“Okay, Jeffrey. Go. Go.”
I straddle the boy’s waist. Set the knifetip horizontally across his windpipe below the Adam’s apple. Drive the knifepoint in, then squeeze either side of the wound. Still too small. Insert my pinkie finger. The boy’s tendons constrict around my fingertip. His slit trachea feels like a calamari ring. I thread the pen barrel in. Nicholas wraps the towel round his boy’s throat. I find the carotid snaking past the boy’s collarbone. Pressure stems the blood flow.
A man enters. He has the look of a SAD cowboy. His consort: a half-naked woman with a harelip.
“We called the medics.”
A medical evacuation helicopter touches down in the gravel lot. I stand in the rotor wash as it lifts off. The helicopter ascends until it is nothing but a blinking red dot.
I return to the motel room. The closet door smashed. Contents of the boy’s knapsack spilled over the carpet. Electronic equipment in Ziploc baggies. On the cover of his math booklet is a girl’s name. Encircled by a lopsided heart. I know that name.
General hospital. Lea side of Valleyview Road past the ambulance bays. Midnight. Patience Nanavatti sits in the passenger seat of my Vend-O-Mat Dodge Sprinter. On my lap is a box of cellulose packing peanuts.
“It is sensible.”
“You keep saying that. How will she breathe?”
“I will punch holes in the boxtop.”
“She’s not a turtle.”
I stack cases of soda onto a dolly. Patience sets Celeste gently into the bed of packing material. She moans when I close the flaps.
“I’m a bad mother, I guess.”
“But she is not your child. She never was.”
I have made Patience Nanavatti SAD. I cannot understand why she should react so. I merely outlined the truth of the matter.
The elevator takes me to the fifth floor. As I am pushing the dolly round a blind corner, I nearly collide with a nurse. The nurse’s patient is Abigail Burger.
Abigail is narcotically swollen inside a hospital gown. Her feet are covered in thick strings of blue veins, which I can see through her green paper shoes. The flesh of her face hangs in bags, as if fishing weights have been sewn under her skin.
“Gruh!” goes Abigail Burger. “Gruh!”
The most purely FRUSTRATED sound I have ever heard. Her breath is as sweet as baby food. She reaches for me. So strong. The nurse struggles to keep her in check.
“No soda machine up here,” the nurse says. “You want the caf.”
I double down the corridor into the neonatal ward. I carefully set Celeste in a plastic tub. Pluck stray peanuts off her blanket. To the tub I affix a note:
FORGIVE ME.
I pull into the horseshoe driveway of my employer’s cottage. The moon stands upon its exact reflection on the lake. Hours ago he called:
“Je . . . uuuuuurt suh– suh . . .”
Then the phone line went dead.
I open the cabin door. All is very quiet. Except a cupboard rattles under the kitchen sink. I open it. The dreadlocked one, Parkhurst, has squirmed underneath. His body is bent round the gooseneck projection of plumbing pipe. His face appears ovencharred, but no: only blood dried to a glaze.
I shut the cupboard.
In the viewing chamber, the casement windows open upon a starless sky. A squirming mass the size of a medicine ball occupies my employers’ wheelchair. On the floor beside it are empty bandage casings that still hold the strange shapes of whatever they once encased.
Inside the box is something holding the exact shape of my employer. Its skin is grey yet gleaming, silvery, shifting in the insubstantial light the way campfire embers will brighten in the wind. But as I watch, its flesh is paling to match the colour of my own. Its eyes are blobs of mercury in creased sockets. With one fingertip the thing traces the box where each pane meets.
“Whoever built this did a very adequate job.”
It opens its mouth against the glass. Puffs its cheeks like a blowfish. Deep down in its craw, little half-seen things are thrashing. It has no nostrils. But the quivering ball in the wheelchair has two slit-like dilations, side by each, fluttering in the manner of fish gills. They are the only feature it has, anymore.
“Are you scared of me?” the thing in the box asks.
I say: “I do not know what I am.”
“If it makes you feel any better, neither do I.”
It yawns. Blood emits from my nose.
“Eat the hearts of the innocent,” it says. “Is that what you think I’ll do?”
I say: “What will you do?”
