Kalila

by Rosemary Nixon

  But the idea of sex in a jail turned him on, Pearl slides forward on the sofa. This woman invented italics. Now what he didn’t realize —

  Sod it! While the owner sidetracked me tasting his linguine, his assistant wrapped inferior olives and slipped them in my bag!

  Pearl shoves her red-ankled feet together. Opens her mouth, pops it closed.

  I look from Virginia in her severe nut-brown dress to Pearl, who wears a shimmering taffeta, high ruffled neck, her legs have fallen open at the knee. Not only are the ankle socks astonishing in their redness, but they are trimmed with frilly pearled edges that furl outward, daffodil-like, and her shoes look 1940s, laces and an open toe.

  The thing is, Pearl zings a look at Virginia, but Virginia just keeps chewing, there’s a television monitor in every washroom. Mmm-hmm. You get the picture. So while they went at it, she flaps a hand to each in turn, ex-cuse my language, on the newly scrubbed bathroom floor, still wet, the only time, let me tell you, the wife could get it, she cranks her head, looks meaningfully at Carl, who gulps more gin, the guards ordered pizza, stood around at the station monitor, and watch —

  Irvin clamps down Brodie’s reaching hand and shrieks, Don’t taste the olives!

  Brodie shoots a fearful glance at Pearl. There is a lengthy silence after which Virginia asks Pearl’s husband to mix the drinks.

  What will you have? Carl asks me. Carl looks like a jockey masquerading as a World War One RAF pilot. He has the lack of height, the bomber jacket, which he keeps on in the house. His cigarettes are tucked inside its pocket, hair slicked back, a little moustache. Tiny hands. Perhaps a bit of wine?

  Yes, wine is nice, Virginia says, distractedly carting off the shameful olives. We’ll have wine for dinner.

  Mmm, gin?

  I sip my gin and tonic. Try the crackers with herbed cheese. Dare not a glance at Brodie.

  Where’s the baby? Carl says.

  Actually she’s in the hosp —

  Jadwiga Chmelyk’s dying! Pearl hollers toward the kitchen.

  Virginia returns and Carl replenishes the drinks. An argument ensues, a heated conversation in which the four try to outdo one another naming how many people they know who have dropped dead in the last year. Pearl pronounces hors d’oeuvres, horsie doov-res, causing Brodie to swallow his purloined olive whole. The list stretches competitively to Irvin’s grandmother’s sister’s friend, Pearl’s church caretaker, a golf partner, a ticket agent who served Virginia at Bass Outlet. Died of a bee sting. One.

  Brodie takes the offer of a second vodka.

  Dinner is artichoke hearts. Leg of lamb. Potato broisettes.

  Gold plates, Pearl’s little husband murmurs, tapping his own. He’s on my right. He leans so close our arm hairs brush. Four-hundred-and-fifty dollars per cup and saucer, this set. He takes a demure sip of his wine, looking pleased.

  Our cleaning lady keeps scraping away surfaces, Virginia announces. Irvin is dishing up each plate, handing them down the table. Virginia pauses, frowning, to watch him lop off a chunk of fat. We’ve had to hide our plates, our saucers.

  Marishkya’s also scrubbed off the surface of the ceramic tiles on the bathroom floor, more lamb? says Irvin.

  No thanks, says Pearl. A bit tallowy for my liking.

  Carl says, I shall.

  A scathing stare from Pearl.

  Marishkya rubbed the gold inlay off our antique chair. Virginia says in triumph, The woman can’t stop cleaning!

  We simply must get rid of her, says Irvin.

  Eighty-six-point-five per cent silver, Carl whispers in my ear, brandishing a spoon, his breath a hot breeze across my neck. You have a good figure! He smells of stale smoke. Nineteen-twenties smoke. I look at the spoon in his hand. Check my fork. Ignore his comment. The silver collection is inscribed with a flourished A. Irvin’s last name is Woolhouse. Did they steal the silver?

  Electronic shutters, Irvin is saying with a wave of his hand. I have them fixed so they all close at one time. They’re automatic. Virginia is jabbing buttons on the stereo.

  I got quite a start when Irvin began courting me. Virginia, standing, planted in her shoes. The first time he swooped closed the shutters, I felt — her fingers flutter to her ample chest — seduced!

  Brodie looks astonished, then very stern.

