by Aaron Dries
“…No.”
“Oh, bub, please take it. It’s okay. I want you to have it.” He saw desperation in her eyes, something wild and unstable. It frightened him just as the pirate ship had.
Again his stomach lifted and his eyes filled with carnival sounds.
He said nothing.
“Okay fine.” His mother put the note back in her purse, irritated. “Don’t take it then. I try to do something nice for you and you don’t even have the courtesy to say thanks, for Christ’s sake.”
She looked up at him, exhaling. “Actually, come with me. I don’t want you wandering off on your own.”
The carnival noises switched off, like a bulb blowing its fuse. “No,” he said—a little too loud. “No, I feel like walking. I do. Is that okay?”
Her eyes softened, and for a moment Noah had no idea what her next expression would be. Would it be sympathy or anger? At that moment it was blank, derailed.
“Okay, bub,” she said. A smile. It made him feel better. “Okay. You go and have fun. Stay out of trouble and I’ll meet you at the Boost Juice in an hour. Keep an ear out for your phone in case I call.”
Noah nodded, turned away and became one with the crowd.
Chapter Six
Marshall opened the door to his house and threw his keys onto the hallway table, stopping to switch on the lamp. Jingle. Flick. He closed the door, the lock snapping into place. He slipped off his shoes and walked into the living room, hanging his leather shoulder bag over the arm of the couch—it slid between the cushions.
These were the routine sounds that signaled the end of his workday, that he was free. They were weekend sounds, full of fatigue.
After pissing with the door open, he went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He’d expected only to open it and close it again—another disembodied habit. Instead, he found purpose on the top shelf. Six in fact. He took a beer and let the door swing shut on its own.
He cracked off the bottle top, flung it at the trash. Amber ale slid down his throat; it fizzed and his eyes watered.
The kitchen table was covered in newspapers, pencils and schoolbooks full of questions he no longer remembered how to answer. It was Claire who helped Noah with his homework, who sat over his shoulder and corrected all his mistakes. Marshall had used one area of his brain for too long and struggled to remember the differences between the types of triangles, or how to find the square root of anything without the use of a calculator. He also didn’t want to sit there and tell his son not to bother, that he wouldn’t use half the shit he was taught.
Learning was important. Remembering it maybe not so much.
Marshall sighed. If he really believed that, then why did the thought make him feel depressed? To prove a point to himself he tried to remember his son’s mobile phone number—and couldn’t.
He took another swig of beer.
That morning he’d sat with his wife and child at the breakfast table. It was rare that their three lives intersected that early, albeit a brief encounter. It was a warm way to start the day. Claire had fried up a dozen gluten-free sausages and poached some eggs for them. The sweet smell of barbecue lingered in the room. And then Noah had knocked over his orange juice. His face was crestfallen and taut, as though prepared for a verbal assault.
It hurt Marshall to see his son like that. He prided himself on being so reasonable and even-tempered. His own father had never been like that, despite how he pawned off his anger once he had a grandchild. Even Claire could give angry politicians a run for their money once her emotions took flight, though she was more bark than bite.
But what a shrill, terrifying bark it could be.
Marshall had mopped up the spilt juice whilst Claire did the dishes. Noah held himself in check, casting furtive glances in their direction. “Everything okay there, big fella?” Marshall asked, throwing the tea towel over his shoulder, hands upturned.
There was no reply.
Claire turned to her husband, rubbed her shoulder against his. He looked at her, at the curve of her cheeks, her ruffling nose. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, shrugging. “Cujo.”
Cujo was their code word. Marshall and Claire often joked around, or pretended to fight as a precursor to flirting. It was one of the ruffles in their relationship—and not necessarily a bad one, either. But one evening over a bottle of red, they had decided that a code word should be decided upon, something that cut through all the bullshit with ease, making way for pure, supportive truth. The word “seriously” didn’t seem appropriate because it was often thrown around in conversation, or in fights. When fooling around. Claire had seen the book her husband was reading on the bedside table, Cujo by Stephen King and knew she had found what she’d been seeking.
“Cujo,” Claire had repeated. It’s okay, and I’m not kidding. We’ll get through this. All of us. As a family.
Unperturbed, Marshall splashed dirty sink water up onto Claire’s shirt, a half scream, half laugh bursting from her. It was a rare, wonderful sound. He pulled two pairs of tongs from the sink and held them at his sides, one in each hand.
Noah turned towards him, eyebrows arched—a look he got from his mother. He watched his father proceed to impersonate a crab, sidestepping across the kitchen, using the tongs as though they were pinch-happy claws.
Marshall brought a smile to his son’s face. It had been weak…but it was there. And that was enough.
The living room walls were lined with family photographs. The three of them on birthdays, Christmases, Noah’s first day of kindergarten. Frozen moments gathering dust. Marshall passed them, beer in hand, before throwing himself onto the couch. He turned on the television, resumed the DVD he’d started watching the night before. The player whirred to life. After a moment of darkness Gillian Anderson’s face filled the screen, her skeptical gaze staring back at him. The old X-Files episode continued.
