Abruptly, she pulled herself off him. He opened his eyes, staring in a way she’d never seen—wildly, animal-like. ‘What are you doing!’ he hissed. ‘Don’t stop!’ Then he came anyway with her sitting on his thighs, hugging herself.
‘I thought you were mad at me!’ said Alison.
Quaking all over, he turned his head on the shining pillow, beautiful again. ‘I was,’ he whispered. ‘Mad knowing in a second it was going to end.’
She sort of understood. When she was most blissful with Billy, those were the times she was also most vulnerable to thoughts of his dying or leaving. If she thought of her life before they were together, it seemed so bereft, though it hadn’t at the time. She hadn’t known she lacked for anything. Now though, now she would know. This fear of losing him almost made her wish she’d never met him.
Billy pulled her down on top of him, the warm puddle of his satisfaction squishing out between them. ‘Oh, no! Crazy cum! Now we’re joined forever at the belly!’
Alison was crying.
‘Shh,’ he said. ‘We’ll manage somehow. We’ll stay in bed forever.’
And when she had calmed, she slid off him and lay with the ball-joint of his shoulder in her cheek. He used her hair to wipe her face then, tenderly, raised her arm and bent her fingers back so the piece of glass on the ring hovered above them like an extinguished meteor.
‘What about this rock, eh?’ he asked.
‘Your mom was disappointed.’
‘You’re not, are you?’
‘What?’
‘Did you want to get married?’
‘Do you?’ she asked, surprised.
‘No, but I want you to be happy.’
‘I’m happy!’ she cried, throwing her arms around him. ‘I’m happy!’
THINGS
GET VICIOUS
1
Late the first day after the holiday, Alison hurried through the gallery, past the glowering Senator, to the back room where Thi had already started on the coffee.
‘Sorry,’ Alison told her. ‘I slept in and missed the bus. Here, I’ll do that.’
‘The problem with holidays,’ said Thi, passing her the pouch of coffee, ‘is coming back to work.’
‘Did you have a good one?’
‘Mmm. You?’
Roxanne appeared just as Alison flicked on the coffee maker. ‘Well? What do you think?’
After the Christmas party Billy had made the comment that Roxanne would not be going anywhere far for the holidays since she could never have got through the metal detector at the airport. Now, in addition to her nipple and navel rings, her grommeted ears and studded tongue, a steel ring was wedded to her bottom lip.
‘Very pretty,’ said Alison, deciding not to show her own ring as she had planned. It was in her purse. The claws would catch in the hair if she wore it while shampooing. At lunch, she would take it out and show Christian and re-enact Billy’s mock proposal.
‘Can you shampoo my client?’ Roxanne asked.
Up front, a young man was waiting. ‘You belong to Roxanne, right? Come with me.’ Alison led him through the columns to the changing room and, drawing back the curtain, handed him a smock. Then Malcolm came in wearing, of all things, an ascot.
‘Hi, Malcolm. Did you have a good holiday?’
‘I didn’t have a holiday,’ he said. ‘I moved.’ But he had celebrated the New Year in his own way—reviewing his bank statements over the remains of the bottle of plonk, then vomiting purple and crawling into bed by ten. Should auld acquaintance be forgot. The morbid effects of this indulgence he continued to feel even now; he was still queasy from the bank statements.
‘Did you do anything for fun?’
He hung up his raincoat and began fussing with his cuffs. ‘I took the dog out,’ he said at last, ‘if that’s what you’d call fun.’
‘I didn’t know you had a dog. What’s his name?’
‘Her name. Her name is Grace.’
‘What kind of dog is she?’
‘Grace defies description.’
For the first time, it occurred to Alison that Malcolm might actually be a very funny man. She laughed, then asked, ‘How’s your friend?’ and by the startled way he looked at her, she guessed he’d forgotten what he told her at the Christmas party.
‘Worse,’ he said, turning quickly away. ‘And worse.’
Roxanne’s client stepped out from behind the curtain, so Alison only had time to say, ‘I’m sorry, Malcolm.’
She found the music getting on her nerves. They’d only got back last night on the late ferry. The soundtrack on the island had been the glottal glugging of ravens, the surf’s boom and fizz, rain falling in an ambient shush and for the rest of the day dripping off the trees.
After the shampoo, she escorted Roxanne’s client to her station, then went to the back room to get him a pot of tea. Crowded because Donna and Jamie had arrived and it was too cold to open the parking-lot extension, she felt as if she’d walked in on a group-therapy session, even Malcolm present, though in the corner he looked more trapped than participating.
Donna was venting. ‘I mean, we had plans! I waited till, I don’t know, seven. Seven! We’re talking New Year’s Eve here, and still he didn’t call!’
‘He’s ready,’ Alison whispered to Roxanne who was drinking black coffee through a straw. She put the teapot of water in the microwave and, while it heated, leaned against the counter to listen, too.
‘It was humiliating waiting by the phone!’
‘Fucker,’ said Jamie. ‘What a fucker.’
‘That’s what I called him when finally he phoned.’
‘When was that?’ Thi asked.
‘New Year’s Day!’
Everybody groaned.