“Go to Disneyland?”
“What are you?”
“Some call me demon, some say alien. Demon as it fits a ready-made definition, I guess. Alien as I don’t match any categorized flora or fauna on earth. I wish I knew what I was. You are lucky to be part of a species.”
It stretches, catlike. Snaps its jaws.
“Want to hear something funny? Although I don’t know if it is. That whole concept is lost on me.”
“Me, too.”
“Your species finds it impossible to envision an alien entity lacking the body structure, appendages in some arrangement, of organisms found on your planet. Your most common alien representation? The “Grey Man.” Big globe-like eyes. Legs, arms, fingers, toes. Or if not human-shaped, then spiderlegged. Or tentacle armed. Still legs, still arms. Or exactly the same bodily specifics as you, except furry. All with eyes and mouths: only more or fewer than you, or smaller or larger. Your imaginations can only conceive of organisms here, on this planet, reconfigured. Do you understand the mammothness of the universe? That there must be life hieing to no forms found here on Earth? Creatures without heads, or eyes, or organs. Only human beings are self-absorbed enough to believe all life in the universe must resemble them.”
Tiny openings appear in the nasal shelf above its top lip. The ball in the wheelchair is now utterly featureless. It bulges convulsively. Then it stops quivering. The thing points to the still ball.
“I promise you I am no better or worse than he was. It’s a one-to-one exchange.” The gesture it makes invites my acceptance. “If that is a fact, then tell me: how can your world be any worse with me in it?”
I wipe my nose. Then I ask:
“How would I do it?”
“Just say the words. Hey!”
“There’s something under the kitchen sink.”
“Oh, you can leave that to me.” The thing performs a jack-legged dance round its box. “Hey! Hey!”
I back out of the chamber. Blood is squeezing out of my pores. I close the front door. Almost. I press my mouth to that slit of darkness and whisper:
“I set you free.”
One year Teddy and I missed Halloween. Chickenpox. Mama made us costumes. Teddy, a teddy bear. “My cuddly Teddsy-weddsy,” said Mama, nuzzling him. I went as “Boxcar Jeffy,” a hobo. Mama painted my beard with an eyeliner pencil. My bindle was filled with tube socks. By the time we got over the contagion it was November 2nd. Mama dressed us up to take us out anyway.
“Why should it matter?” she told Cappy. “Surely our neighbours have leftover candy.”
On a cold night we went trick-or-treating. No jack-o-lanterns, except those that had been smashed by vandals or were decaying in trash cans. Mama knocked on doors around Sarah Court. Philip Nanavatti wasn’t confident he had any candy. The holiday having passed, you see. Mama had not ordered the Nanavatti’s squirrel shot yet.
“Come now, Phil,” said Mama. “Surely your daughter could part with a few candy bars from her stash. For my boys’ sake.”
Philip dutifully rummaged up a few granola bars. Not all neighbours were so obliging.
“Tell the belligerent bitch to take a hike,” came Frank Saberhagen’s voice from the family room when his wife answered Mama’s knock.
But Mama was persistent; we returned home with our plastic pumpkins full. I felt something indefinable for Mama. For what she had done. Was it LOVE? I could not say.
Squirrels gave every child on our block parasitic seatworms. Mama had “a bird” watching Teddy or me claw at our anuses. She ordered: “Don’t flush!”, then checked our leavings. At Shoppers Drugmart Mama bought a kit: Colonix Cleanse. Insisted upon administering it herself. Teddy, myself: naked on plastic sheets in the bathroom. Clutching our privates. We pried our buttocks open. Mama lubricated the plastic wand with flaxseed oil.
“Hold it, darlings. Hold it up there.”
Cappy quarrelled with her over this.
“You force them to hold two pictures of you in their heads. One’s this woman who feeds and houses them. The other’s an ass-invading bitch-wolf.”
“They can’t give themselves bloody enemas, William.”
“You’re half devil, Clara. I swear. Three quarters, some days.”
She envisioned a world where she was everyone’s Mama. She sought to hurt her darlings as only a child can be hurt by its mother.
From my employer’s I drive to hers.
