Red Plaid Shirt

by Diane Schoemperlen

  In 1988, students at University College, Dublin, debated the notion that “Every Dog Should Have Its Day” for 503 hours and 45 minutes. This record was broken in April 1992 by students at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, North Carolina, who debated the idea that “There’s No Place Like Home” for 517 hours and 45 minutes. The winners of these debates are not noted.

  My daughter is born 12 days later. I am in labour for 18 hours and 45 minutes, with my best friend as my coach. My daughter weighs 7 pounds, 6 1/2 ounces and is 20 inches long. I should be afraid, but I’m not.

  8. My best friend and I find babysitters so we can go downtown on Friday night. We are giddy with freedom while our beautiful babies sleep. We cruise the shiny streets arm in arm laughing with our heads thrown back. We go inside and stand at the bar. We order Scotch and water which after 3 sips tastes like apple juice to me. We flirt with 2 young men in tight jeans and bandanas. They wear silk vests with nothing underneath. Their pectorals are hairless, shiny, and distinct. We flick our long hair, our slim hips, our little pointy tongues. We tell them we are tourists. When they become obnoxious, we hold hands and tell them we are gay. We do not tell them we are mothers in disguise. We tease them till they sulk. We snort and snicker and order more Scotch. We speculate as to the exact nature of the male ego, this allegedly natural phenomenon which gets so much attention. Where is it located? In the head, the heart, the penis? What colour is it? Blood red, royal blue, deep purple, black? How big is it really, this marvellous chimera which we have spent so much of our lives tending to, massaging, tippy-toeing around?

  The largest living organism on earth was discovered in a forest in Northern Michigan on April 2, 1992. This fungus, a member of the species Armillaria bulbosa, covered at least 37 acres and weighed over 100 tons. Only a month later, this discovery was dwarfed by yet another fungus, the closely related Armillaria ostoyae, reported to be covering 1,500 acres in Washington State. Its weight has yet to be determined.

  We go home to our babies happy and self-satisfied. This is more than can be said for the men, who go home drunk and alone, shaking their heads, bearing their big wounded egos in their heavily muscled outstretched arms.

  9. My daughter crawls with determination. Her little hands and knees thump all over the hardwood floors. All the knees of all her clothes are worn through. She is fast and curious. She gets into everything. She empties the toy box, the bottom dresser drawers, the lower kitchen cupboards and bookshelves. I follow her from room to room cleaning up the mess, fearful for her safety. I remember reading in the newspaper about a little girl who pulled a bookcase down on top of herself and was crushed to death beneath its weight. Childproofing the house, I keep moving things up and up and up until eventually, I imagine, everything I own will be suspended from the ceiling by invisible strings. She never stops moving.

  The longest continuous voluntary crawl on record is 31.5 miles by Peter McKinley and John Murrie, who covered 115 laps of an athletic track at Falkirk, Great Britain, on March 28 to 29, 1992. Over a space of 15 months ending March 9, 1985, Jagdish Chan-der crawled 870 miles from Aligarh to Jamma, India, to appease his revered Hindu Goddess, Mata. What sin or crime he may have committed to so offend her is not specified.

  On the advice of the parenting books, I get down on my hands and knees and crawl along beside my daughter to see the world from her angle, to scout out dangerous objects within her reach. She laughs at me and claps her hands. She thinks I’m playing. Little does she know. I am doing my best to protect her. It will be years yet before she falls in love and flies away.

  10. The crystal bowl of ceramic balls sits on my table now. My mother passed them on to me after my daughter was born. I

  guess she figures that, having proven my ability to handle a baby without damaging it, I’m old enough now to juggle these balls without breaking them. Next thing you know I’ll be baking.