Chapter Seven
The blank stares of shop-front mannequins followed Noah’s every move, or so it felt. Every man, woman and child seemed to lock eyes with him, seeing deep inside— all the way to the truth. They scared him. His heartbeat started to rise; he could hear it thumping in his ears. Nearby, the dinosaur exhibit roared again.
Noah walked faster up the incline, his clammy hand skidding over the balustrade until it burnt. Here, on the uppermost level, the crowd had thinned. Voices were a solid, imperceptible screech. His chest seized when a flurry of colors flew by on his left. Noah leapt back from the railing, crying out. Sweat dripped into his eyes and stung. The colors sailed higher, rising until they bobbed against the ceiling, a thick sheet of glass separating the red, orange and silver balloons from the lightning and rain outside.
Claire hadn’t realized how blistered her ankles were until she took off her shoes. The skin was puckered and red. She pulled down her sport sock and inspected it for drops of blood. There were none. She had become so accustomed to her aches that they almost felt a part of her now, and yet she tolerated them all. Her ankles, the sharp stabs of pain between her shoulder blades in the middle of the night. Professional massages sounded tempting, but the concept of strangers touching her body made her feel uncomfortable. Would she have to take off her shirt in order for them to knead away her knots? Claire didn’t want that. Insecurity made her feel ugly. Fat.
On some level, Claire understood that she was pretty, but it was so much easier to hate herself and the way she looked. It was just like the pain between her shoulder blades, the pain around her ankles…it was easier to accept it as a permanent fixture than to look at it as something she deserved—
Her thought was cut short by screams.
The shoe salesman looked up at her from his crouched position. He had soiled eyes, pale blue and full of imperfections—Claire saw her reflection in them. The salesman blinked. Overhead there was Muzak, something familiar. Claire stood, a little lopsided. Her removed shoe dangled from her hand.
There were more screams now, a tide of them rising.
The salesman followed his shoppers to the window. “Hell’s bells, what’s all this about?” he said.
“What is it?” Claire asked, slipping on her shoe. As the heel slid over her ankle there was the familiar discomfort; it completed her somehow. It was the absence of pain that had become the distraction.
“People,” said the man. He had a deep voice, accented. She couldn’t place the origin. “Everyone’s running.”
Chapter Eight
As Mulder and Scully ran across the screen, Marshall remembered holding his son on the day he was born. Noah had been so small. Tiny. A doll in blankets, eyes wide open, sucking up color and information. It brought tears to his eyes, and there, in the hospital nursery, Marshall Deakins came to understand what it was to love without condition.
He’d been afraid to hold the baby at first. What if I drop him? It took a long time for the knots in Marshall’s stomach to disappear, months in fact, but he learned to listen to his own muscles and believe that he was strong enough to hold his son with confidence.
Marshall didn’t know what brought the memory to mind. But it was welcome, nonetheless.
He breathed over the lip of the beer bottle; it gave off a tooting sound. He closed his eyes but could still sense the ceiling light burning through the dark. Everything was red. He wondered if it was fatigue that was making him nostalgic.
Claire. Another memory.
They had met over a bowl of Massaman curry in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She sat at his table, her auburn hair catching his eye.
“My God, I’ve got to have that!” It was the first thing she ever said to him. He adored hearing her voice with its thick, textured accent. It was different. Exciting. He was as attracted to her confidence as he was to her looks. He asked her if she was American and felt like a fool when she told him she was Canadian. But Claire had taken no offence. The only thing she took was his spoon. “Can I try some?”
It was their first dinner together. After that night, with the scent of spice and frying banana in the air, Claire Redman—as she was then known—and Marshall Deakins became inseparable.
Both had been travelling alone and were starved for companionship, their shoulders aching from carrying around their backpacks. In each other they had found someone alike and fascinating, different and yet familiar. Claire loved how laid back he was. Marshall responded to her energy. They danced through Bangkok, sweated through their way through the provinces, rode elephants and shared many more meals of varying quality. Soon their flirtations were jungle vines wrapping around them, a source of sustenance and strangulation. They fucked. Over and over. Their bed rocked against the thin walls of their hut, the window open to the mosquitoes. Claire tasted different from any other girl he’d been with. She spoke differently too—and not just her accent, but her philosophies and aspirations.
I want to write someday. Travel. Just keep on moving.
She was an exotic stranger broadly painted against an even stranger, exotic backdrop. Among the banana leaves and lady-boys, she stood swaying with a cocktail in her hand, a purple bandanna wrapped around her upper arm. He fell for her hard and fast.
They round-tripped back to Bangkok and he saw her off. She took his number with him, and his promises. Claire left for the States—a short stopover before heading home. Marshall said he would meet her in Vancouver and they could see how things went from there. Only he knew what he wanted, Marshall just hoped that she wanted it too.
Their reunion was heated. Vancouver burned bright for the two of them.
He wanted every part of her. Her upper lip, her elbows, the tiny space between her third and forth toe. Everything. Their lives assimilated, two hands intertwining fingers. But always squeezing, always fighting. He was okay with that.
