Nothing but Life

by Brent van Staalduinen

  “How, Jesse? How do I get to you?”

  His words and voice have become more urgent, and I want to go more than ever. But I’m fifteen. I’m not one of those kids who has worked out how to leave, a plan in his back pocket. I never wanted to run away. Mom and Jesse and I have never been a perfect family, but there’s love there. Safety. So many people have assumed that Jesse was always violent, but that’s not the case at all. Irritable? Lonely? Impulsive? Sure, sometimes. But he always had time for me, too. Always made sure that his knowledge was my knowledge. Is. I never felt in danger. We never felt in danger.

  Of course, Jesse doesn’t answer. So I walk and spear the occasional trash, my black plastic garbage bag filling slowly, and let my mind wander.

  There’s the issue of how to get to Windsor. Google tells me there’s a bus, but that takes money. Probably ID, too. My student card won’t be good enough. Mom keeps my birth certificate and health card. And my passport, a few years old, with a photo of me so young I barely recognize myself. All ears and big new teeth. Hitchhiking is free, but no way. Mom has a car, but I’d bet all the money I don’t have that she won’t take me. Maybe Aunt Viv can drive.

  And that’s as far as my plotting gets me. Uncertainty. That three-hour drive might as well be across a demilitarized border, like in Korea. Landmined and razor-wired.

  I think about Mia, too. Her parents a different kind of border, just as hard to cross. Me over here, carrying how I feel about her, and her over there with her own feelings. She made it sound so simple. Her parents don’t need to know. Parents always find out, though. And I think about Aunt Viv and Sean and Mom and Gramma Jan, and I wonder why life has to be so complicated. Here, Dills, the universe is saying, deal with all of this, will ya? You can handle it, right? It’s not like you have any other issues to process.

  I trip over an exposed root. The dressing covering my rash catches on a low branch and tears off. The sudden air against it is a lit match against sawdust. Up it goes. The itch blooming like flame again. The perfect timing of it makes me stop midstep and close my eyes. I feel like swearing.

  “Coming through!”

  It’s a big guy in sweaty running gear. The brightest shades of it. Soaked salmon shirt over his expansive gut, blue shorts covering his spindle thighs. Running hat in construction orange. He has a small dog, maybe a chihuahua, a tiny rat thing that yips and growls at me. I’m so stunned by the sight of them that I can’t move, and they’re forced to stop a couple of feet from me. Even the dog is decked out for a blinding jaunt though the woods, wearing a ridiculously tiny yellow bandana that matches my safety vest. It’s surreal how intense they are against the gloom.

  “Out of the way, kid!”

  But I don’t move. My eyes are locked on the dog as it bristles, teeth bared at me. All the dog shit I’ve had to clean over the past few weeks. Bagging it for the trash. Flicking it into the underbrush when I can so I don’t have to carry it around. Fresh. Petrified. Somewhere in between. The hot, smelly mess of it.

  “You should leash your dog,” I say, removing my helmet and wiping the sweat from my forehead. “The bylaw’s clear. I’m sick of picking up after them.”

  The guy, shiny with run sweat, folds his arms. “What are you, the cops?”

  Instead of replying, I push past him and carry on up the path. The dog growls as I pass, the low burr of a tiny voice box. I can feel all four of their eyes on my back. There was nothing more to say that wouldn’t have devolved into swearing and yelling and tearing into him. Not recommended for my situation.

  The rest of the morning passes slowly but without further incident. Sweaty and slow. Thinking and waiting and worrying are the worst companions when you want the time to fly.

  TERMINAL

  I’m late getting home even though I paused my workday in time. At five to eleven I stashed my gear behind a tree and walked to the edge of the park. Something stopped me there, one foot on the end of the sidewalk, the other on the park grass. Awkward. But I remained in that position for five, maybe ten, minutes, staring at the neighbourhood and thinking about everything. Overwhelmed. Forcing myself to breathe. I hope no one saw me.