  After my daughter is safely sleeping, I remove the balls one by one from the bowl and admire them carefully. They are as light as the brush of my daughter’s eyelash against my cheek. I imagine I am the woman in Vermeer’s painting, the woman weighing pearls on a balance. She stands before a wooden table in the corner of a room. The light comes through the window and illuminates her right hand, the balance, the pearls, and the white fur on her blue morning jacket. Intent upon her task and the attainment of equilibrium, the woman’s eyes are downcast and her forehead is smooth. She looks to be several months pregnant. On the wall behind her is a large dark painting of The Last Judgement. To weigh is to judge. Recent microscopic examination has revealed that the pans of the balance contain neither pearls nor gold but are empty. The woman nevertheless is suffused with serenity.

  The ceramic balls glow in the moonlight cast through my window. The picture on the wall behind me is not a painting, but an enlarged photograph of my best friend and me and our little girls in the park. The girls are strapped safely into the baby swings. We push them as high as we dare. Breaking free of gravity, they squeal on the upswing and kick their little legs. My best friend and I commandeered a passing stranger to take this picture. His shadow falls just to the left of me. I am looking past him.

  I’ve been hearing rumours lately about a scientist who has measured the weight of the human soul. People talk about it at parties, at work, even at the hairdresser’s. Invariably they laugh.

  Apparently the scientist set up a delicate system of scales and balances beneath the bodies of the dying. Everyone has read the newspaper report but they cannot remember the details and none of them can find it now. Someone at work says the scientist was German. Others say the experiments were performed in Switzerland, Italy, Paris, France. Someone says this scientist has determined that at the moment of death, a person’s body weight decreases by exactly 21 grams. This, he has concluded, is the weight of the human soul which exits the body at death. Where it goes after that has yet to be determined.

  Apparently the contents of a soul do not alter its weight. Good or evil, souls are all the same. It is only the weight of the world upon each soul that varies, not to mention the miracles or atrocities which issue from it.

  I have tried to learn the metric system but cannot get the hang of it. In the back of my Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook there is a section called “Putting Metric In Perspective.” It says that 1 gram is the weight of a paper clip. I put the ceramic balls back in the bowl and hold 21 paper clips in my left hand instead. If I had a balance like the Vermeer woman, what would I put on the other side? A ballpoint pen? A letter from my ex-husband? My daughter’s first rattle, a purple plastic hippopotamus? One of the ceramic balls? The red one, the green one, just for a minute now, the blue one is my favourite, be careful.

  Someone at work says 21 grams is too light. Someone else says it’s too heavy. But to me, the weight of these paper clips as I pass them from hand to hand by the window in the moonlight feels exactly right. As I contemplate them, I imagine my face is expectant but serene. My forehead is smooth.

  Years pass. The future becomes the present which then becomes the past. This transformation is inevitable. All events must first occur in the present tense. Before the fact, they are mirages; after the fact, memories. Through it all, the weight of my soul remains unchanged. A stable still point of reference, it continues, constant, motionless, and invisible. The exact nature of its contents has yet to be revealed.

  The longest a person has continuously remained motionless is 24 hours, by William Fuqua at Glendale, California, on May 17 to 18, 1985 while sitting on a motorcycle. On July 30, 1988, António Gomes dos Santos of Zare, Portugal, stood motionless for 15 hours, 2 minutes, and 55 seconds at the Amoreiras Shopping Centre in Lisbon.

  Forms of Devotion (1994)

  Strangely enough we are all seeking a form of devotion which fits our sense of wonder.

  —J. Marks, Transition

  I. FAITH

  The faithful are everywhere. They climb into their cars each morning and drive undaunted into the
day. They sail off to work, perfectly confident that they will indeed get there: on time, intact. It does not occur to them that they could just as well be broadsided by a Coca-Cola delivery truck running the red light at the corner of Johnson and Main. They do not imagine the bottles exploding, the windshield shattering, their chests collapsing, the blood spurting out of their ears. They just drive. The same route every day, stop and go, back and forth, and yes, they get there: safe and sound. In the same unremarkable manner, they get home again too. Then they start supper without ever once marvelling at the fact that they have survived. It does not occur to them that the can of tuna they are using in the casserole might be tainted and they could all be dead of botulism by midnight.