It was during this time that he first noticed how her eyes wandered when things grew quiet, the eerie stillness. She looked displaced. A little sad. It just made him ache for her even more. The mystery.
On the corner of Georgia and Howe in downtown Vancouver, silhouetted against the lit Art Gallery, Marshall proposed to her.
“I’m pregnant,” she told him.
The concrete lions on the step of the gallery watched their backs. It started to rain. He opened his red umbrella to stop the sudden downpour and she wrapped her arms around his chest.
To anyone else they were two kids seeking shelter from the rain. How insignificant the eyes of others could be, he thought. What one person sees as an annoying display of public affection is another person’s marriage acceptance.
Claire and Marshall kissed, the hem of her dress saturated, revealing the outline of her shaking knees. When they pulled apart, she was crying.
They returned to Australia together and were wed in a small, non-denominational church in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, a fifteen-minute drive from where Marshall was raised in the small town James Bridge. His parents attended but were hurt because they felt so estranged from something they assumed they would play a part in. But Bobby and Mavis Deakins came to love this auburn, accented stranger. They knew better than to fight their pride. It was better to relent to their expectations and to trust their son. Things could be far worse.
Claire’s parents were not so forgiving. They didn’t feel like they were gaining a son, they felt like they were losing a daughter—to the other side of the planet, no less. Announcing their engagement to the Redmans in their North Vancouver apartment had been awful. Claire’s father had shaken his hand, but clenched it so hard it almost hurt. Her mother went into the kitchen, put a hand to her temple and sat alone. They told them about the pregnancy a month later over the phone, and by that time, the newlyweds were already in James Bridge, scouring newspapers for an apartment in Sydney.
The home phone began to ring. Marshall sighed and rolled off the couch, killing the television with a punch to the remote. He became aware of his weight against the floorboards, which groaned as though in warning.
Chapter Nine
“Heya,” Marshall said.
Claire despised him for his cheeriness. How could he not feel it? How could he say that word with such relief, not assuming the worst? She hated her husband in that moment, as she stood among the running shoppers with the phone pressed tight against her burning ear, her throat turning dry. It felt like some rabid, clawed animal was ripping through her stomach.
The screaming was because of Noah. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did—and she was offended that Marshall couldn’t sense it. A parent knew these things. It was their duty. How could his guard be so low?
She swallowed her anger. You’re being irrational. Panic scrambled her words. She choked.
“You okay there, babe?” Marshall asked.
She felt dizzy and steadied herself by resting her hand against the Boost Juice stand. The hour was up and Noah was nowhere to be seen. Running up to the food court, she’d caught the snatches of conversation from the passing shoppers running in the opposite direction.
“I’m not fucking around, Mars. Cujo. Someone’s been pushed. Blood.”
Each word was a confirmation, a blade slipping deeper and deeper inside. She watched the mall cops ushering people along, their faces as confused as those they directed.
And then she’d seen the abandoned juice stand, praying to God that she would see Noah beside it. The phone in his hand, the battery dead.
But Noah was not there.
The walls of the mall seemed to close in on her and the tiles under her blistered feet began to glow too bright. Everything became hyper-real. She could feel each flicker of the florescent bulbs like small wings beating against her face. Everything was slowing down and her heart was drowning out all other sound, pound by bloody pound. Her focal point slipped, and when she spun her head to look for her son, everything warped.
“I can’t find Noah,” Claire spoke into the phone.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I can’t fucking find him. And something’s wrong. Someone was pushed and there’s blood
somewhere and I-I just know it’s him.”
“Babe, what are you talking about?”
“What? Aren’t you listening to me?”
“Claire, calm down.”
“I can’t find him. I told him to meet me here in an hour, right here in the food court next to this goddamned juice stand and he’s not here and someone’s dead and everyone’s running around like crazy—”
“Okay, babe, slow down. Take a breath and tell me what’s happened again. You’ve lost me. So you told Noah to meet you at the stand? Is that the one upstairs near the food court?” His voice was low and controlled; she had to push the phone even harder against her ear to hear him.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. He’s not there?”
“No…” She trailed off.
Marshall waited for her to finish her sentence but it never came. “Okay. And someone’s dead? There in the mall?”
“Yes I said.”
“Yes you know or yes you assume?”
“Oh, Jesus, Mars, I dunno know. Yes.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah I assume.”
He sighed. “Okay, babe, it’s going to be fine. If something’s wrong follow the direction of everyone else. Did you call Noah’s phone?”
“Of course I did!” Claire couldn’t hide how annoyed she was by his tone. She felt condescended to. “It went straight to his message bank.”
There was a pause on the line. It was only then, as she waited for her husband to speak again, that Claire realized how much she depended on that calm, condescending voice to keep her under control. His voice was the bedside lamp that kept the monsters from coming out of the closet at night.
“Goddammit, say something, Mars!”
“Find one of the mall cops and ask him for help,” he began. “The worst that has happened is that Noah is out there seeing something he shouldn’t. At best, he ran with the crowd. He’s okay. Please calm down, babe. I’m getting in the car and coming to you right now, okay?”
