Some Great Thing

by Colin McAdam

  “Yes! I know Kwyet! She’s not here today!”

  “Could you tell me where she might be, her address perhaps?!”

  “Are you her father?!”

  “No!”

  “Uncle or something?!”

  “I am a friend from Ottawa!”

  “She lives at RVC! University and Sherbrooke! But you’d have better luck finding her back in Ottawa!”

  “Why?!”

  “She’s gone home for the weekend!”

  “To Ottawa?!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Are you sure?!”

  “Yeah! That’s why she’s not at practice!”

  “I was . . . ! She invited me! I was supposed to meet her here this weekend!”

  “Wait! Are you Simon?!”

  “Yes!”

  “OK! I thought you were her father, you know, or something! OK! I thought you were coming next weekend!”

  “No! No, I am here now, you see!”

  “Kwyet’s expecting you next weekend!”

  “No!”

  “Yes! Next weekend!”

  9

  I NEVER RECOGNIZED KATHLEEN again. Once, maybe twice. I recognized her twice but the second time was after she did something completely nutty.

  She wasn’t talking for a long time because they did something to her throat. And she never looked normal. In that first ward she was always in the same position, always looking like she was about to cry or like she was looking for the place in her mind that let her cry. I was told that she was restless, but I never saw her like that. She just seemed still and strange.

  Then they moved her. She was yellow. They put her in an in-patient ward, watched her, made sure she didn’t break.

  “Had a bad fall, eh, Kath?”

  “Unn?”

  “Had a bad fall, eh?”

  “Unn?”

  She looked thin and then she looked fat. I said to the nurse, I said, “What’re ya feedin her, ha ha. Wow, ha!”

  The doctor told me Kathleen didn’t seem to remember how she arrived in the hospital.

  “Memory’s not important,” I said. “What’s important is you’ve got your health.”

  What?

  I said some shiny stupid things quite regularly those days. I don’t know why. The doctor made me nervous, like he had all the answers, and I always wanted to show him that I had some wisdom of my own. I could take care of her.

  Dear Jerry,

  Where the fuck are you? Why are you gone, writing me a letter, you fuckin little nut?

  That’s a letter I never sent, having no address or sense of where I was.

  THE FIRST TIME I recognized her, she had found that place in her mind and a human Kathleen was sitting up in her bed having a wail of a torn-bodied cry. I held her. She didn’t push me away. But she let me know that she didn’t want me there, like her tears were a language she didn’t want me to speak. I recognized her but she was telling me to forget her.

  Every time I visited her I expected her to be better, to be up telling jokes and frying toast in her room. I thought she was over the worst. Her room was nice—big floor-to-ceiling window looking out over a parking lot—and everything but her was in place to make her better.

  The second time I recognized her I was walking toward her room and I heard a noise, like BOUNGHK!, like a bird hitting a window but fatter. I went into the room and saw her lying in a heap. Good and solid, those big windows. Except for the bump on her head that was definitely Kathleen on the floor. Maybe the window knocked her back into herself for a while. I asked her if she wanted the doctor and she shook her head as in normal conversation.

  She lay on her bed, staring at the window, not saying anything. It was a long time of silence, long enough for me to get over any shock I allowed myself to feel, long enough to think about golf courses.

  “I’ll build us a . . . we’ll have a nice view, Kath. Grass. Beautiful.”

  She stayed quiet.

  “I jon’t,” she said after a long time.

  “Don’t what?” I said.

  “Want a nithe view.” Her tongue was hurting. “I’ve got choo leave you, Jerry.”

  “Well, no. No. The doctor says you’ve had a little drinking problem. You know, lay off the booze for a bit.”

  “It’th you, Jerry. It’th not the boosh. I can’t joo it.”

  “Do what?”

  “I can’t, I can’t shshsh, thththink.”

  “Doctor says you’ve had thirty or forty drinks a day.”

  “Fuck the joctor.”

  “Is it true?”

  “I have choo leave you. Jon’t make it hard. Thith taketh, like, shtrength, Jerry, thoo shay thith from the feckin hothpital bed. Can you?”

