by Amanda Leduc
Five
In his dreams, he crept down corridors of stone, stood on a windswept beach, and found himself fumbling for words in the dark. He walked, barefoot, and listened to the shuffle of his wings.
Awake, he walked the streets of Vancouver and made his way through a world filled with auras. He wore gloves to hide his hands. Colours were sharpened, everything around him crisp and saturated. He could smell the damp even when the sun was shining, and hear children laughing hundreds of feet away. He often found himself out of breath, as though he’d been running. Walking was the only thing that kept him calm.
Some mornings, he crept into the cathedral and watched, hunched in a pew at the back, as Father Jim said Mass. How well he remembered this — the uneven hush of the cathedral floor, the terrible quiet in the air. The priest at once commanding and unobtrusive, calm. Amen, he said. Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.
Father Mario, who seemed happy to sit back for these sessions, often sat with him in the pew. This other priest, whose part in the story no one could quite figure out.
“It is good to see you here, Samuel,” he said once. “Are you well?”
“No,” Sam said, his voice low. In front of them, Father Jim read the Gospel. A story about a son who returned to his household after a long time away.
“You should not be afraid, Samuel. God would not want you to be afraid.”
“Really?” he said. In these moments with his head above the water, why was it that the rage and the sarcasm came so easily? “But surely if I feel fear, it comes from God Himself. Surely He wants me to feel this way. Otherwise, why bother with the wings at all?”
“You mistake fear for cowardice,” said the priest. “Fear that turns one immobile does no one any good. But fear that draws you out of yourself is a different thing entirely.”
“I don’t want to lose myself,” he said. He thought of Julie, Emma, and Bryan. All these parts of his life, falling away. “I don’t want to disappear.”
“Every man is destined to disappear in the face of God,” said the priest. “How could someone maintain their individual nature in the face of the Almighty? It is just not possible. But God will give you strength.”
“God has not given me anything.”
“Many people say this. But the truth is merely that God has not given them what they want.”
It went like this often, which is why he walked instead. He traversed the streets of his neighbourhood so frequently people stopped registering his face — no more Sam, just another body in the grey. He walked, and he thought. About his mother, scattered in tiny pieces over the water. About the wings. About Emma, who had started, he could see, to be afraid. And he thought about Julie.
Julie had left three messages on the machine since he’d seen her last. Sam. Sam, I need to talk to you. Please call me back.
Two weeks after she’d left the first message, and he still hadn’t picked up the phone.
“Are you going to leave those on the machine forever?” asked Father Jim. They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee, as they had begun to do in the mornings. “They take up space, you know. Someone else might be trying to get through.”
“Stacey,” he said. He watched Chickenhead bat dust balls in the corner of the room. “Or Emma. That’s all, really.” Bryan was still out of the country — there was another face he found himself forgetting.
“Sam,” Father Jim said again. “I think you should call her.”
“I’m going to call,” he said. “I’ve been busy.”
“Mmm,” said the priest. He nodded, suddenly, to Sam’s hands. “What’s with the gloves? You can’t possibly be cold.”
Sam took the gloves off and spread his hands. They seemed strangely effeminate now, without nails. It had become difficult to pick things up if he dropped anything — he wore the gloves for this purpose now as much as any other.
“Ah.” Father Jim didn’t flinch. “I wondered.”
“They just came off. In the sink. It just . . . happened.”
Father Jim shrugged. “Maybe it’s just stress, Sam. Maybe they’ll grow back.”
“Maybe,” he echoed. Then he tried to make a joke of it. “Or maybe I’m just evolving. You know — onto the next stage. No more ass scratching or fumbling in the dirt for me.”
The words were hollow, bereft of humour. Father Jim reached over and squeezed his hand. But he didn’t say anything, and after a while Sam put the gloves back on.
—
He called Julie at work, finally, and she left her office to see him. They went to the coffee shop she loved — the one on Denman, so close to the shores of English Bay.
“How are you?” she said. “I’ve been so worried. You look terrible.”
That made him laugh. “Well. I’ve had better days.” Weeks. Months. Years.
“I heard that you left your job,” she said.
“How?”
“Stacey told me.”
“Stacey?”
“She’s a client.” Julie waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter. But she said that she asked you to stay. That you’re not returning her calls.”
“I don’t work there anymore,” he said. A lifetime ago, that’s what that was. “I don’t have to call her.”
“She’s worried about you.”
He stared at her. “Should you even be telling me these kinds of things?” The wings curled around the metal backing of the chair. “Besides — I’m hardly any of Stacey’s business.”
Her eyebrow went up. How well he remembered that, another lifetime away. “Just like you’re hardly any of that student’s business? Ella?”
“Emma,” he said instantly.
She held his gaze for a moment and then flushed. “It’s just — you always have these women. All the time.”
“So you phoned me,” he said, slowly, “again and again, and left messages, just to meet with me and tell me about my ‘women’?”
She tapped her fingernails against her mug. The sound echoed. “I just want to know how you are.”
