The Secrets Men Keep

by Mark Sampson

  She forked an eyebrow at me and locked in her sharp blue stare, as if to goad me further.

  “See that one over there? I was fucking her for six months while her fiancé was travelling in the Amazon. Or how about that one? She was my best friend all through art school, totally platonic for years—until one night she seduced me and felt bad about it, and now we don’t speak anymore. Or that one: I don’t even know her name. She was some Hollis Street hooker who charged me 85 dollars—85 dollars!—for what amounted to half a hand job and a pat on the head.”

  “Have you sculpted me yet?”

  “You make meaning,” I mocked. “Jesus fucking Christ. You’re the dumbest person I’ve ever met.”

  “You’re so mean. Have you sculpted me yet or not?”

  “I have a good mind to move these back to your side of the lawn. What do you think that would mean?”

  Moving closer, she spotted the monocle sticking out of my breast pocket and snatched it up. I tried to stop her but she was too quick for me. “Why do you have to be so mean?” she asked, sticking the eyewear on her face.

  “Hey, I make meanness.” But the pith was gone from my words. Natalie’s eye, now a bloated poached egg, blared at me from behind the glass. Like a puppet with tangled strings, I moved my arms clumsily around her waist and bent down to kiss her.

  “So will you come to my staff party?” she asked. “You still haven’t given me a straight answer.”

  Sighing the weighty sigh of a man, I looked over her shoulder at the multitude of statues surrounding us. They stood silent and offered no help. “Fine. But I’ll have you know I’ll probably drink too much, talk too little, and go home with someone other than you.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she said. And with hands on my shoulders, forced me to my knees in front of her. It was a deed I took especial joy in, since it meant I didn’t have to answer the question she forgot to keep asking.

  ~

  We pushed through the noisy crowd, our drinks held aloft, on our way to the crowded table at the other end of the bar. It was hard to tell which of the people sitting there were employees of the Nautical Pub and which were merely friends, spouses, or lovers dragged along as I was. When we finally reached the table, Natalie set her martini down and ran to hug one of her girlfriends who had arrived while we were at the bar. Her friend then introduced Natalie to her brother, whom she brought along to meet some new people. I braced myself, waiting for the big introduction—This is Marlyn, the genius sculptor I told you about—but it never came. Natalie had either forgotten about or was ignoring me. I sat down at the table and took a long pull on my beer, nodding to strangers sitting across from me who barely nodded back. Feeling stranded, I returned my attention to Natalie, but she was already immersed in a conversation with her friend’s brother, tucking her hair behind her ears and touching his arm as they talked.

  I could see the dance floor beyond our table, its packed revelers moving like a segmented insect with several appendages raising gold-filled glasses in the air. This is what Natalie had been talking about, and I felt its tug on me and my inhibitions. All individuality seemed to disappear amidst the screaming fiddles and drunken ditties, as the reeling collective worked itself up into a frenzied madness. I drank and watched, all the while fighting the urge to join their numbers.

  A tug at my sleeve and I turned to find Natalie sitting next to me, her face inquisitive and planted in her upturned palm. “You want to dance?”

  I pulled and swallowed. “I don’t dance,” I said, hoping she’d convince me otherwise.

  “Well then do you mind if I dance with Bob?”

  “Who’s Bob?”

  “Sarah’s brother. You know, the guy I’ve been talking to for the last five minutes.”

  This Bob was a porcine hulk of a man with a shaved head bubbling up from his faded denim shirt. He stood there, hovering over Natalie, thick arms folded across doughy chest, and looked anxious to claim his prize should I admit defeat. I pictured them both then, in that moment, not dancing at all but making love on the dance floor to the time of fierce fiddles and a thick voice piping out the lyrics to “The Mary Ellen Carter.” And it made me wish I had brought my monocle.

  “So do you mind or not?” Natalie pressed.

  “Fill your boots,” I shrugged.

  So she grabbed Bob by the arm and together they disappeared into the fold of moving bodies. I sat there for a long time, soaking in my inaction as I tried not to look at them.