  “What?”

  “Leave me alone. Will ya leave me alone?”

  “Jerry’s missing. He’s run away. He sent me a letter.”

  “I thtill won’t come back.”

  “Is that what you think I’m saying?”

  “Eh?”

  “What?”

  “I’m confuthed!”

  “Are you saying that I think that you . . . Did you just try to kill yourself, Kath?”

  “Jid you shay Jerry’th mithing?”

  “And you don’t care? I don’t know what is going on, Kath. What is going on? Why are you here?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “No.”

  “I can’t feckin! I want to jie, Jerry. Let me be. Pleathe, pleathe, pleathe, you ugly ffook. Can ya? What joo I need to joo Jerry What joo I need to joo Jerry What joo I need to joo Jerry What joo I need to joo Jerry?”

  “Fuckin smarten up is what you . . . I don’t know you, drinking a bottle a day.”

  “Ecthactly! Ecthactly, Jerry. And may I shay that living with you hath been one . . . You’re a ffff . . . Jerry, and yith have trapped me with yer fuckin ssshon. I’m in pain.”

  “Nurse!”

  “Not a nursh! Jutht leave me. If I could run. I’ll run out that god feckin winjow!”

  “You’ll settle down. You’ll just settle down.”

  “I will NOT! I’m thick of it! You’ve made me thick!”

  “How?”

  “Ecthactly! Now leave. Leave leave leave leave leave leave! Yiv been sthdanding, yiv bin shittin there all my feckin life, thinkin yer big, thinkin yith can, yith could shtop me, thinkin yer a rock, feckin sholid, like yith can shtop me. Yer not. Yith have never NEVER been man enough. Never big. No one, ya fuckin old man . . . look at ya . . . FUCKIN no one, will shtop me. Again. Wheresh it all gone, eh? Kathleen, eh? Thish Kathleen? Am I?!”

  “What?”

  “You know me? You ever know me? Ya . . . ya crush me on a feckin bed, but ya shtill never got shtrength to know me. Shtrong fuckin man, but yish can never hold me. Let me go. Thatsh how I could have lovejyou.”

  “What?”

  “Fuck off outta here now! Now! I’ll run out the winjow!”

  “Fuckin eh, Kathleen. Run out the window! Try again!”

  “Leave! I want to leave! Jerriald Mac, yer a feckin iron WEIGHT!”

  “Nurse!”

  “Leave!”

  I told the nurse when she came in, I snapped, I shouted, “She’s a nut!”

  “Calm down, sir.”

  “She’s a fuckin nut!”

  “It’s normal.”

  “It’s not normal. Look at her! No, it is normal. She’s always on the floor! You’re right. Look at her . . . yeah! . . . Go ahead and smile, Kathleen. She just tried to kill herself, but it is normal, because . . . look at her! Fuck off Kathleen . . .”

  “Sir . . .”

  “Because she’s blaming me! She’s blaming my son! I don’t even know how she got here. I don’t know where our son is and she doesn’t care!”

  “I care.”

  “She doesn’t care! Listen to her. She changes her tone like that . . . pretends . . . all fuckin sweet. ‘I care,’ like she’s breathing . . . like she’s made of fuckin flowers . . .”

  “Si
r . . .”

  “It’s not new. That’s what I’m telling you. She pretends. She’s a good mother, a good wife, around you, yeah, other people, but she’s a bitch. Ask her what she said, ask her how she got that bump. Ask her!”

  “Perhaps you should leave.”

  “Get him out of the room. Let my shon in, but not him.”

  “Oh, listen to her!”

  “You should rest . . .”

  “Did you fuckin hear her?”

  “Please leave, sir.”

  “I will. I’ll leave, Kathleen. See?”

  “Leave!”

  “There. See her? I will. I’m leaving. I am leaving you. It’s official. You’re a witness.”

  “Yeah, she’th a feckin witneth.”

  “I’m gone.”

  10

  “IT’S KWYET CALLING.”

  “Kwyet! You are very naughty.”

  “I didn’t know you were coming. I said four weekends. I am very sorry.”