“I’m surviving.” What a strange word. “I just — it’s hard, Julie.”
“I know.” Unexpectedly, she reached across the table and took his hand. His new hand, hidden and safe within the glove. “You know I’m here for you, Sam.”
“Sure,” he said. “You look good, by the way.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
He coughed. “How’s Buddhism class?”
“Sam.”
“Seriously.”
She shrugged. “It’s all right. Derek’s really into it.”
“You know,” because he couldn’t help himself, “studies have shown that Tibetan Buddhism has a large part to play in the prostitution problem in Thailand.”
“Really.” She let go of his hand.
“Yes.” He dragged his coffee cup in small circles around the table. “Tibetan Buddhists believe in reincarnation. You’ll know this, obviously.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice going thin.
“So they teach that prostitutes are on the streets paying for the sins of a past life. I think it’s a funny doctrine.”
“It’s not a class in Tibetan Buddhism.”
“Oh. Well then. I guess that’s fine.”
“We were having a nice time,” she said. “Just now.”
“We had a lot of nice times,” he said. “But in the end that didn’t seem to matter, did it.”
“What’s with you?” she muttered. “You’ve got all of these people around you — Father Jim, me, Bryan, that student. All of these people, and you’re just — this isn’t you. This isn’t the Sam I remember.”
“That’s astute. Did you not hear me, five minutes ago, when I said I was having a hard time?”
“I know you’re having a hard time.” Her own hands were rigid against
her mug. “But people die, Sam. It’s horrible, but it happens. You have to keep going.”
“Bryan, by the way, says that he’s sorry for being a dick. He’s in Italy. He’s not exactly around right now.”
Her mouth hung open just the tiniest bit — that lip, that red lip that he loved. “What is wrong with you?”
He laughed. “Nothing. Never mind.” He lifted the coffee cup to his mouth. It was empty, but he pretended to drink from it anyway. “What else did Stacey have to say?”
“I think you should see somebody,” she said. “A doctor. A—”
“Priest?” He bit down on the sudden urge to laugh again. “I have a priest living with me now. He even cooks. He makes fantastic pancakes.” He talked faster to hide the panic. Her lips were too red, her coat too green, the pulse of veins beneath her cheeks visible when he should have seen nothing at all.
“That’s good,” she said. “I’m glad you’re not alone.”
Two nights ago he had woken up on Grouse Mountain, halfway up a tree. Where would he be tomorrow? Would he wake up in the air this time, floating over that beach, then crash to the ground and pierce his wings on the rocks that sat below? “I have the cat,” he said. It was all he could say. Even his own voice was too loud.
“Sam?” Her voice was worried now. “Sam — are you sick?”
“Yes,” he gasped. He could not stop shaking. Just before his head hit the table he prayed that he would not disappear, that he wouldn’t wake up in the ocean, soaking and afraid.
—
He woke up in his own room. Julie sat in a chair beside the bed, Chickenhead in her lap.
“Hi,” she said softly, when he registered that she was there.
“She’s in your lap,” he said. The wings were bunched around his head and draped halfway over his face, and the gloves were still on his hands. He was so hot. The room swam in colour, floated in stale air.
“I know,” and she ran a hand through the cat’s fur, as though she couldn’t quite believe it herself. “She’s been here since I sat down.”
“How long have you been here?” The migraine, or whatever it was, had receded. He felt wrung out, limp.
She shrugged. “A few hours? I’m not sure.”
He tried to sit up, and shook the wings out so that they stretched over either side of the bed. “You didn’t have to stay.”
“I know,” she said. She looked calm and regal, composed. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“How did I get home?”
“I called your house,” she said. “Father Jim came right away. And I called an ambulance. They were ready to take you to the hospital, but Father Jim said you’d be all right. He said you were probably just tired. That you haven’t been sleeping.”
“That’s true.”
“He said you’ve been sleepwalking, Sam.”
So he knew. “That’s also true.”
“You’ve never sleepwalked.”
His mouth tasted of decay. “Not that I remember, no.”
“What’s wrong? It’s not just your mother.” Not so calm now, not so composed. “That day, when you came to see me at work. You asked about Father Jim. Something was wrong then — I knew it. Are you in trouble? Do you need money?”
He laughed, it was so absurd. “No. I don’t need money. There’s the house, remember?”
“Then what?” She bit her lip. “I need to know, Sam. I think about you all of the time. I can’t sleep. Even Derek’s noticed.”
She wouldn’t believe him. He knew she wouldn’t believe him. Yet he was struck, all the same, by a rush to let her know, to have someone else believe. “I’m just . . . ”
“Yes?” she said, impatient. “You — what?”
“I have wings,” he said. “I woke up a few weeks ago, and they were there. I’ve had to cut my shirts, Julie. And then Chickenhead got hit by a car, in front of me. And I brought her back. From — wherever.”
Her hand hadn’t stopped petting the cat. He stared at it and continued.