‘So you stayed home?’ asked Roxanne. The pained sound in her voice, Alison realized, was more than sympathy; the straw was because her lip hurt. She shuddered at the same time the microwave started beeping.
‘Of course not. I had an alternative. My point is the humiliation!’
Alison brought Roxanne’s client his tea just as the phone up front began to ring. When she got there to answer it, she found three clients waiting. ‘Vitae. Can you hold, please?’ She covered the receiver, apologized to those there in body, then got back on the line and booked a cut.
‘Mrs. Leonard is here for Malcolm. Who are you waiting for?’ she asked the other two.
‘Christian,’ they chorused. Alison sighed. ‘Not again.’
What Malcolm thought was that Christian was too embarrassed to face him after he had stood him up, that that was why he didn’t show up for work. It was a ludicrous notion, of course. Christian was no blusher.
By mid-morning Thi and the girl began to call him. They left a series of messages filled with the vibrato of concern. Then came a flurry of rescheduling.
‘He isn’t in today. Can you change your afternoon appointment?’ Again and again, Malcolm overheard, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know where he is.’
Jamie, on his lunch break, drove downtown with Thi to knock on his door, just in case he simply wasn’t answering the phone.
‘He’s not there,’ he said when they got back. ‘We got the super to let us in.’
‘Did it look like he’d gone away? Like he’d packed or anything?’ asked Donna.
‘No,’ said Thi. ‘Everything looked normal and, you know, neat as a pin.’
They were in the back room. Alison sank down on the bench beside Malcolm and, with her face in her hands, asked, ‘Do you think we should—?’
‘What?’ asked Malcolm.
She whispered it. ‘Call the police?’
As soon as she said it, it was understood that something had happened to him.
‘No,’ said Roxanne, and she teetered angrily out of the room, back to her client.
>
‘Did anyone check the deli?’ Robert asked, trying to make a joke.
Who finally called, or when, Malcolm didn’t know, but the next morning there they were. Normally no one would have noticed their entrance, people came and went all the time, but Alison shut off the music so they all looked up and, seeing the two in blue, froze—all but Malcolm, who had closed his eyes. What a relief not to hear that beat pounding out like a pneumatic drill! Savouring the silence, he lowered the dryer onto Mrs. Creighton’s curler-armoured head, loath to turn it on and spoil the moment. Then, catching sight of them in the mirror, he swung around. Everyone was looking at him. The police saw everyone looking at him, so towards Malcolm they came—slowly, the long length of the gallery. Had Christian been there, he would have squealed with delight.
It seemed to take a week for them to reach him. All that time Malcolm wondered why. Why were they coming for him? What did they think? That he was the owner?
‘Sir,’ one of them said. ‘May we have a word with you?’
They stepped into the back room. Strangely, Malcolm couldn’t seem to hear a word they said. It was as if he were holding a seashell to both ears; a muted roar, the surge of his own blood in his skull. It’s not fair, he was thinking. They had not drawn straws or, from the top tray of the Senator’s trolley, names on paper slips. The fair-haired one, he noticed, was in need of a moustache trim.
From their gestures, he understood that he was going to leave with them. He led the way, stopping briefly where Mrs. Creighton was still waiting under the dryer. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘Alison will have to finish you today.’
She grabbed his hand. ‘But Malcolm, tell me what you’ve done!’
In the police car, the radio issued intermittent bursts of static and cryptic dispatches. Mostly they did not speak; now and then the two officers exchanged a comment in low tones. Then the one not driving turned and asked Malcolm, ‘How long did you know him for?’
‘About a year and a half.’ It was a brilliantly sunny day and they were driving along parallel to the railway track.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To the morgue.’
‘Oh, the morgue.’ He pressed his eyes and for no reason said, ‘It’s the same word in French.’
The one driving said, ‘I guess a lot of words are the same.’
‘The pronunciation’s different,’ the other added sagely.
Then Malcolm found himself being ushered into a cold room where, on a gurney, a curiously shaped object lay under a sheet. He had understood that they were going to show him Christian’s body, but whatever was under the sheet seemed too small. A sudden battering headache—from the chemicals, Malcolm thought. As he pressed his fingers to his eyes again, it occurred to him that he was dreaming. That was what he had been telling himself for the last six years. And when the sheet was drawn back, though he didn’t recognize Christian, he didn’t say, ‘I don’t know this person.’ He asked instead, ‘Is this a person?’
Why had they picked him? It seemed especially cruel after all that he had been through. Now, along with the memory of Denis’ disease, there would be the memory of looking down on this obliterated face.
‘May I touch him?’ he asked. ‘I can’t tell unless I do. He’ll have a certain callous.’ He showed them his own on his thumb and finger. ‘From the scissors.’
The sheet was lifted at one side to expose a lifeless hand, but Malcolm didn’t have to touch him after all. ‘Yes, it’s him,’ he told them. He knew by how small a hand it was.
