Do You Think This Is Strange?

by Aaron Cully Drake

  He looked at me, then back at her. “Well, she’d better bloody well take them off,” he said. “Tell her to take them off.”

  “But she won’t take them off.”

  “The hell she won’t.”

  “The hell she will,” I replied, then turned the pages faster.

  I could feel his glare. He stared at me for ten seconds. My mouth dried, I began to sweat, and I felt a pressing need to swallow. Then he went back to his desk and shuffled through his papers. Seeing a red manila folder on his desk, he picked it up and opened it. As he read it, he glanced up at Saskia three times.

  “Autistic,” he said. “Great.”

  Heads turned. Eyes fell on Saskia, the newest artifact of interest in the class.

  “P.D.D.N.O.S.” I said.

  Mr. Pringle looked at me. “Christ, Wyland, now what?”

  “I don’t know,” I hastily responded. I had meant to say nothing at all. I wasn’t interested in a conversation. Not another one. I’d already had one, earlier in the day, with Jim Worley. That was enough.

  “Okay,” said Mr. Pringle. He slammed his folder shut and put it down on the desk. “Do you know her?”

  “Yes.”

  He considered her as she ran a pencil back and forth under the water. Slight squeaks, barely audible above the sound of the central air coming from the ceiling above her, popped from her lips.

  Mr. Pringle nodded. “Congratulations, professor, she’s now your lab partner, and your responsibility. Go sit beside her. And, for God’s sake, get her to stop playing with the water taps.”

  I picked up my binder and carried it to her table. Moving the stool until it was as far away from her as it could be, I sat down. I slowly reached out and tapped her pencil with a single finger. She glanced at me, looked away quickly, then turned off the water faucet. She put the pencil down, sat back, and folded her hands in her lap, looking at the desktop.

  Mr. Pringle, after observing this, sighed and shook his head. “What idiot decided she was ready to use an open flame?”

  Saskia turned down her headphones and copied the notes that the teacher wrote on the chalkboard. She opened her book to the correct page. She read the text and turned the pages. She did her work in silence. Slightly, just slightly, the corner of her mouth turned up in the hint of a smile. And then it was gone. She turned her pages.

  As she did this, I began to feel a growing sense of alarm, because I was not supposed to find this as enjoyable as I did.

  THE SUNDAY MORNING INQUISITION

  The inquisition began, as per normal, Sunday morning, halfway through our patrol in the mountains behind the house.

  “Tell me three things that you’re excited about,” Bill said as we trudged forward, single file, at a slow enough pace to comfortably talk in short sentences, just fast enough that neither of us could sing. We had tried singing years before. It wasn’t satisfying. That is why we walk at this pace.

  Every week, I am asked to look forward to the upcoming week. Every week, Bill has to ask twice, because the pace is just fast enough that his patience for a response is abbreviated.

  “Three things, Freddy,” he said.

  We reached the crest of a hill and paused for a rest. There was a break in the trees and we could see the valley stretching below, until it disappeared in distant rain bursts.

  Tell him you’re excited about telling him three things you’re excited about, the threads urged.

  It won’t work, I told the threads. It never does.

  Maybe this time.

  “I’m excited about telling you three things,” I said and tried to look nonchalant.

  Bill frowned and stared at me, waiting.

  The jig is up! howled the threads.

  “Tell me the next two things you’re excited to tell me about,” Bill said.

  “Apples.”

  “You’re excited about apples?”

  “No,” I said. “Yes. Sometimes. Not now.”

  “Then why did you say ‘apples’?”

  “It was the first thing that came to mind.”

  The wind shivered the tops of the trees. “Freddy, do we have to go through this every time?”

  Say no, warned the smarter half of my mind.

  Just tell him yes, shouted the threads.

  “Not every time,” I said, which I thought was a happy medium.

  We don’t know what that means, said the threads.

  Bill rubbed his eyes. He sighed. He fiddled with the Velcro holding his water bottle to his belt.

  “Freddy,” he began.

  “Chemistry class,” I said quickly, and everyone in my head was surprised.

  We did not see that coming, said the threads.

  —

  I didn’t realize I was going to say it before I said it. It just came out. I blurted.

  I never blurt.

  Sometimes I stammer. Sometimes I pause mid-sentence because the threads have led me down a rabbit hole, and I have forgotten the last half of what I was going to say. And sometimes I stare because I have nothing to say. I can’t pull anything relevant from my queue of answers. The threads are silent. The smarter half is thinking about something else. I have been abandoned in my own mind, and I have nothing. So I just pick the nearest approximation. Usually, it’s something from a movie that I’ve seen recently.

  When I was younger and Bill asked me “How was school today?” I would answer with something relatively appropriate, perhaps from Finding Nemo.

  “Just keep swimming,” I’d chime. “Just keep swimming.”

  “Ah!” Bill would say and wonder if we’d Made a Breakthrough.

  That was then.

  Today, if he asked me, I would be more likely to answer with something from an Ed Norton movie.

  “How was school today?”

  “Welcome to Fight Club,” I would reply. “The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club!”

  He doesn’t ask how school went all that often.