“And then Mom died, and I went to find Father Jim. He can see the wings, and so can Emma, and so can Father Mario. But you can’t. You can’t see them, and you think I’m crazy. Right now. And I’m dreaming strange things and waking up all over the city in the early hours of the morning, and I don’t know how I’m getting there. I really don’t.” She was still petting the cat. “Chickenhead can see them too, by the way.”
Julie nodded. “I see.”
He let his breath out in a rush. “That’s why. That’s why . . . everything.”
The line of her shoulders was set, firm. She stared at him until he began to fidget on the bed. “Sam, I think you need help.”
“You do think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” she said, hastily. “I just think — ”
“Talk to Father Jim,” he said. “Father Jim will tell you.”
She frowned. “I think that Father Jim is enabling you. He wouldn’t even let me take off those silly gloves. Maybe he’s doing it because your mother died — I don’t know. But I think you’re in serious trouble, Sam. You need help. Professional help.”
“Father Jim is a professional.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
He pulled off his shirt and tossed it to the floor. “You can’t see anything.”
“See what?” She let the cat down, then pushed herself off the chair and stood beside the bed, her hands clenched. “There’s nothing to see, Sam.”
He closed his eyes against the nausea. “You should probably go.”
She blinked. “I’m trying to help you.”
“You can’t help,” he said. “No one can.”
Julie cleared her throat. She was so close. “Well,” she said stiffly. “You know where I am if you — if you need me.”
“I know,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She stood up from the chair and went out of the room without speaking. The door closed very quietly.
“She didn’t believe me,” he said. To the air, to the cat. What kind of prophet could he be, when even those he loved could not see him, could not see what he was becoming?
Chickenhead climbed onto the bed, purred against him and slept.
—
Later, a different woman beside him. “Tell me about your sister,” he said as they walked around the pond. Chickenhead bounced ahead of them in the grass.
“She was hit by a car,” Emma said. “She was playing on the sidewalk, and this truck came up onto the curb and pinned her to a tree.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The driver was seventeen. She’d just gotten her full license, and she was driving her father’s truck home from the mall. She said she couldn’t see anything, that she lost control because of the sun through the window.”
“What happened?”
Emma crossed her arms, tucked her hands into her armpits. “My parents called the ambulance, and they got her to the hospital while she was still conscious. But there were head injuries. She went into a coma later that night, and died in the morning.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven. Corrie was eight.”
“And you wanted a miracle.”
“Of course I wanted a miracle,” she said. “Who wouldn’t?” She uncrossed her arms and shoved her hands in her pockets. “Anyway, she died. And my parents almost divorced. It’s been seven years, and sometimes I still come home from school ready to tell her things.”
It hadn’t been a month since his mother had died, and even her face was disappearing. “Emma, I’m sorry.”
“There’s no use in being sorry.” She pointed to Chickenhead, crouched dangerously close to the edge of the pond. “Should she be that close?”
“She’s pretty good on her feet,”
Sam said absently. “But she does like to show off, yes.” He bent down and scooped her up. She grumbled, then nestled against his chest and started to purr.
“It’s very nice here,” Emma said. “It would be a good place to pray.”
He laughed. “I don’t think my neighbours would agree, but okay.”
She looked at him. “Tell me,” she said. “What would you pray for, now, if you had the chance?”
He thought of Father Jim. “Don’t we always have the chance to pray? Isn’t that the point?”
“But you don’t pray. So. If you wanted to, what would you pray for?”
Yes, he’d want a miracle too. To wake up the next morning and be a normal man. To wake up and have a life that was once more ordinary and uninspired.
She saw it in his face; the disappointment in her eyes was almost tangible. “You’d still give it back. If you could.”
“Yes.” He hugged the cat and would not meet her eyes. He would give it back, and make his last conversation with Julie disappear. “I would choose a life that I knew over this. Is that so terrible?”
“It’s not terrible.” They reached the patio. Emma stepped into the house before him and then turned to face them both, poised over the threshold. “But I can pray and pray, Sam, and my sister won’t come back. My life is different now. So what I ask for — that has to be different too.”
“I want a sign,” he said, and even saying it made him ashamed. “I want God to give me a sign.”
Emma smiled. “What — wings aren’t enough for you?”
“I want God to speak to me,” he said, and he tightened his grip on the cat. “I want to know what to do.”
“No one ever knows what to do,” she said. “But eventually we do something. Sooner or later, Sam, you have to stop fighting.”
—
He couldn’t sleep. He dressed and left the cat on the bed. The light from Father Jim’s room shone as a thin golden line across the floor. He slid down the hall and went out the front door, then closed it quietly, like a thief stealing away.
He walked all the way into town and followed the water, the waves soft on his left-hand side. Into and through Stanley Park, the wings glowing white behind him. He remembered Cathedral Grove and imagined himself disappearing into the trees. He walked to the eastern side of town, the lights of the city flickering green and red and hesitantly blue. He padded past a bar fight, through the edges of a drunken wedding party, down countless streets that shimmered with rain. A dog followed him for six blocks, barking at the wings. He unfurled them in front of an all-night Chinese restaurant and glared at the dog. It fled, whimpering.