  Darling, what’s the name of that bridge in Vienna? Irvin asks. The one the groom carries the bride across for luck?

  Some grooms have to carry their bride across seven bridges to get any luck, Pearl says. Women in Vienna can’t afford scrawny husbands. She sniffs at Carl and turns away, tongue searching out a tooth.

  Carl shoves a narrow thumb in Pearl’s direction. She stepped out shopping for antiques in Vienna last summer, he murmurs, and showed up at the hotel three days later. He shrugs, reaches for a third helping of lamb.

  I gingerly accept Virginia’s offer of the four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar teacup.

  Carl, ignoring the signal for dessert, and Pearl’s pursed lips, saws off another chunk of meat with his eighty-six-point-five per cent silver knife. A clock strikes nine.

  Irvin says, I’ve just repaired my clock. He lays down his knife and fork. Face wasn’t there. Just the hands. They don’t make things like they used to. It’s a bloody nuisance. You expect the parts to work. I had to recut the gears. Hung weights on them finally, so the new gears would wear into each other. Ah, there go the blinds.

  And sure enough, in one swoop, on all sides, the landscape disappears and we are enclosed with four strangers, tea, and a dry European cake. Irvin offers liqueurs.

  After dinner, Irvin ushers Brodie into his study to show off his pocket watch collection. Carl isn’t invited, but then Carl’s fifth glass of vodka has pinned him to his chair. With the alternative of being crushed under Carl’s longing gazes while examining the bunions on Pearl’s feet — she’s due for surgery — and the stitches behind her ears — she’s had a facelift — I trail along. There, in the back room, trapped under the coffee table glass, lie Irvin’s watches.

  Watches that date back to the eighteenth century, Irvin says. They glint dull gold and silver.

  History under glass, he raps the table. Without watchbands, the watches look disabled. Irvin says, I can give you the history of each one. This one? Belonged to a French count. This? Early nineteenth-century Britain. This, a Jewish moneychanger. That one’s a pedometer. It measures how far a person goes. Came out of the Spanish Civil War.

  I point to one swathed in a tiny bag of grey brocade like a bunting bag. Could I have a peek at that one?

  Absolutely not, says Irvin. They must be kept sterile. He taps the glassed-in tabletop again. Museum pieces. These babes have walked through history. Did you know, he adds, at the turn of the eighteenth century, watchmakers got together to try to regulate the ticking of all clocks?

  What for? I ask.

  Irvin swings on me. Why, to control time! Have you not studied Umberto Eco? Did you not know a heartbeat sets its rhythm to the ticking of a bedside clock? Irvin looks disapprovingly at Brodie’s digital watch. Now, your watch there. It’s useless. It shows no circle of time. It just records a moment — look: ten-forty-three. It has no face to harbour where time’s gone. Or where it comes from.

  Well, time is relative, says Brodie.

  Irvin waves Brodie’s comment away, his gesture takes in all his watches, All keep perfect time, and he launches into an explanation of the perils of insurance for watch collections. I manouevre for the salon door. Brodie grins at me. Great timing! I am treated to a peek behind Pearl’s stitched-up ears.

  More rounds of cake and tea. Carl is gently snoring. Pearl appears set on staying until time itself runs out; she’s onto traffic on German autobahns and doesn’t even wave goodbye when at half past eleven, we slip back into the night, giggling, holding each other up on the thin-iced sidewalk. The wind has died. Air balmy with chinook. The roads shine blackly wet.

  Whew! Brodie chortles as we climb into the car. To think we turned down previ
ous invitations!

  We gun down Crowchild Trail, light-headed. The story has shifted gears.

  I breeze into Neonatal ICU on gusty winds of change. I want to hold her!

  A nurse opens the glass lid that encloses Kalila. The baby’s startled face against my breast.

  A note taped to a nearby baby’s isolette: Allergy to soy. Attempts to pull out tube.

  Suicide Watch!

  I picture babies flinging themselves in droves from their little bunks, babies stuffing squeaky rubber barbells down their throats, babies lying grimly on their food tubes. Not this baby. The bumpbump bumpbump of her heart. Kalila blinks cool air. I slip my hands beneath the baby’s nightie, smooth hot skin. Flesh of my flesh. The baby shifts, stretches one foot. Ahhhhh.

  We’ve tipped our toes into a fairy story; dreams do come true.

