia’s mother. Her voice was unsteady: “Cynthia, I’m sorry for what I said. I’m just upset for you, I want you to be happy. I know Leonard’s a good man. I’m sorry. Why don’t you bring some things here, get out of there, just for a while? I’m sorry, dear, I’m just upset for you. I am. But he did leave. Please call when you get this. I love you.”
He thought of waiting for his wife to return, but seeing her, the emotion this might engender, might force a decision, make him reconsider. And he felt like a bird flying low to the ground, content in his acceleration, in the blur of things above and below; but, more, it was as if the world was spinning, spinning crazily, and he had to stay in place. Meeting his wife would push him this way or that, and he was the only steady thing around.
16
PREVIOUS COYOTE
Leonard drove to a local record store on Eglinton, found a copy of NOW, Toronto’s alternative paper. At home, he began to study the ads for Hallowe’en events, hoping to discover some clue as to where Alison might be working. Found an elaborate Hallowe’en advertisement down one whole side of a page. It listed various attractions, the black-on-orange words penetrated by elongated pumpkins, crescent moons, skulls, and the twining fingers of two zombie-like cartoon women in tight, ragged dresses, each with pouty lips and vampire teeth:
Circus of the Grotesque, 4th Annual Hallowe’en Extravaganza
Featuring:
The Human Freak Show
Weird and Wild Wrestling Vampire Girls
The Go-Go Ghouls
The Conjurer Corpse
The
Sounds of GraveGroove and Master Neckburn
The Toronto Chainsaw Massacre
All Nite Terror Tunes
Plus:
Big Screen Horror Flix
and
Midnight Costume Parade and Prizes
all at
The Church at Berkeley
315 Queen
Between Sherbourne and Parliament
There was a number at the bottom of the ad, which Leonard phoned. But the sleepy voice that answered had not much info, man, though he did say that as a backdrop to the dancing that night, there would be images from horror films and such. But he didn’t know, sorry guy, specifically who was involved in the event. When Leonard was about to hang up, someone else’s voice, strong and forthright, came on the line.
“Yes, hello, you ordering tickets, you need to talk to ...”
Leonard interrupted: “Yes, well, no, I’m writing an article on various Hallowe’en events for NOW magazine, I’ll be coming to yours, but I need to know the names of some of the people involved.”
“The whole thing’s sponsored by Nevermore magazine, the co-editor is in charge.”
“I have most of the names already,” Leonard said, “but I understand someone is projecting films. I’d like to get the name right.”
“You need to talk to Wayne. Hold on a sec.”
Leonard could hear voices in the background, then the sound of chewing, grinding. He imagined some feral creature had taken the phone in its mouth, was drinking electricity from it. He considered hanging up but the voice came back on.
“I’ve a list here, it’s small. For technical there’s Wayne Hauser, Mark Willoughby-Booth, Tina Black, Alison Corvu ...”
“Thank you, I don’t want to take your time.”
“It’s not really ...”
“Thanks again, really, thanks.” Leonard hung up.
His nephew Ellis was in the kitchen. He held a cereal bowl in each hand, one of them empty, the other filled with Alpha-Bits. “How’re you doin’?” his nephew asked. He was wearing oversized pyjamas with a pattern of trucks and tractors.