  This time, I just led him into it. I didn’t know it was something I was looking forward to.

  Bill tilted his head. “Chemistry class,” he said slowly. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  I braced myself, for I knew that there were more questions coming. I had opened the door. Would I not expect that Bill would just walk right in?

  Change the subject!

  “Frogs,” I said. And I began walking.

  That did it. Bill pursed his lips and pondered the new revelation as he fell in behind me and we began our descent. “What about frogs?”

  “I’m excited about frogs. Frogs is the third thing I’m excited about.”

  “Why on God’s green earth would you be excited about frogs today?”

  “I’m excited about them every day.”

  He said, “Let’s go back to chemistry class. Why—”

  “Just keep swimming!” I shouted quickly. “Just keep swimming!”

  Down the valley, a low crack of thunder. Rain began falling on my hood.

  “Let’s get going,” Bill said, and I was all too ready to agree.

  —

  Despite the Three Things I Did or the Three Things I Look Forward To or the Three Things I’m Excited About, the trails behind my house remain a Favourite Thing. They have been a constant in my life.

  After my mother left, Bill and I walked the hills like soldiers to the front. Our heads down, single file, a strong march, with little time to look around. I thought a lot. One of the things I thought about was Saskia. I wondered where she was. I wondered if she still went to Excalibur House. And I wondered why, even years later, I still wondered these things.

  Saskia was one of my Favourite Things when we were friends. Even after I stopped seeing her, she remained a Favourite Thing. Over the years, new memories began to erode the spot she held in my mind, and I gradually thought about her less on my walks until, more than five years after I last saw her, I stopped
wondering. She sat down in her seat at the back of my mind and rarely crossed my thoughts.

  I don’t know why she remained such a Favourite Thing for so long, but she did. While she was on my list, I thought of it as rational. She was my friend, my only friend, and her absence didn’t seem a reason for her to stop being my friend. So, every week, for years after I left Excalibur House, she came with me on my walks.

  Hello, Freddy, she called out. Did you have a good day?

  I did. I had a good day.

  I had a good day too!

  I marched behind my father, while the winds played the trees like cellos and the trolls glowered down at me from the cliffs above.

  THE TALISMAN

  I opened my eyes and I was seven years old. The rain made a tat-tat-tat noise on my hood. I sat with my back against the cliff and listened to the wind shaking the trees, the rain like applause, and I waited for the trolls to come down and meet with me.

  Not long before that, I stood in the kitchen, staring out the window into the forest. The rain was our constant companion; it had been pouring for weeks. I wondered if there was something I could do about it. I went to my father’s room and searched through his desk until I found his jade talisman, the one he kept in his pocket when walking in the forest.

  I put on my raincoat and walked out the back door, through the yard, and past the gate. I didn’t stand or pause, but stepped between the two giant firs that stood like sentinels at the entrance to the forest. I went in. Among the trees, it was dark, and the water drops grew thicker, slapping on my hood like birds pecking at my brow.

  In my pocket, I nervously caressed the talisman.

  —

  Although I had heard the back door slam when I shut it behind me, I didn’t see it pop back out of its latch. When my father came home, the house was as cold as a tomb. I was, by then, too far away to hear his calls.

  He went upstairs to check my bedroom. When he found it empty, he went to his bedroom to phone the police. There, the dresser drawers were open, the contents astray; he saw how I had rifled through his things.

  The bottom drawer of his desk was open. His talisman was gone. He knew where I went.

  —

  Deep in the forest, I sat with my back against a lichen-strafed cliff wall. Across the valley, I saw mountains poking out from the mist.

  A hundred yards down the steep slope, my father, in a heavy green fisherman’s coat, grunted and cursed as he made his way over salal and deadfall, up to the base of the cliff, where I sat.

  He arrived, out of breath, and took a moment to compose himself.

  “Dammit, Freddy,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

  “Where’s Mom?” I asked, looking out into the disappearing mountains.

  His shoulders sagged. He sat beside me, and we didn’t speak for a half hour as night slipped overhead.

  —

  Ten years ago, the rain came like the locusts and stayed for three months. During its visit, there were only four days that staggered the downpour.

  On weekends, I stared out the window of the living room and watched the sidewalks, empty of neighbours. No one casually walked by anymore to see if my mother was dancing. They stayed out of the downpour, which was just as well, because my mother didn’t dance anymore. After the first few weeks of the rainfall, she shuffled about the living room in a housecoat and slippers, with a cup of coffee and a head full of morning hair. Sometimes she didn’t dress until dinner.

  When someone is feeling sad, you’re supposed to rub their backs and empathize. You are supposed to do kind things for them. But I didn’t know how to do any of that, I didn’t know what to say.

  I knew I was supposed to say, “What’s wrong?” but I wasn’t going to pretend. I already knew what was wrong: she was unhappy. At night, I sometimes sat in bed and stared at the wall, and listened to her crying in the living room. At other times, I awoke to the sound of my parents arguing. Sometimes, they shouted until my father stormed out of the house.

  Often, my name was one of the words shouted back and forth.