  “It was four weekends.”

  “Was it? I am sorry Simon. How . . . Can you come again?”

  “When?”

  “Well, when would it . . . I’m really sorry, Simon. Could you come in another four weekends?”

  “Really?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So this Saturday is the third, yes?”

  “Third what? Third of February, yes, yes, sorry.”

  “So the third of March. I should come on the second of March?”

  “Could you?”

  “Could I?”

  COULD HE DO anything at all?

  Yes. He did everything.

  He was frantic.

  “Please, Paul, get your application together. Time is of the essence. I cannot delay other decisions forever.”

  His appointment might be running out. There were rumors, stronger rumors, that some would have to end. He still believed he was well liked, but one could never be sure with politics, as his father ponderously said. What if Leonard was replaced? Poor old Leonard, eh? These threats of revealing his arrangements. The land was Simon’s as long as he and Leonard were around.

  “Paul. Please.”

  They had more discussions. Simon got more excited.

  “All you have to do, Paul, is send me an application. I can alter it as I see fit. All you need is my approval.”

  Paul told him about the wind tunnel he wanted. A continuous flow, closed circuit, atmospheric testing section.

  That was not exciting.

  “We can test everything in there. For everyone. Huge commercial possibilities, Simon. Not just aeronautics.”

  This is what Simon liked.

  “Buildings. Can they withstand winds? Can cars be more fuel efficient? Can trains go faster? Will this spacecraft take us to the moon?”

  “Space?”

  “Of course.”

  “Go on.”

  “Millions of things. Any commercial material, any building material subject to natural force. This restaurant, for example. Could it withstand a heavy storm? Is it overbuilt? How will it age?”

  “How will it age?”

  “Exactly We can look into the future. Applying the right pressure, the right environment, to any substance lets you see how it will age. If we get the proper facility built—environmental chambers, drop tower, maybe even a Clean Room— we can see what this city will look like in a hundred years.”

  “Paul, there is plum sauce on your lip. Wipe it off, get a new napkin, and when you receive that napkin, write your application on it. That is all I need. I will get you your approval.”

  11

  THE THING IS, I told you earlier, remember, my friend, I told you earlier that I would smarten up, become myself again when I heard a woman hit a window. But that was boasting. I will admit that now.

  As events turned out, effectively, I did smarten up. But I never really left her, you see.

  She left me.

  I went home in a smoking huff, and shouted fuck at all the walls, and I went into her room and put some light, some much needed light, in the room, and on the bed, right, under the bed. Everything I needed to learn was there on that regret of a bed. Stains. She was actually pissing herself. That’s why the smell. She had been pissing in our own bed. And the smell. Of course, underneath. I flip up the mattress, and underneath is this graveyard of vodka bottles, this stinking frozen storm of labels and goddamn glass. You know, an affair is one thing, it’s, there are muscles, and we’re animals, so we have a fuck and maybe it continues for a while, because, certainly, there are beautiful honey-shaped muscles in the world, man or woman, but, fine, we are animals and we hide things, bury things, but what silly animals, with muscles, hide bottles, you know, Smirnoff, under the shitty bed?

  I couldn’t have learned a more depressing little secret. Ridiculous. The smell, like an armpit’s ass, and that’s my Kathleen making it because she really likes vodka and doesn’t like me.

  And, my good friend, that should have been enough. I should have had an easy time walking away from that. I was afraid of the truth for a long time and now here was the truth, so Run! But it tasted, in fact, better than the fear of it did. It was disgusting, but it wasn’t enough to smarten me up. There was still me in me, the little freak saying aw, no, Kath will be fine.

  I wanted to smash a bottle against the wall, but it was, see, a good wall, I’m afraid, so I cleaned up, disinfected, spick and spooky span, for all those unknown visitors who pass between me and my walls.

  I didn’t see her for a couple of weeks. I didn’t visit her for a couple of weeks, and when I did, do you know, she wasn’t there to be visited. She checked out on her own.

  I have an account, a bank account, which I call “Kathleen.” I deposit money every month.