  They are armed with faith. They trust, if not in God exactly, then in the steadfast notion of everyday life. They do not expect to live forever of course, but they would not be entirely surprised if they did. On a daily basis, death strikes them mostly as a calamity which befalls other people, people who are probably evil, careless, or unlucky: just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  On weekend mornings, the faithful take their children to the park and assume they will not be abducted or fondled behind the climber by a pervert in a trench coat. In the afternoons, they work in their gardens, quite confident that those tiny seeds will eventually produce more tomatoes, zucchini, and green beans than they will know what to do with. They dig in the dirt and believe in the future. They put up preserves, save for retirement, and look forward to being grandparents. After they retire, they plan to buy a motorhome and travel.

  When they go to bed at night, they assume that their white houses will stay standing, their green gardens will keep growing, their pink babies will keep breathing, and the yellow sun will rise in the morning just as it always does. Many of the faithful are women, giving birth being, after all, the ultimate act of pure faith. When their sons and daughters (whose as yet embryonic faith may temporarily fail them) wake sobbing from nightmares and wail, “Mommy, I dreamed you were dead. You won’t die, will you?” these faithful mothers say, in all honesty, “Don’t worry, I won’t.” The faithful sleep soundly.

  If ever they find themselves feeling unhappy or afraid (as sometimes they do because, although faithful, they are also still human), they assume this too shall pass. They expect to be safe. They expect to be saved in the long run. They are devoted to the discharge of their daily lives. It does not occur to them that the meaning of life may be open to question.

  II. MEMORY

  Remember to put out the garbage, pick up the dry cleaning, defrost the pork chops (the ground beef, the chicken thighs, the fillet of sole). Remember to feed the dog (the cat, the hamster, the goldfish, the canary). Remember the first smile, the first step, the first crush, the first kiss. Remember the bright morning, the long hot afternoon, the quiet evening, the soft bed, gentle rain in the night. Also remember the pain, the disappointments, the humiliations, the broken hearts, and an eclectic assortment of other sorrows. Take these tragedies in stride and with dignity. Do not tear your hair out. Forgive and forget and get on with it. The faithful look back fondly.

  They are only passingly familiar with shame, guilt, torment, chaos, existentialism, and metaphysics. The consciences of the faithful are clear. They are not the ones spending millions of dollars on self-help books and exercise videos. They know they’ve done the best they could. If and when the faithful make mistakes, they know how to forgive themselves without requiring years of expensive therapy in the process.

  In the summer, remember the winter: snow sparkling in clear sunlight, children in puffy snowsuits building snowmen and sucking icicles. Remember hockey rinks, rosy cheeks, Christmas carols, wool socks, and hot chocolate with marshmallows. In the winter, remember the summer: tidy green grass beneath big blue sky, long-limbed children playing hide-and-go-seek and running through sprinklers. Remember barbecues, sailboats, flowers, strawberries, and pink lemonade. The faithful can always find something to look forward to. The faithful never confuse the future with the past.

  III. KNOWLEDGE

  The knowledge of the faithful is vast. They know how to change a tire on a deserted highway in the middle of the night without getting dirty or killed. They know how to bake a birthday cake in the shape of a bunny rabbit with gumdrop eyes and a pink peppermint nose. They know how to unplug a clogged drain with baking soda and vinegar.

  They know how to paint the hallway, refinish the hardwood floors, wallpaper the bedroom, insulate the attic, reshingle the roof, and install a new toilet. They know how to build a campfire and pitch a tent single-handedly. They know how to tune up the car, repair the furnace, and seal the storm windows to prevent those nasty and expensive winter drafts.