  Five-seventeen. You head home. Exams to mark. A sudden stab of grief, a sudden wrench of joy. You set your books down on the counter, watch a lone winter ant labour through a honey-stickied patch of counter.

  A survivor.

  Wind rushes your veins.

  You are entering the unknown.

  The future keeps on coming. They can’t take that away.

  Dr. Vanioc steps into the den to find that Diane has mounted a Colville print she bought online. It’s hanging on the feature wall. He snaps open a beer, drops on the couch, puts up his tired feet. There’s not much more than a moon and a cow. His head is aching. The cow is sleeping in a field. The child’s lungs aren’t clear. The sky has windblown clouds. As long as you keep parameters sterile and artificial you are taking a chance. The cow is in the foreground, a different kind of chance, a cattle shed on the horizon. But then when has Dr. Vanioc taken a chance at all? He squeezes the pain against his backbone. The parents are right in how they’ve interpreted — the cow’s back gently contours, rhyming with the hills. But in someone that small a judgment can be inaccurate — Bill Vanioc drops his feet. This picture should be peaceful, pleasing — Diane!

  Diane appears in the doorway with Cy and a plate of cheese and crackers. The baby, face smeared, grins, reaching for Dr. Vanioc. Isn’t it nice? Diane goes on about the tonal contrasts. They make the earth more luminous than the moon; and so the picture feels enchanted. The baby grabs Dr. Vanioc’s face. He doesn’t feel enchanted. He feels exhausted, hypnotized. He’s drinking his beer too fast and on an empty stomach. If she asphyxiates — his son’s tiny fingernails scratch and scratch.

  Dinner and W5. The plight of immigrants in our country. A cow dozes above Diane’s onyx bowls set on a weathered sky-blue entry table. Reality has shifted. Overqualified for jobs.

  February 26. Thirty-three below. A play of light. Ice fog with sunny breaks. Rustle of snowfall.

  Kalila’s coming home.

  One last time I step into the neonatal landscape. Survey the clutter, the thick black cords entangling, endless outlets clutching behind countless little beds. I have spent hours talking with the nurses, the doctors, the psychologist, the Upjohn organization who, like a big fat fairy godmother, will pay the bills. Yes, we know it will be hard. Yes, we’re grateful. What do they want? Grovelling?

  A baby carriage in the corner. An empty rocking chair. No abandoned glass slipper, no spinning wheel prick here. No poisoned apples. This fairy tale will have a happy ending.

  Baby Krueger, kitty-corner to Kalila, propped at an angle, is fed through a gastronomy tube as well. His father never visits. Ghost-thin and awkward, the mother curls over her baby’s emaciated body, fine hair masking her face. There’s a nervousness in neonatal this afternoon. Like the restlessness of cows when one is led off to the slaughter. Left on your own with your baby. It could happen.

  One last feeding lesson. 4 cc of Prosobee dribble down the elevated tube. I pour Prosobee from the narrow flask. Liquid gives in to gravity. The baby mews, moves softly in her bed. That little voice. 2 cc MCT oil spill down the tube. 1 cc digoxin.

  Kalila stares up at me while the Prosobee drips. She senses something is afoot. Her legs kick once. Her orange Nerf ball springs across the isolette. I tighten the clip to slow the drops, pull up the stool, open the isolette hatch, and draw the little one onto my lap, tubes trailing like ribbons, like first prize at the fair. Kalila’s small hand opens in a stationary wave. Goodbye, neonatal.

  I hum, begin to sing. Sail, baby, sail far across the sea. Kalila gawks. Heads shoot up, the babies skittish. Kalila stares harder, a frown of concentration creasing her tiny forehead. You see? Just mention escape and this baby’s on alert.

  If you have any problems, the Dutch nurse says, stopping by Kalila’s isolette, just call the hospital. She wrings my hand. You’re very brave.

  The social worker hovers, clipboard in hand. Marriages break up at times like this.

  Screw off.

  I’m here if you want to talk.

  I turn my back. I am marching Kalila out of this hostile country, deserting its roads of tubes and intravenous lines, its trails of glass boxes, beeping machines, brown walls, closing doors, bequeathing them to the less determined, to those who don’t know how to fight to win.