Mama is in bed. Her sleep apnea machine hums. Mama removes the mask. Gulping inhales. Her eyes too round. Words mushed up. She cannot see the latex gloves on my hands.
She tells me a police officer named Mulligan barged in today.
“Investigating computer malfeasance. A ring of kids teased some poor youngster into a suicide attempt.” Suside ta-tempt. “But I don’t know my ass from my elbow with computers—do I, darling?” She nibbled her bottom lip. “He took your lovely gift away. As evidence. As if I’d even hurt a fly. He said my parole officer hasn’t even been born yet. That’s how long I’d be in jail.”
Every act of kindness I ever experienced came at her hands. She never hurt me because she never found a soft spot. But she took me in. I called her mother.
I pull the pillow from beneath her head. I settle it over her face. Apply pressure. Her startled slurs are muffled by the stuffing. Her hand rises, trembling, to touch my elbow. Then it is all thrashing. Grunting. Growling. One dead leg slips off the mattress. I slide myself on top to straddle her. Her big breasts bunch under my groin. Her nails tear grooves in my forearms. Her chest deflates between my thighs. I withdraw the pillow. The muscles of her face have come unglued. I see the silver fillings in her molars. She has wet herself. That almond-y smell. Thin rasps exit her throat. I snap the oxygen mask back over her face.
I find some Q-Tips in a bathroom drawer. Sit back with Mama. I take each finger very gently. I remove my skin cells where they have collected under each fingernail bed.
Patience Nanavatti has been sleeping at my apartment. She is packed when I arrive. Grocery bags filled with Sally Anne clothing. Enough, she believes, to make a clean start.
“You’re sweating,” she says. “There’s blood on you.”
A blistering ache sets up in my arms, my shoulders. Lactic acid burn. Chloride torching the muscle fibres. Matilda noses between my legs.
“Lie down, Jeff.”
“I am alright.”
“Lie down.”
“I will.”
I lie on the bed she has occupied previous nights. I have slept on the couch. The scent of her is in the sheets. It is not a bad smell at all. Patience Nanavatti pulls off her sweater. Blue static sparks pop along her torso.
I do it out of LOVE. Mama used to say this. “If I am brusque or insensitive it is because we are familiar and I LOVE you.” How much behaviour can you hide under the cover of LOVE? Allowances made to trample others because—because what? Because LOVE? Because you LOVE someone?
Patience Nanavatti lies beside me. We do not touch.
“I could take the dog,” she says. “You, too.”
To leave this town permanently—I do not know it is FEAR I feel, simply because I do not know the colour that emotion bleeds. There is a brittle cracking sensation, localized to my chest, through which burst wires that wriggle as earthworms do. To vacate these streets, these sights of long acquaintance . . .
As Cappy Lonnigan says: Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s the mystery.
“You must understand, Patience Nanavatti. I do not need you.”
“That’s fine, Jeff. I don’t need you, either.”
EPILOGUE
Summertime and squirrels abound on Sarah Court. The descendants of Alvin and Gadzooks! nest in trees whose outlines stand in calligraphic relief against the sky.
Nicholas Saberhagen’s car rounds the bend where Clara Russell’s house still stands. He pulls up in front of Fletcher Burger’s house. Burger himself is long gone—disseminated is more apt—but the house is currently occupied by his ex-wife and daughter.
Nicholas’s knock is answered by Abigail. Who is lovely in a violet sun dress. The scar on her throat is white, while the rest is tanned. She extends her hand to Nick, who receives it in a brotherly manner. They do not speak. Abby seldom does anymore.
They cross to the house where Nick grew up. His mother lives there now that her ex-husband is gone. Released on bail after his malpractice hearing, Frank Saberhagen booked clandestine passage to Brazil on a ship borne down the Saint Lawrence seaway. He was bitten by a stowaway spider. Its neurotoxin induced seizures and severe priapism. Frank Saberhagen thrashed to death in an airless metal cabin on a banana freighter in the dead calm of the Atlantic ocean. His limbs flexed hard as bowstrings. Teeth clenched so tight his molars impacted. He also happened to perish sporting a trouser-ripping erection.