  “So what do you do?” someone finally asked me. It was a man across the table, redheaded and obscenely freckled.

  “Sorry?”

  “I said: What do you do?”

  “I turn food into energy and waste.”

  He didn’t know whether to smile or frown. “Um, no, what I meant was: what do you do . . . for a living?”

  “I’m a sculptor.”

  A few heads turned in my direction, curiosity piqued by the word. Finally, some recognition.

  “Oh yeah, Natalie mentioned you,” the redhead said. “What is it you sculpt?”

  “Female nudes, mostly. But I’ll sculpt anything I feel ought to be turned into stone.”

  The mouths around me gaped open. Someone chuckled uncomfortably, a little click of the throat that dissolved before it really began. The guy sitting next to the redhead looked at me. “That’s a bit harsh, wouldn’t you say?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it makes it sound like you’ve got a problem with the female body?”

  “Not at all,” I replied. I tried explaining my dense theories about stillness, about freezing positions and binding bodies. Those who continued to listen didn’t look like they were buying any of it. I talked some more, but each idea I voiced—my struggles against movement, the perfection of femininity in repose—seemed to dig the hole deeper and deeper. I looked over my shoulder at the dance floor and saw Natalie whooping it up, her body bouncing with exuberance while in the throes of a jig. I turned back to the remaining faces looking at me—the redhead and the guy sitting next to him. They were waiting for me to go on.

  “Sorry, I still don’t understand what you’re talking about,” the guy said. “What is it about the female body you need to ‘bind’ in that way?”

  “Look, I just like rendering . . . rendering it stationary. I . . .” I stopped. For the first time in my life I could hear my words as others did. I could see the two men creating a meaning that was not part of what I meant, yet there was no arguing with their interpretation. I plugged forward. “Look, I just, I mean, I’m . . . forcing it into . . . into stillness. Once I sculpt something, okay, it’s like it becomes . . . frozen in a moment.” God, that sounded horrible. It was horrible.

  “Have you sculpted Natalie naked?” the redhead asked.

  My mouth fell open. I looked back at the dance floor, but Natalie was hiding in the folds, out of visual range. The men were waiting for me to go on. My dirty little secret. I had sculpted Natalie. I never told her, never showed it to her. Now I felt my resolve snap and was suddenly awash in guilt. These two men, staring across at me with innocent curiosity, had no idea what they were doing. The centre of me felt like it was collapsing. I was suddenly ashamed of the statue that lay hidden under the velvet cloth in my studio. It may have had the intent stare of Natalie’s face, may have formed the spacious W of her breasts, may have recreated the soft clean cleft of her backside; but it was a representation of her as she had never been: motionless.

  “I highly doubt he could ever pin Natalie down long enough to sculpt her,” said the redheaded guy.

  “Yeah, she’s too much of a handful.”

  “I have to go,” I said, and got up from the table.

  “C’mon, you can tell us, man,” the redhead pressed. “We won’t tell her you said anything.”

  But I spun on my feet and headed for the
dance floor, pushing my way through the jigs and reels until I found Natalie, glowing with sweat. Bob had an arm on her waist but backed off when he saw me coming. “Hey, what are you doing here?” she asked, smiling with bleary-eyed enthusiasm. “I thought you didn’t dan—”

  I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to me, spinning us both forcibly around, completely out of time to the music, blurring the moving shapes surrounding us into one swirling mix.

  “I did carve you,” I said.

  “You . . . what?”

  “I did carve you. The other day you asked me and I never answered. I did carve you. But I’m going to destroy it. I don’t see you that way. Not anymore.” To prove my point, I kissed her hard and full on the mouth.

  “Whoah there. Too bad you can’t dance as well as you kiss. Here, let me lead.”

  “I want you,” I said. “The rock garden . . . I don’t need it anymore . . . okay . . . I just need you . . . just . . . you . . .” I slid my hands upwards.

  “Marlyn. Oh. Oh my,” she said, before grabbing both my hands in hers. “Okay. Here, slow down. Let me lead. Let me lead.”