  SOMETIMES I just sat there, could sit there till I died.

  Now I Taught the weeping willow how to cry cry cry.

  And I showed the clouds how to covet up a clear blue sky.

  And the tears I cried for that woman are gonna flood you, Big River.

  And I’m gonna sit right here until I die.

  I circled that block downtown, that block where Tony kept seeing him. Every night, I drove around, waiting for him to appear, waiting to club him over the head. When the mouse appears, club the little bastard over the head.

  Can you believe him? Fourteen years old, or so? Quits school, writes home to his dad, dear dad?

  I HAD a theory.

  Jerry saw her fall off the chair. She was up early, being a thirsty boozed-up, underboozed thirsty freakin weirdo.

  Kathleen was up on that chair and Jerry saw her fall. I had a feeling. That was my theory.

  And he got scared, because: who wouldn’t? She falls down and knocks herself out, he gets scared and runs away But it’s more than fear now, isn’t it? You don’t stay away so long because you’re afraid.

  “Is she OK?” he asks in that letter. He must have known something was wrong with her. He obviously saw her fall. Maybe he pushed her. Maybe he was feeling guilty.

  (Look over here now, though, in my mind’s eye, I’ll get back in a minute, I’m on a bit of a binge, see, there, Look, look, I’m back there, Kath’s left, Jerry’s gone, early days yet, and I’m missing him, actually, but I’m mad, pissed, pissed, angry drunk mad, at everyone, and there I am, see, at Edgar’s site office and, watch this, I stumble in there grumbling something dizzy, and I head straight for Edgar, “Whereshmyshun!” or something and I swing at poor skinny Edgar and miss and trip over my swing and pass out, yep, yes, drooling there, dribbling. Heh heh.)

  I drove around that block a lot and I never saw him.

  “I’M KEEPING my eyes peeled, Jer, seriously. Why would I . . . You OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would I know where Jerry is? You know, look, shit, buddy, I was interested in Kath, you know, sorry, but not, you know, not your son. I don’t know where he is. I’ve been looking. What about the cops?”

  “They know. They’re looking.”
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  “I’ve been looking out. I’ve asked my guys to keep a lookout too. What about Cooper?”

  “What about him?”

  “They were chummy, weren’t they?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah. Chums. Maybe he knows.”

  “Have you seen Kath?”

  AS I SAID, it must have been more than fear at this point. If he was afraid of what he saw, Kathleen falling, he wouldn’t have been gone for six months.

  Dead?

  No chance.

  So what was wrong?

  It was the Government. They had him scared. He noticed how much the Government was pissing me off, making me unhappy, so he was afraid. You know, he was entering the building trade: maybe he was afraid of them doing the same to him. The Government sent someone around to scare him—to scare me, but I wasn’t home so they scared him. That’s what I thought. The Government was up to something, certainly. First, there were those men I saw on the land, then there were months of no response at all, not a peep. And then Schutz—Jesus, Schutz. I tried to talk to him about what was going on, and he looked worse than Kathleen did. Miserable!

  I said to him, “Schutz!” I said, “Jesus, Schutz, what is going on?”

  He just grumbled.

  “Are you guys going to sell me that land or not?”

  He grumbled, stared into space, mumbled something about a colleague, couldn’t look at me. He looked like he was drugged. Someone had him scared.

  “My wife,” he said (miserable! mopey!). “It is not a good time, Mr. McGuinty.”

  “You’re right. You’re goddamn right.”

  “Could we meet some other time? I’m a bit . . . I am a bit preoccupied.”

  “Preoccupied! Jesus, Schutz, ‘preoccupied’ makes the world go round. Who isn’t preoccupied? You people, you want to stop the world going round. That’s your problem.”

  He was shuffling forward. I was at his house, standing at the front door and he was shuffling forward, trying to keep me out.

  “Can we please meet some other time?”

  “Who got to you, Schutz?”

  “What?”

  “Someone’s got to you.”

  He just wasn’t talking. I thought for a minute that he was hiding Jerry. “Who’s in there, Schutz?”

  “My wife.”