Though I give the impression of omniscience, it is not so. Whether Frank is dead or alive in fortuitous or inhospitable circumstances is really up to you. Stiff as a rod in a Brazilian banana boat? Fine. Should you wish to picture him in more charitable circumstances, well, everything is within the realm of speculation.
Dylan Saberhagen runs out to greet his father and Abby. Had it been me guiding this narrative, I suppose I would have let him die at the Motor Motel. Please try not to hold this inclination towards the most horrid variable against me. How svelte the boy is! Brain damage altered the appetite suppression centre in Dylan’s brain. As has been said: the brain is a funny organ and it breaks in funny ways.
Nick’s car wends up Martindale past the pond where Dylan caught poison ivy years ago. Nick unrolls his window to let air flow through his spread fingers. Wind skates up Abigail’s legs to stir the hem of her dress. Nick’s gaze momentarily wanders to that bare strip of thigh—a sight that once would have locked a thrilling tension across his chest—but now he only lays a hand on the armrest as the fabric touches his fingertips to resettle.
The Lion’s Club carnival is on in Port Dalhousie. The heavenly smell of fried dough, or at least I’ve heard it described as such. The beach is studded with Tilt-A-Whirl, Zipper, bumper cars. All manned by a leathery roustabout. A pavilion christened “Our Poisoned Seas” is erected beside the marina. An oilcoated shark floats in a glass box of formaldehyde. Its black eyes stare over Lake Ontario.
An Educational Initiative Made Possible by Mister Conway Finnegan and Wal-Mart, reads the plaque beneath the shark.
The lake shore is teeming with residents awaiting the fireworks. A ferry crosses the lake, its windows bright as Kuggerand gold as if ferrying the sun itself.
Nicholas spots Wesley Hill and his son. They greet each other with great warmth. Colin has caught something he wants to show everyone. A lunar moth batters the cage of his spread fingers.
“You mustn’t do that,” Wesley tells his son, as he’d told him years ago. “Moths have a protective powder on their wings. If it comes off, it’s like . . . well, you without your skin.”
Colin opens his hands. The moth floats up into the night.
“Did I kill it?”
“He’ll be okay,” Dylan tells him. But everyone knows the moth will die.
You are all in this together. That huge thrashing teardrop of life. Consider the story threads. Where they start and end. A
young pyromaniac enthralled by fireworks ends with fresh eyes in a woman’s sockets. A car thief telling an odd boy how to hutwhirr a vayheckle ends with an equally odd boy hanging himself in a motel closet—only to be saved by that first odd boy, now a man, who once stole a Cadillac belonging to the other boy’s grandfather.
Some say the only way to break such chains is to leave the place they’ve been forged. Yet every town is essentially a box with an open top, isn’t it? If you do not make the choice to step out of the box, well, can you really call it a trap?
Further downshore stands my benefactor, Jeffrey, with Patience Nanavatti. They should not be here, as they could be spotted—indeed, Danny Mulligan stands not far away with his daughter Cassie upon his shoulders—but Patience’s father will be honoured with a fireworks fusillade tonight. Between them sits a bitch with a livid scar on her flank.
At the merry-go-round congregate the residents of Tufford Manor. Clive hands out blankets to his thin-blooded charges. William Lonnigan wipes away a runner of gossamer-thin drool descending from Clara Russell’s bottom lip. She’s by far the most docile tenant at Tufford Manor. Clara Russell causes absolutely no fuss at all. After all, she is alive in the sense a ficus plant can be considered alive.
I myself hover peripherally. The moonlight reflecting off my silver eyes tends to look alarming. When I alarm your species, you fuckers have a nasty habit of locking me up. Do you not enjoy my being here? I unnerve you. Yes, I do that. But it is quite possible I am not here at all. Could be it was only a box. You know, the sort magicians escape from. An empty, boring box. If that is what you would rather believe, well, I urge you to do so. It may even be true.
Dylan presses his forehead to Nicholas’s hip. As he gets taller he will adapt this same gesture to elevated portions of his father’s anatomy. He will press his forehead to the spot under Nicholas’s rib cage, the crook of his elbow, the round of one shoulder. When fully grown Dylan’s habit will be to wrap one hand gently round the back of his father’s skull and press their foreheads together.
Sarah Court Page 20