  And so I did. She stopped our random spinning and stilled me for a moment. Then together, hand in hand, we began jumping up and down, a quick, hopping jig to the beat of the music and in unison with the crowd. The lyrics blared loud and sonorous in our ears:

  Oh me, oh my, I heard the old one sigh . . . but I could still shout to Natalie over the clamour. “I just want you . . . fucking want you . . . just, just please don’t go anywhere. . . .”

  Oh me, oh my, I think I’m gonna die . . .

  She leaned in close, and with a mouth reeking of her martini, said: “Take me home, right now, and I’ll bring us closer than we’ve ever been. You won’t have control like that, not ever again. But you’ll never be alone. I promise.”

  Oh me, oh my, I heard the old one say: “I never should have taken this excursion around the bay . . .”

  I followed her out of the bar and into the street, down the hill for a long disjointed walk along the waterfront. When we finally made it back to the duplex, I barely took notice of the rock garden as we stumbled by.

  ~

  There was a sliver of sunlight trickling between the shades of my studio window, throwing itself over my eye and blinding me. I took a step back to get out of its glare and the room became visible again. In my hands rested the heavy weight of a sledgehammer, its wooden handle smooth and cold inside my grip. Some of the navy blue paint on its head had chipped away over the years to reveal portions of black underneath. I felt manly as I held it, more like myself than I had in hours.

  My covertly carved statue was out from beneath its velvet cloth and on the dusty hardwood floor in front of me. Its thin vacant eyes stared at my ankles as it lay supine and unaware of its fate. I spread my feet on either side of it, raised the sledgehammer over my head, and took a deep breath. Then, with tightened muscles, I swung my weapon downward, hard and deliberate, striking Natalie on her side. Her shiny, smooth frame shattered, firing pieces of stone like missiles across the floor. Her head shot up and cartwheeled before clattering back down onto the hardwood in front of me. I met it eye to eye, its face inert and emotionless, so unlike the face it was meant to represent. I raised the sledgehammer once more and brought it down across the bridge of her nose. The face exploded, vapourizing into a cloud of dust.

  Just then the backdoor downstairs slammed. Natalie was back from her walk and looking to visit before heading off to work. She came bounding up the stairs and ran into my arms. “That’s a funny-looking tool for sculpting,” she said, stroking the handle of the sledgehammer. “Using it for anything in particular?”

  “Behave yourself,” I replied, turning my monocled eye towards her. “Go into my room and climb onto the bed. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Man,” she said, and spun playfully on her heels. As she headed out the door, she yanked open her jeans and shimmied them down her hips, smiling over her shoulder at me as she did. I took only cursory notice.

  Plucking the monocle off my face, I set it down on the desk where I kept my various other implements of creation—the chisels and buffers, the rags and finishers. The eyewear looked ordinary among their numbers. I thought about picking it back up and dropping it on the floor so I could smash it to pieces, like I had done to the statue it had helped to create. But I decided against it. There was a purpose to the monocle here among all this stone, and destroying it would do little to rescue me from its glassy, unblinking gaze. I just wasn’t going to bring it into the bedroom with me anymore. I would have to find other ways to keep things from running away from me.

  THE MAN ROOM

  The home invader’s face, grey and unshaven, appeared through the snow-scabbed window of the Man Room. Donald was on the floor playing Xbox at the time, a glass of whisky at his knee. He turned from the TV screen, flinched at the sight of the face, and knocked over his whisky. The home invader’s stare, framed in the paned glass, had not fallen onto Donald. Rather, it went to something beyond him—to the IKEA shelf against the wall where a huge, stately, taxidermied hawk sat on the top shelf, lording over the room. The hawk, wings up, talons clutching their wooden branch plinth, distracted the intruder for just an instant, but that instant was all Donald needed. He bolted to his feet a split second before the face vanished from the window.

  “Celine! Celine! Call 911!”