  Mom’s Corolla is parked on the street next to the side door. Odd. She’s so fastidious about parking in the driveway, which is in the back of the house because we’re on a corner lot. More traffic to worry about when you park streetside, more risk of dings and scratches. As I come near, I smell burning. Hot rubber and steel. The car’s hood is open. The muffler and the long exhaust pipe rest on the asphalt under the car.

  “Mom?” I yell as I close the door behind me.

  “You’re home,” Mom says, appearing in the hallway. “Good.”

  “What happened to the car?”

  “I don’t know. It started making all sorts of horrible sounds on the way home from the hospital and died right as I pulled up.”

  Cars don’t die, Mom. They just stop, is what I think. But I can’t say that to her. Or to myself, maybe. I kick off my shoes. “It got you home.”

  “True, but now it won’t start.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. Anyhow, come on in. We’re in the living room.”

  We walk in together. Gramma Jan is seated in the easy chair at the far corner of the living room. Aunt Viv is sitting across from her on the good sofa. Mom sits down slowly, carefully, at the other end. A special occasion? Gramma Jan loves to sit and read in that chair, but the rest of the furniture rarely gets used. Aunt Viv and Mom look as stiff as only sitting on an off-white sofa can make a person. You’re afraid to breathe. Your breath might stain the fabric. And there are biscuits on a fancy plate in the centre of the coffee table. They’re called biscuits, not cookies, because they’re in recognizable flower shapes, covered in chocolate, dusted with coconut. Gramma Jan, Mom, and Aunt Viv are each sipping coffee from proper cups and saucers, delicate things with gold edges and hand-painted flowers.

  This all clashes. We’re more a kitchen-table-and-family-room kind of family. We sometimes sit on the floor. We’re mugs and cookies, never fine china, never biscuits. Four-finger mugs. Messy, homemade cookies with smeared chocolate chips. I am instantly on alert.

  Gramma Jan smiles at me. She is still so pale, and she looks like she’s lost half her body weight since I saw her a couple of days ago. It makes her smile too big. Her head like a grinning skull.

  “Wendell!” she says. “Get your ass over here and give your gramma a hug.”

  I go over to her, but slowly. The language is her, but the instruction is not. I am not a Wendell in this house. You know by now that we are not hugs, either.

  “Here, Mom,” Aunt Viv says, rising from the sofa, “let me take your cup.”

  But Gramma Jan has shifted forward and risen from her seat, surprisingly strong.

  “Don’t worry about it, Viv.”

  “But the rug —”

  “Is just a rug.”

  Aunt Viv stops, unsure. Glances at Mom, who shrugs. Gramma Jan steps forward and grabs me with a single bony arm. Her other hand somewhere behind me, the cup and saucer clinking an alarming tattoo. She smells of rubbing alcohol and hospital wards and the faintest whiff of urine.

  “I missed you, kid,” she says. Her voice low and husky. Breaking, kind of.

  “Hey, Gramma.”

  That’s all I can get out. Gramma Jan doesn’t seem to mind or notice. She holds on for a long time. Tight. The details I’ve taken in since I walked through the door may have created a general sense of something being off. The hug, though, the length of her need to hold on, tells me with precision that something is wrong. When she finally lets me go and steps back, her eyes are red and shimmering, and the sense of wrongness grows. Gramma Jan is steel and edge, not crying and tears. She eases herself down into the chair again with an audible exhalation.

  “Why are you home early?” I ask, finding my voice again.

  “They needed the bed,” Gramma Jan says.

  “Mom,” Aunt Viv says, leaving the se
ntence unfinished. We talked about this, the tone says.

  Gramma Jan chuckles. “The girls tell me I shouldn’t lie to you.”

  “Lie about what?”

  “I said not to burden you, but they’re stubborn. Like me.”

  “Is it your heart?”

  “My goddamn heart’s fine,” Gramma Jan says. “Well, in context, anyhow.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m dying, kid.”

  Mom exhales audibly and brings a hand to her mouth. Aunt Viv makes a face like she could punch the words Gramma Jan just said.

