The Withdrawal Method

by Pasha Malla

  What are you talking about?

  I'm talking about you, actually doing something for a change. Not just sitting back and watching and then going to your computer and typing it all down.

  I'm sorry?

  You know, it's too bad you wrecked that tape I was making. I was planning on playing it back for you, so you could actually hear yourself. Like, for real, instead of the version you make up in your head.

  What would you know about that?

  Listen, she said, kicking the covers off. I think one of us sleeping on the couch is a great idea. And I volunteer myself. Seriously. No problem. The bed's all yours.

  And then she ducked through the curtains and was gone. Womack looked down at the S-shaped indentation her body had imprinted on the mattress. Lying down, curling his own body to fill the shape, he could smell Adriane's hair on the pillow. He pulled the sheets around him and cocooned himself within the heat she had left behind.

  WOMACK'S LAST TASK before he puts the boy to bed is to give him water. This is not as simple as running the tap into a cup and tipping it down the boy's throat; while pureed foods are not a problem, the boy chokes on liquids. Drinking is a complicated, almost medical procedure. The boy has been outfitted with a sort of valve above his belly button. It looks to Womack like a valve you might find on a pair of children's water wings: a little tube that juts out of the boy's stomach and a stopper on a flexible hinge that plugs and unplugs the opening of the tube. In the corner of the bedroom, Womack sits the boy down in his wheelchair, lifts his shirt to expose the valve, and attaches a tube connected to an iv bag hanging from the ceiling. Water from the bag drips along the tube and directly into the boy's stomach. Womack sits back, waiting, and watches the boy drink.

  ONE OF THE last nights before Adriane moved out, Womack came home from volunteering and she was sleeping in the bed, the curtains open. The blankets on the couch were still there, crumpled in a woolly ball from where she had kicked them that morning. It was early, barely nine o'clock. Womack stood between the open curtains, looking down on her lying there, listening for the whistle of her breath. There was silence. Womack knew she was awake.

  Hey, he said, getting into bed.

  There was no reply, but Womack could feel her shifting, moving closer.

  Hey, he said again.

  Adriane turned over. Womack reached out and put his hand to her face, felt the wetness of tears on her cheek.

  Just sleeping, right? said Adriane. No fooling around.

  Womack nodded, avoided saying anything about old time's sake.

  He slid one arm underneath her neck, another around her back, his thigh between her legs. Their faces were close. Her breath was salty and hot.

  I miss you, he said.

  Adriane sniffed.

  He kissed her, then, felt her lips against his, but the kiss felt only like a gesture: a handshake, a nod, a wave goodbye. Then she turned and he curled tightly into her back and closed his eyes. After a few minutes like this, he felt her body relax as she fell asleep. Her breath came in deep, restful sighs.

  Womack lay there, the tickle of Adriane's hair against his face. Sleepless minutes became an hour. An hour became two. He was hot. He kicked the covers off. Another hour passed. Womack thought, Sleep, sleep. He tried to match his breathing to hers. Eventually, he rolled away, releasing her, and sat up. Legs dangling off the bed, Womack looked at Adriane over his shoulder. Her face.

  In the kitchen Womack filled a mug with milk and put it in the microwave, which whirred to life and cast a yellow glow in the dark kitchen. He leaned back on the counter in front of the refrigerator, smiled, then reached forward, opening the freezer. A cold blast of air, and there was the turkey, surrounded by ice-cube trays and Tv dinners and Tupperware.

  In the den, Womack sat down with his warm milk on the uncomfortable chair and turned on his computer. He sipped at the milk while things booted up, thinking of the turkey in the freezer: a last sad attempt at domesticity, futile and abandoned and collecting the white fur of frost.

  When the computer was ready, he opened up the file on the desktop that was his novel and sat there, reading it over, rolling slightly this way and that. He leaned back. The milk was done. He let the cup rest in his lap, stretched out his legs, and the next morning when Adriane woke, she found him asleep in the chair underneath the window, the computer's screensaver whirling around on the other side of the room.

  ON THE BOY's bed are a harness and guardrail to prevent him from rolling out over the course of the night. These Womack once forgot to put in place; he realized the following morning and promptly called the boy's mother to make sure the boy had not cracked his skull open over the course of the night. The boy had not. Sylvia explained that every night after Womack leaves the house, she checks on her son and kisses him goodnight.

  NOW IT is the last Saturday before Christmas. Next week the family has told Womack to take the day off. A holiday. But today Womack is scheduled to head out there on his bicycle, to go through his routine with the boy of opening doors and supper and bathtime and bedtime.