They were kind enough to drive him home. Again, no one really spoke. Malcolm, for his part, was thinking about how trivial his complaints had actually been before today. Visiting Denis, he sometimes met spouses of the other patients, people whom he would spend a few moments commiserating with. A retired roofer, a retired lawyer, a housewife, a retired poofter, they made an unlikely group, but Malcolm nonetheless considered them his peers. All of them had seen their loved ones become different people. Denis had become demanding and unlikeable, hate-filled, a person who had to have butterscotch pudding thick over everything he ate. It tormented Malcolm wondering which Denis was real, the gentle man he had seemed to be up until his illness, or who he was now. Yet his situation was hardly unique. The roofer and the lawyer and the housewife, they wondered the same thing. In essence, their pain was even commonplace: their lovers had abandoned them and so they grieved. Who, after all, had that not happened to?
He had seen Christian lying on a morgue gurney. Nothing would ever be as bad as what his face had looked like under the sheet.
And now he noticed that a peculiar odour had followed them into the car. Smelling it, Malcolm hoped he would not start to weep. When they dropped him off, they said that they would be in touch. Malcolm thanked them with a wince.
He didn’t come back to the salon. They were all waiting, expecting him, growing more and more edgy by the hour. Before closing, Alison finally phoned. She saw the crossed-out address in the Rolodex and the same number as before. It took a long time for him to answer, and when he did, he sounded as if he’d been asleep.
‘What?’ he asked.‘What do you want?’
‘We have to know what happened!’ she cried.
‘If you’re all so curious, why didn’t one of you go instead?’
She had nothing to say to that. She simply sat there clinging to the receiver, not looking at the drawn faces of the rest of them gathered in the reception area. After a long pause, Malcolm exhaled and said, ‘He’s dead.’
‘No,’ said Alison.
‘I saw him!’ he fairly screamed.
Amanda closed the salon for three days, but even then Alison didn’t completely believe that Christian wasn’t going to come back with the rest of them. The only other person Alison had known who’d died was her grandmother, when Alison was twelve. But she’d been old, white barbs of whiskers on her chin. After a series of strokes leading up to the one that finally killed her, she hadn’t known who Alison was, or even Alison’s mother, her own daughter. It was natural that she died. Christian had been thirty.
Three strange, suspended days. ‘My friend is dead,’ she told everyone she met. ‘My friend was killed.’ Hearing herself say it, she would begin to cry; but if she wasn’t talking about him, she didn’t feel a thing.
The telephone was partly to blame. When she called Christian, this was what she heard: ‘Greetings, loved one, you have reached three-three-one, zero-two-four-nine . . .’
It sounded like Christian alive and braying.
‘. . . Though I can never truly express my deep regret at being unable to take this, your treasured call, I pray that at the sound of the tone you’ll let me know I missed you.’
And in the pause she heard him, too—heavy in-breaths through his mouth. He’s there, she thought. He’s there.
‘Dear friend, as you make your way through this long day, be it blissful or a trial, rest assured that I do, with all my heart, miss you.’
‘It’s like that when a friend goes,’ was her mother’s opinion. ‘If it’s not someone you lived with, someone you saw every day, it takes a long time to sink in. When you get back to work, it will seem more real. Is there going to be a funeral?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There ought to be. You’ll need one, especially in circumstances like those.’
On the third night she dreamed she met him. They were in front of Vitae after hours, the salon darkened, Christian searching his pockets for the key. People walking past were slowing and, whereas in waking life they would have stared at Christian, now they looked at Alison suspiciously. It made her nervous and she wished Christian would hurry and unlock the door.
No one could see Christian but her, she realized.
He went ahead to the gallery where he stood waiting for her, looking just like Christian in his chains and strategically ripped jea
ns. But he wasn’t speaking and that, so out of character, began to make her feel afraid. Slowly, she walked towards him, Christian watching out of one eye, then the other, and when she was almost in front of him, when she could hear his clotted breathing, she reached out her hand for his.
Warm. Though nothing else in the dream was hot or cold, his hand in hers gave off a palpable heat. He was alive, she understood. Alive, and she the only one who knew it.
They set to doing what they had come for. In the gallery, the floor was strewn with hair. No one had remembered to sweep up. Without speaking, Alison and Christian began gathering the hair, scooping it up in handfuls, filling their arms with it. And when she woke in the middle of the night, she lay there smiling in the dark. For the first time in her life she had dreamed a temperature.
When they came back, it was to a macabre barbershop, black ribbons wound around the outside columns—Amanda’s idea. Too ostentatious, none of them liked it; it smacked of a business opportunity.
Thi brought two newspaper clippings. One article her husband had found when he had gone through their recycling box. The headline none of them had noticed during the holidays: SLAYING SIGNALS INTOLERANCE. ‘A victim as yet unidentified . . .’ it began. The second, from two days before, named Christian.
She hadn’t expected the anger, or that half the talk would be, not about Christian, but the nameless, faceless person who had killed him. She had not herself thought about revenge. But listening to Robert list off his friends and acquaintances who had been beaten up or threatened, she understood at last what Christian had meant by enemies. The gentlest person she knew was Robert. Now he sat fingering the ring in his eyebrow and talking about hate.
A week with no dance track, just sibilance and hush—whispers, scissors snipping, Alison sweeping up the hair. Pushing the broom against the little door, she remembered her dream.
A History of Forgetting Page 14