  “But you’re …”

  I stop myself from saying the rest. You’re fine, I was about to say. But obviously not. That would be stupid. Gramma Jan looks at me. Long. Without speaking. Like she’s suddenly aware of how important it is to wait for others to respond to bad news. Mom and Aunt Viv both look like they want to take over. To tell me everything. But they don’t. Gramma Jan’s news to share.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  So she does. So many details. The heart issue and the tests they ran uncovered certain things. Various elevated levels. Further testing and scans revealed more. Cancer. The Big C. Buried deep, spreading fast. Terminal. Gramma Jan already knew something was seriously wrong but didn’t tell anyone. There’s an argument about that, about responsibility and sensitivity and pridefulness. But I know that the argument is a symptom of Mom’s and Aunt Viv’s pain, rather than a need to work through anything. What’s done is done.

  For my part, I don’t say anything. Instead, my mind tries to sort through the infuriating mystery of why bodies fail before their time. I’m still processing why and how the universe can extinguish so many lives by the horrible actions of others. How bodies can be torn apart from the outside. Now I have to process why and how our bodies can turn on us, too. How they can tear themselves apart from the inside. How defenceless we are against any of it.

  LIKE NORMAL

  “So, do you still hear him?” Aunt Viv asks late the next morning, sitting on the chair beside me.

  I take my eyes from my iPod. “Huh?”

  We’re both in the family room at the back of the house, where the TV and beat-up furniture live. Aunt Viv has her laptop open and is working the keys, her hands a blur. Mom’s puttering around in her workshop — she hates the word puttering, a Jesse word, and says it diminishes what a person does — more quietly than usual. Earlier, she had the Corolla towed and the tow-truck guy shook his head like it was all over, and now it seems like Mom’s grieving the car’s absence on top of everything else. Gramma Jan is upstairs, still sleeping. Sean called and said I could take the day off. Aunt Viv must’ve told him about the diagnosis.

  “Jesse,” she says.

  “Oh. Yeah. Not right now, but every day.”

  “And Windsor? Still trying to get back?”

  “Yes. No. It’s complicated.”

  “Why?”

  “Like I said. Mobility challenges.”

  “So jump on a bus. Get an Uber. Hitchhike, for crying out loud.”

  “Uh huh. Money? My safety? You haven’t offered to drive, either.”

  “Car’s in the shop.”

  “What about later, after —”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  She scratches a spot behind her ear. “Uh, I don’t do highways.”

  “So we take side roads.”

  “I can’t do those, either.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I have a thing. It has a name, but let’s call it fear of road travel.”

  “A thing.”

  “A phobia.”

  “You’re messing with me.”

  “Wish I was, kid. It’s real. I’ve learned to function in the city, but I can’t drive farther.”

  A thought arrives. Lands on me heavy. “That’s why you never visited me and Mom.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Gramma Jan doesn’t drive.”

  “She had to give up her licence years ago because of some eye thing she won’t talk about. I wonder if it’s tied to her recent heart troubles …” She shakes her head and sighs. “Anyhow, before you and your mom came home with an extra set of wheels, I was her taxi.”

  “Even after Windsor, you couldn’t —”

  “It sounds weak, but between your gramma and me, it was easy to talk ourselves out of going.”

  “Mom knows.”

  “Yep.”

  “Which is why she never complained about you two staying back here in Hamilton. Huh. I never thought about it. I thought it was about Jesse.”

  “That, too. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t know what to say right now.”

  “But you should still go. I can give you the money.”

  “It’s not just about getting there,” I say, holding up my leg. “I’m LoJacked, remember? And why are you encouraging me? You were worried about my healing, didn’t want me to tell Mom.”

  “You seem so preoccupied. And I think you need the chance to …” A pause. “Jesse and you were so … are so —” She smacks the table. “Shit, Dills. It’s not your fault. Any of it.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I do!”

  “I don’t want to intrude. And yet I do. Feel free to tell me to fuck off.”