  On the fourth week of the downpour, she shuffled less about the living room and sat more in the sofa chair, staring at the rain, a glass of wine always in her hand. On the fifth week, she sat there for large parts of the day and would still be there when my father came home from work at night. He sometimes sat with her and drank his Bud Light in silence. On the sixth week, Bill began working overtime shifts and came home only after Mom had gone to bed.

  On the seventh week, she came early for me at Excalibur House. “Where’s Dad?” I asked, and she didn’t answer.

  I got in the car. “Where’s my booster seat?”

  The last thing we talked about was the location of my booster seat. It was a substantial conversation, lasting the entirety of the ride.

  She drove me to the station and held me tightly until I finally pushed her away. “It’s time for you to be a man now,” she said. “Get up and get on with your life.” Then she sat me on the bench, made me lie down and close my eyes, and she left. That’s just the way it is.

  I don’t remember how I got home. It’s one of the few things in my life I don’t remember. Instead, I remember lying on my back, looking at the dark night sky, as the rain fell on my face. I remember feeling cold, listening to the sound of people around me, the sounds of the train station, the ticking of cooling metal, the hiss of air being released from brakes.

  I remember someone standing over me, as I lay staring up at the sky.

  “What are you looking at, sport?” he said.

  THE CANDLES THAT RESTED

  ON MY TWIN BROTHER

  I opened my eyes and I was fourteen years old, in my bed, and my father was drinking in the kitchen. I couldn’t sleep, and the house was cold. I got up from bed and walked downstairs. I found him at the kitchen table.

  The kitchen table is my brother, my father often told me. When I was a child, he liked to tease me about it. It made no sense to me, but I liked it, because he played with me when he said it.

  “You’re the two funniest looking twins I’ve ever seen,” he told me, putting down his beer and chasing me to the living room, where my mother was dancing.

  The table and I are non-identical twins, so that makes us fraternal. We were both delivered on the same day. Me, at 9 pounds, 12 ounces. The table, at 158 pounds. I don’t know how many ounces. Me, with a slight swirl of blond hair. It, with oak stained cherry red.

  Both the kitchen table and I were difficult deliveries.

  The table was too large to easily fit through the front hall and had to go into the house through a more circuitous route, lifted up to the balcony, through the sliding door into the living room. Then to the nook in the kitchen.

  Similarly, I was too large to easily fit through a birth canal and had to go out through a more circuitous route. The womb from which I was ripped grieved petulantly. It mourned its loss, crying eleven units of blood over the next two hours. Until the surgeons finally stopped the flow of blood, it wasn’t known whether I would be born to a one- or two-parent family.

  The table was my father’s present to his beloved wife, to my mother, for the work she had done, for the sacrifice she gave. She could never have children again. I destroyed her womb. I blew shut the door from which I came, and no one could follow after me. I made my mother into a one-act play, and I was the plot.

  And now, fourteen years later, my father sat alone in the dark with his scotch and his candles.

  “Where’s Mom?” I asked him, and the candles danced.

  “You keep asking that,” he sighed.

  Outside, a flash of lightning turned the night to day, and I saw the alder at the window, tapping.

  “You know where she is,” he said. He motioned to the chair across from him. “Sit,” he said. “Just sit for a bit.”

  I sat down.

  “Have you asked me where Mom is before?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Have I told you the a
nswer before?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what the answer is.”

  “She left us.”

  He nodded.

  “When did she leave us?” he asked.

  I paused. “Seven years ago.”

  “How many days?”

  “Two thousand, seven hundred, and forty-three days.”

  He nodded again. “Two thousand, seven hundred, and forty-three days,” he said and took a sip of his scotch. “That’s a long time for you to keep asking, you know.”

  The refrigerator turned on. I listened to its chatter for a moment and it calmed my mind. I watched the candles flicker. They were a characteristic of our home. My father preferred them to a lamp. He claimed it made the evening more important.

  “A candle at the table means there are secrets, Freddy. A candle is intimate. On a night where there is only a candle for light, you are probably about to enter into a dialogue with your own soul.”

  He leaned toward me. “Tonight, boy,” he pointed his dying cigarette at me, “we can talk about questions of the soul.”

  “Why did she leave?” I asked.

  “Some people can’t handle it.” He shrugged.

  I stared out the window.

  “Listen,” he said. “There were stages we went through. I think they’re the same stages every parent like us goes through. Some of the stages overlap.” He held up his glass. “Like the drinking stage.

  “But the first stages are the same for everyone. First there’s shock, and you sit around waiting for someone to pull out the accidentally misplaced file and tell you it was all a mix-up. Then there’s the stage where you don’t believe it, what if the diagnosis was wrong, what if Freddy was just having a bad day?” He shook his head. “But deep down you know none of that is going to happen, because you’ve suspected for too long, you’ve lived with it for too long. You know it’s true. And you move on to the next stage.

  “You go through each phase and it’s tough,” he muttered as he stubbed out his cigarette. “Because nothing happens. You get angry, but there’s no one to be angry at. You sit in denial and hope that your kid will spontaneously get better. You do nothing and watch it get worse. After that, and for the rest of your life, you live with the guilt that you didn’t start soon enough.”