  I replace the sleeping child in her glass cupboard, ride down the elevator, and step into a frigid blue-white world. Wind eddies the snow in swirling spirits. Storm in the forecast. In the time it takes to run across the giant parking lot to my car, my left cheek freezes. The Toyota’s stiff motor barely turns. Five-thirty p.m. Dusk threads itself across the heavens.

  One night to go.

  I pull out of the hospital parking lot in a cloud of white exhaust, slide left onto Twenty-ninth Street, the terrible never-ending present vanishing in wisps of fog.

  By the time I jerk up to the house, the interior of the car is almost warm.

  You hover at the living room window, ache in your joints, peer through an oval frame of frost, burst open the front door, run out without your jacket, carry in the toy-loaded baby seat, slip on the front steps, trip over Skipper’s skittering paws, the porch so cold.

  A world of sharp edges. You’ve cleaned and rearranged the house. So many places a child might come to harm. You’ve started supper, your cooking a nervous habit. The house smells of sweet and sour. Maggie drops her coat and boots. While you set the table, Maggie stands in the baby’s room, peach-and-cream wallpaper. Orange is the most stimulating colour, the physiotherapist said.

  While you ladle the food, Maggie wanders to the front window to look beyond to the duplex where your neighbour slouches in the window mornings, scratching his underwear. Where a little girl lives.

  Tomorrow your own will live across the street.

  Sweet and sour pork ribs. Rice. Green beans. Baguette. Brodie spoons food into his mouth. Odd to be eating at a time like this. Sharing this Last Supper, remembering five months of grim and bloodless battle.

  Brodie reaches for his glass, and as he raises his milk, the tears slide.

  We’ll do all right, Brodie.

  I know.

  I lie in bed and listen to the crunch of tires on the street, to Skipper’s snuffly breaths. Imagine tomorrow’s negations. No waiting for the phone. No long drive to the hospital. No walk into that cold neonatal country where dreams are unloaded at the door. A gaping space across from Baby Krueger’s isolette. Will he sense Kalila’s absence? Will he wonder where she’s gone? Will the doctors, doing their rounds, experience a brief jerk of emotion? The chart for Kalila, thrown away? Her part played in hospital history over?

  Last night, Marigold’s girls burst through the door. A celebration. Last chance to babysit for a long time. Brodie popped their favourite disc into the DVD player, the two snuggled between us, Skipper scrunched at our feet, all chomping popcorn that still strews the carpet, and watched Mary Poppins and Eli dance their way through life’s tribulations.

  There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times … and all of them, as children know, penetrate each other, Eli said. The girls drew against us, fresh-wind scent in their hair.

  Outside, wi
nd growls itself into a storm.

  I twist to look at the alarm clock. Two a.m.

  Four months, twenty-seven days.

  Ten more hours.

  It is near noon when the white-and-yellow ambulance jerks onto the street piled high with snowdrifts.

  Maggie!

  Maggie at a run.

  You watch at the window, skittering heart, the driver jumps down, kicks up a snow spray. You, out this morning, six a.m., scraping the sidewalk, head lifted to the west. White clouds scuttle a whiter sky. You’ve spent the morning hunched over physics lab reports, drinking coffee, scrawling with your red pen. The tall thin passenger flings open the back doors, lifts out a small glass box. They stumble through the drifts, a baby between them, airborne, gazing at white sky. Her container touches down. Snow-scraped cement.

  Calgary, meet Kalila!

  Kalila, Calgary!

  Two strangers push a tiny child up the sidewalk, natural light enfolding itself round her for the first time, two awkward, swearing men, wheels catching in the snowdrifts, swoop this baby into air as they back up the stairs and stamp into the porch, fighting the awkward angles. Skipper crouched under the kitchen table, whining. The neighbour, face seamed, rumpled sweater, squinting across the street.

  And it’s happening. A tiny princess rolls through your living room, her coach trailing a track of dirty melting snow across the waiting carpet.

  The moving men unload Kalila in her winter nursery. Two icemen, breathing out of sync, smelling of snow and cold and outdoor boots, unload a glass-box baby, oxygen tent zipping, tubes and hoses sorted, Kalila already tumbled into exhausted sleep, deep breathing on her back, hospital nightie abandoned, in a surprising little dress of lacy forest-green, a five-month-old newborn, arm flung above her head.

  She sleeps just like her Grandma Watson! Maggie whispers.