  “No way, Aunt Viv. Never.”

  “I just want to help.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  I glance at the screen again. Refresh my email. Again. Willing it to display a little 1 in red. For Mia to reach out, even though it was me who stormed off the other day. The irrational hope I won’t have to do anything. That she’ll love me for my brand of stubborn crazy. Like one of those scenes in a movie, where the other person appears at just the right time with just the right words in just the right place, even though real life isn’t like that and there are so few right times and places. Like this:

  Him:

  I am so glad you decided to read my mind and appear in the middle of my randomness.

  Her:

  You are so good to accept my apologies.

  Him:

  Why, of course it would be okay to call me again.

  Her:

  I want to kiss you now.

  Him:

  Yes, we should kiss.

  Her:

  And look at that sunset!

  Him:

  It is orange and attractive.

  Meh.

  “You’ve been glued to that thing, Dills. It’s the girl, right?” Aunt Viv looks excited. Like changing the topic was a kind of rescue.

  “How did you —”

  “Educated guess. People who stare at screens so much are usually waiting on someone.”

  “Not you.”

  “True. I don’t wait for them to deliver POL. Proof of love,” she explains before I can ask, looking pleased with herself.

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Not what your mom says. She says the girl seems nice.”

  “She told you?”

  “She called you ‘smitten.’” She makes a face. “I hate that word. It’s like roses and chocolates and stupid crushes.”

  “Me, too.”

  “But you like her.”

  I nod. There’s no point denying it. She isn’t asking.

  “Hard to fight, when it hits you like that,” she says.

  She gets a far-off look in her eyes as she speaks. Well. Who’s smitten now?

  “Like you and Sean?”

  She frowns, coming back to herself. “Maybe. I don’t know what to call us. We’re having fun. But this isn’t about us. What’s her name?”

  “Mia.”

  “Italian?”

  “Palestinian. Her last name is Al-Ansour.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I think so.”

  “So why isn’t she messaging?”

  “She prefers email, actually.”


  Viv rolls her eyes. “How fifteen years ago. Quaint. Maybe you’re more roses and chocolate than I realized.”

  “Aunt Viv …”

  “Now I am messing with you, Dills.”

  She looks at her watch and stands. Looks back at her computer. Then moves off into the kitchen where I can hear the fridge door opening and closing. I’d call it aimless, but she’s trying to connect. I’m sure her mind is on her computer, assaulting some stubborn code somewhere, racking up her billable hours. Mom’s gone quiet in her workshop. It feels weird to have Aunt Viv and Mom not busy. Mom had to take time off from her work after the shooting, of course, but that was not by choice. Aside from Sean giving me the okay to stay home, nothing has been said, but I can tell they’ve cleared their schedules for the day. Making themselves available for Gramma Jan. And me.

  But can we step out of our lives for more than a day? It took me a long time to fall asleep last night. Thinking about what Gramma Jan’s diagnosis could mean. For her. Us. It’s called “terminal” for a reason. It’s not going anywhere. Suspended over us. Today feels like suspension, but tomorrow will push us back into our everyday stuff. Stuff that has to change but still try to stay the same. I have a feeling we’ll be looking for a new normal.

  Something has changed. Please come.

  I know, Jesse. Here, too, I think. I lift my iPod and tap Reload. No change there.

  HELD UP

  We had a massive thunderstorm overnight. Arrived about three in the morning and rattled the foundations for about thirty minutes. Puddles everywhere and a new coolness in the air this morning when I went out for work. Like the heat and humidity’s backs had been broken. I haven’t been sweating today even though it’s now after lunch, when the heat usually soars.

  I’m back at it, working the main park today, dodging parents and kids and the city’s grass-mowing crew. Everyone is smiling more. I catch one of the city workers humming as she walks back to her truck, gas trimmer slung over her shoulder. No, not walks. Strolls. She smiles and winks at me as she passes, saying something about being able to breathe again. Her teeth perfect white against her tanned face.