  In his place that he now inhabits alone, in his place that is not quite loft and not quite apartment, his place that contains just under half as much furniture and two tropical houseplants fewer than it did a few weeks prior, Womack gets ready for his day of volunteering. He eats a sensible lunch of a bowl of soup, a bagel, and an apple. The coffee maker is gone, so instead Womack makes a cup of tea, which he sips while he edits a draft of his novel, not yet complete but still printed out and lying in two stacks on the kitchen table. He works with a blue pen on the stack of paper to his right. The completed pages he turns over and adds to the stack to his left. If he were honest with himself, he would admit that he cannot write anything new; the editing gives him something to do.

  When it is time to leave, Womack finishes the page he is working on, stands, puts on his coat and hat and gloves, checks for the key to his bike lock in his pocket. At the door on his way out, he pauses for a moment, looking back across the kitchen, at the refrigerator, at the freezer.

  At the family's house Sylvia is waiting, as always, with her son in his wheelchair, but this time the other children are decorating a Christmas tree in the corner of the room. Andrew is hanging ornaments with methodical symmetry; Jessica is wrapping the branches in silver tinsel. A blue macaroni angel looms above. Womack removes his coat and hat and gloves, lowers his backpack to the ground.

  What's in the bag? asks the boy's mother.

  Ah, says Womack. A little present.

  He opens the zipper, and, shaking the backpack a bit, produces the turkey.

  A turkey, says Sylvia. Beside her, the boy begins to moan.

  I thought we could maybe have it tonight, says Womack, cradling it like an infant, adding, Together.

  That's very kind of you, says Sylvia, but I think it's still frozen. It'll take at least a day to thaw before we can even think about cooking it.

  Womack wavers at this, feeling vulnerable and foolish.

  Hastily, Sylvia holds out her hands for the turkey. But if you're not going to eat it, we'd love to keep it for another time.

  Womack smiles. The boy moans. Okay, says Womack.

  The rest of the afternoon is spent predictably: the walking about, the doors, supper, the boy's bath. Womack lies the boy down on his bed, lifts the boy's legs up in the air, does his best to get the diaper on. Next: pajamas. Outside the December sky glows a dull orange. Womack closes the blinds of the boy's bedroom, pulls back the covers, starts to lift the latches on the guardrail to secure it alongside the mattress.

  When the boy is safely in bed, Womack's duties will be over for the evening. He will cross the hall and knock on Sylvia's bedroom door. He will hear the click of the lock and the door will open and Sylvia will smile a tired sort of smile and say, Thank you, Martin, Merry Christmas, and Martin Womack will say, No problem, Merry Christmas to you too. He will say, See you in two weeks, Sylvia, and Sylvia will say, Yes.

  Bu
t tonight, Womack realizes, in the den Jessica and Andrew will not be packing up The Game of Life, Jessica having won again, her little car packed with the blue and pink pegs of a successful family, her bank account bursting, her assets bountiful. They will have finished decorating the tree. They might be watching a movie, a Christmas movie, the tree blinking coloured lights from the corner of the room. Goodbye, Womack will whisper, as he puts on his coat. Jessica will say, Your turkey's in the fridge, not turning from the movie, and Andrew will wave and grin.

  And so Womack will leave the family. He will head outside and unchain his bicycle and hop up onto it and push off and begin to pedal his way home, where his half-written novel waits for him on his kitchen table. The bicycle will cut down the darkened streets of the suburbs, heading toward the city and the novel. The streets will be black and wet with melted snow and spangled golden with streetlights, and riding back home along them, through the winter night, will tonight feel to Womack a little bit like falling.

  WHEN JACQUES COUSTEAU

  GAVE PABLO PICASSO

  A PIECE OF BLACK CORAL

  ON ONE OF their many dives in the Red Sea, Jacques Cousteau and his crew excavated a piece of rare black coral from the reefs off the shores of the Sudan. Months later, Cousteau sat with Pablo Picasso on the whitewashed balcony of the painter's villa in Cannes, drinking wine of an inconsequential vintage and gazing out over the Mediterranean.

  "I've brought you something," Cousteau said, reaching into his satchel and producing the coral. He handed it to his friend. "The Saudis use it to make prayer beads."

  Picasso nodded, turning the coral over in his hands. It was a small branch from one of the great underwater trees, brownish and knobby. Beneath the villa, the sea crashed frothing against the seawall.

  "It took one of our men over an hour to saw it off." Cousteau smiled. "He came up covered in coral mucus. Two days to wash himself clean."