  Celine, the love of Donald’s life, in the next room sorting Christmas lights and talking to the baby in his play pen, called out “What?” even though she had in fact heard him. (She was always doing this—getting Donald to repeat himself even though she’d caught what he said, then smiling at him impishly.) She grabbed the cordless off an end table and rushed over to see Donald coming out of his Man Room, fumbling with the back door and then dashing into the winter night. She keyed in the numbers as she followed him outside, her heart racing. C’mon pick up pick up, she thought as she rounded the house. But when the operator finally came on, Celine halted. There, up on the slight hill by the neighbour’s fence, was a sight she had never seen before. The sight of her husband grappling in the snow with a stranger.

  She thought: Wow. He’s actually pretty strong.

  ~

  The hawk had come into their lives seven years earlier. Donald had spotted it trapped in the plow of the 23:30 from Sarnia as it rolled in during his four-to-midnight shift at Union Station. He was making his way down the platform with a dolly, ready to greet the Sarnia passengers and, if needed, lug their luggage. His VIA Rail-issued winter coat was bulky around his torso; his breath was up around his head in great transparent plumes. There, among the platform’s digital boards and numbered pikes and panels, he glimpsed the bird as it raced past him on the rapidly slowing train. Its wings were laced emblem-like through the tines of the plow, its head twisted up toward the outdoor ceiling as if contemplating a question. It looked majestic there, mesmerizing, like a feathery hood ornament.

  Abandoning his dolly for a moment, Donald double-timed it to the front of the train as it came to its final clanging halt. He stared at the bird, snug in its iron nest. The thing was frozen solid, dead as dead can be. But still, it was a god! Donald knew exactly what he was going to do. He looked up and down the platform to make sure no one was watching. He then took a breath, planted one foot on the yellow safety line, and then starfished himself across the plow. He reached, reached, reached over the tines until he could grab the hawk by its wing. He gave a tug and was surprised at how easily the bird came free.

  Back on the platform, Donald examined his find. With the exception of its broken neck, the hawk was in remarkable shape. Its feathers were an exquisite mottle of brown and white; its scythe-like beak was sharp; its eyes, even in death, were full of cunning. With his work gloves still on, Donald ruffled the hawk’s thick breast, stroked its head as if it were a pet. The idea of wha
t to do with this sudden acquisition flooded him in an instant. Did he turn his thoughts to Celine then, to what she might think? Maybe. But maybe not. At any rate, he took the bird over to a nearby trash bin, reached underneath to where he knew the spare plastic bags were kept, and pulled one out. He stuffed the bird inside, tied a knot, and stashed it under the bin until he finished helping the Sarnia passengers with their luggage.

  When he came back, Donald fished out the bird and smuggled it into the station proper and upstairs to the employee area, which overlooked Union Station’s grand hall. The employee area had a hallway of lockers and a room with couches and a fridge. There was a rumour that there had also been a firing range up here once, back when management had been an old boys’ club, but it had long been decommissioned. Donald opened his locker and stashed the hawk inside. He would keep it there until he had a chance to Google ‘Taxidermist Toronto.’

  He got that chance the next day. This was back when he and Celine still lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in a crumbling Parkdale walk-up. While Celine was out TAing an early morning class, Donald made himself comfortable at her wooden study desk and booted up their six-year-old Mac. Celine’s desk was spilling over with notes and library books for her PhD dissertation, called “The Meta-Ethics of Health Care: A Feminist Perspective,” which she would defend in another year or so. (Donald, meanwhile, had dropped out two credits shy of a BA in history six years earlier after some blow-up with a prof. He took the job at VIA Rail to tide them over until he could muster the courage to return to school. But two years later, Celine had failed to get some scholarship or other for her PhD, and they agreed he would postpone his own studies and continue working, at least until she graduated.) The desk was a favourite napping spot of their cat Thumper, who would spread out on Celine’s books and gnaw on the printer cord until she’d shoo him away.

  There it was: Taxidermist Toronto. One click found him several options. Donald stroked Thumper as he scrolled through them, and settled on a place out in Pickering because he liked the pictures on its website. He called to get a quote. “Can’t say until I see the animal,” the taxidermist said. “Can you bring it out here tomorrow?”