  They know how to prepare dinner for eight in an hour and a half for less than twenty dollars. They know how to sew, knit, crochet, and cut hair. They know how to keep themselves, their houses, their cars, and their children clean, very clean. They do not resent having to perform the domestic duties of family life. They may even enjoy doing the laundry, washing the walls, cleaning the oven, and grocery shopping.

  They know how to make love to the same person for twenty years without either of them getting bored. They know how to administer CPR and the Heimlich manoeuvre. They know how and when to have fun.

  The faithful know exactly what to say at funerals, weddings, and cocktail parties. They know when to laugh and when to cry and they never get these two expressions of emotion mixed up. The faithful know they are normal and they’re damn proud of it. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

  IV. INNOCENCE

  The faithful are so innocent. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they believe that deep down everybody is just like them, or could be. They believe in benevolence, their own and other people’s. They think that, given half a chance, even hardened criminals and manic-depressives can change. They are willing to give everyone a second chance. For the faithful, shaking off doubt is as easy as shaking a rug.

  The faithful believe in law and order. They still look up to policemen, lawyers, teachers, doctors, and priests. They believe every word these people say. They even believe what the radio weatherman says in the forecast right after the morning news. It does not occur to them that these authority figures could be wrong, corrupt, or just plain stupid. Mind you, even the faithful are beginning to have serious reservations about politicians.

  The faithful take many miraculous things for granted. Things like skin, electricity, trees, water, fidelity, the dogged revolution of the earth around the sun. They believe in beauty as a birthright and surround themselves with it whenever they can. They believe in interior decorating and makeup. They never underestimate the degree of happiness to be engendered by renovating the kitchen, placing fresh-cut flowers on the table, purchasing a set of fine silver, a mink coat, a minivan, or miscellaneous precious jewels. The faithful still believe you get what you pay for.

  The faithful take things at face value. They do not search for hidden meanings or agendas. They are not skeptical, cynical, or suspicious. They are not often ironic. The faithful are the angels among us.

  V. STRENGTH

  The faithless say the faithful are fools. Obviously it must be getting more and more difficult to keep the faith these days. Read the paper. Watch the news. Wonder what the world is coming to. All things considered, it has become harder to believe than to despair.

  The faithless say the faithful are missing the point. But secretly the faithless must admit that if indeed, as they allege, there is no point (no purpose, no reason, no hope), then the faithful aren’t missing a thing.

  The faithless say the faithful are living minor lives, trivial, mundane, frivolous, blind. But secretly the faithless must envy the faithful, wondering if they themselves are simply too fainthearted for faith.

  While the faithless gaze into the abyss, fretting, moaning, and brooding, the faithful are busy getting on with their lives: labouring, rejoicing, carving Hallowe’en pumpkins, roast
ing Christmas and Thanksgiving turkeys, blowing out birthday candles year after year, and kissing each other wetly at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

  No matter what, the faithful know how to persevere. They are masters of the rituals that protect them. To the faithful, despair is a foreign language which they have neither the time nor the inclination to learn. The faithful frequently sing in the shower.

  The faithful understand the value of fortitude. They carry always with them the courage of their convictions. They do not go to extremes but they could perform miracles if they had to. The faithful will not be crushed by the weight of the world. The faithful are sturdy and brave.

  VI. IMAGINATION

  The faithful have their imaginations well in hand. They do not lie awake at night imagining earthquakes, tornadoes, flash floods, or nuclear war. They do not deal in cataclysms. They do not entertain the possibility of being axed to death in their beds by a psychokiller on the loose from the psychiatric hospital on the eastern edge of town. They do not lie there wide-eyed for hours picturing malignant cells galloping through their uteruses, their intestines, their prostate glands, or their brains. To the faithful, a headache is a headache, not a brain tumour. They do not imagine themselves rotting away from the inside out. They do not have detailed sexual fantasies about the mailman, the aerobics instructor, or their children’s Grade Two teacher. The nights of the faithful are peaceful. Even their nightmares have happy endings. The faithful wake up smiling. Their subconsciouses are clear.