  Picasso nodded again. He ran his thumb over the coral's rough terrain, cataloging its crevices and ridges by touch. Then, with a jerky motion, the painter tossed the coral into the air, caught it, and dropped it into the pocket of his baggy velvet trousers, where it became a vague lump in the soft fabric. Picasso raised his glass to Cousteau. "Thank you," he said, and swallowed the wine in a single gulp.

  INSIDE, COUSTEAU moved from room to room admiring the art that filled the villa: paintings piled on floors, drawings pinned to walls, sculptures clumped in corners. He stopped before a sketch of Picasso's mural at the UNESCO building in Paris. In its centre was what looked like a spindly blue man, falling downwards, arms flailing over his head.

  Picasso slid up beside Cousteau and placed a hand on the explorer's shoulder. Cousteau pointed to the man in the picture. "What's he meant to be doing?"

  "You know," Picasso said, "art critics have written extensively about that figure. Some say it is the fall of Icarus. Others that it is Lucifer being cast from heaven."

  "So?" said Cousteau, still staring at the drawing.

  "Don't tell anybody, Jacques." Here Picasso leaned in closer, his mouth almost touching Cousteau's ear, the wine sweet and lemony on his breath. He whispered, "I was just trying to paint a diver."

  WHEN IT WAS time for Cousteau to leave, Picasso walked with him down the stone stairs of the villa. With one arm he held the door open for Cousteau as he stepped outside onto the street. Picasso's other hand remained buried deep in the pocket of his trousers.

  "Sorry to run, Pablito," said Cousteau, "but I'm playing truant from my crew."

  Picasso laughed. "Back to discovering lost worlds," he said.

  "And you, back to inventing new ones." Cousteau reached out to shake hands.

  Picasso hastily removed his hand from his pocket. In it, a rusty, mottled husk, sat the piece of black coral. He paused for a moment, locking eyes with his friend. Then, before either could speak, Picasso slapped his hand into Cousteau's, clasping the coral between their palms. Cousteau felt it there, the sharp sting of its knobs and spines. Picasso pumped his arm vigorously, crushing the coral into Cousteau's hand. Then he pulled away.

  "Take care, Jacques," Picasso said, grinning. He dropped the coral into his pocket, waved, and closed the door.

  Cousteau was left standing on the street, the midday sun slicing down and carving shadows from the rooftops, the thunder of surf in the distance. His palm still stung. Turning his hand over, looking down, Cousteau saw what had been etched there: a pattern of holes and furrows and puckered wrinkles, carved deep and pink into his skin.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  "The Film We Made About Dads" was first published online at sweetfancymoses.com, and subsequently in Maisonneuve magazine.

  "Pushing Oceans In and Pulling Oceans Out" was first published in Prism International as "Pulling Oceans In and Pushing Oceans Out."

  The postcard described in "Dizzy When You Look Down In" is real and very exciting.

  "The Love Life of the Automaton Turk" could not have been written without Mark Sussman's essay, "Performing the Intelligent Machine: Deception and Enchantment in the Life of the Automaton Chess Player," published in The Drama Review and The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine by Tom Standage.

  "The Past Composed" was first published in Grain and subsequently in The Journey Prize Stories 16. The art exhibit described in this story is an installation by Douglas Gordon called "30 Second Text."

  "Respite" was first published in Malahat Review and subsequently in The Journey Prize Stories 18. The Fountain Group is based on Le Phare, a non-profit organization that provides respite care to families with terminally ill children in Montreal. Please donate money to them.

  "When Jacques Cousteau Gave Pablo Picasso a Piece of Black Coral" was first published in Prairie Fire and borrows heavily from Cousteau's excellent book The Living Sea.

  I'd like to express special gratitude to the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council for financial assistance.

  There are many, many people who deserve credit for their various roles in helping turn a file on my computer into this book. Thanks to each and every one of you, very much, for all your help and support.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PASHA MALLA was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, grew up in London, Ontario, and now lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has written regularly for McSweeney's, has had multiple stories nominated for the Pushcart and journey prizes, and has contributed to CBC Radio's "Definitely Not the Opera." He is currently working on a novel to be published by Anansi in 2010.

  Table of Contents

  The Slough I

  Big City Girls 1

  The Film We Made About Dads 1

  Pushing Oceans In and Pulling Oceans Out 1

  Long Short Short Long 1

  Dizzy When You Look Down In 1

  Being Like Bulls 1

  The Love Life of the Automaton Turk 1

  Pet Therapy 1

  The Past Composed 1

  Timber on the Wheel of Everyone 1

  Respite 1

  When Jacques Cousteau Gave Pablo Picasso a Piece of Black Coral 1