Nothing Looks Familiar

by Shawn Syms

  Sean stripped down in the upstairs bathroom and turned on the hot and cold taps. He pulled the shower curtain across and soaped himself up, paying attention to his thick blond hair and his rank underarms and dirty ass. Fencing practice made him sweat and stink, but he preferred to shower at home, even though the claw-foot tub was small and he always got water on the floor. Sean was built tall and wide like a refrigerator. He had to negotiate his own bathroom like a gorilla trying to get into the driver’s seat of a Cooper Mini. But something about the shower room at the Salle D’Armes unnerved him too. The men’s changing facilities were so spare, the tiled floors so cold and ancient and cracked. Each showerhead was a mere nozzle jutting from a section of metal piping. A dozen guys scrubbed down, a few feet apart, fully exposed. The water was always too hot. And the room made Sean think of a gas chamber.

  The woman at the front desk knew not to give him a towel when he came. He thought he noticed her staring on a few occasions.

  “She wants your piggy in her blanket,” said his brother Daniel, who was also Sean’s fencing buddy. Danny sometimes talked bitchy like one of those drag queens, like RuPaul, only he was short, freckled, skinny, and white. Daniel and Sean looked nothing alike.

  “Bro, didn’t she see my ring?” Sean thought chicks who went after married men were scummy. He wasn’t interested.

  He poured a capful of Head & Shoulders into his hands and massaged his scalp. The banging started up again. It persisted for a minute, stopped, then picked back up again. Jackass. Sean felt the urge to go downstairs and build the Bennø CD rack or Bërgsbo bookcase for Les himself. And instruct him to load it up quietly. Sean suspected Les was intimidated by his build and demeanour—or at least he hoped so—but clearly not enough to fear his wrath for making such a racket. This guy’s got no respect, thought Sean.

  “Goddamn, what the fuck,” Sean muttered as he rinsed his hair then turned off the water. He grabbed a towel and pawed at himself with it. Pulling on a pair of gym shorts and a tank top, he stepped on a pile of Kate’s bras and panties on the floor as he hurried out of the bathroom and down the stairs. The phone rang, but he ignored it as he reached Les’s door and rapped three times.

  I’ve got my adult Nuk from Pacifiers R Us in my mouth, but I’d so much rather be suckling a woman’s breast. Especially if she’s lactating.

  My former therapist, Dr Zirknitz, says I like to dress like a baby because I abandoned my girlfriend and newborn son when I was eighteen. I think that’s simplistic and predictable. I believe you can like something for no reason, or at least no significant reason. Milly and the boy still live in Hull. I send cheques every month.

  I’ve got my favourite XL onesie on. It’s black with yellow rings around the collar and arm- and leg-holes. It has a picture of a giraffe on it. I bought it on eBay for twenty-five dollars. I picked it because it reminds me of the home uniform of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Also, I like dark colours, nothing too flashy.

  There are forty-six baby outfits in my closet. You can afford to indulge a little bit when you’re a highly paid human-rights consultant. I help people challenge mistreatment at the hands of the municipal, provincial, and federal governments. Right now I’m working on the case of a refugee who’s a part-time postal worker. She was sexually harassed—a pair of managers ganged up on her in the postal-sortation plant at the end of the night shift. I hate this kind of unspeakable bullshit, and I am very good at avenging it. We are going to win this case.

  I’m finally moving out of this dungeon in a month. I just gave Kate my notice this morning. But some things can’t wait. My adult-sized crib was delivered this morning. I didn’t see it till after dinner time because I was meeting the lawyers in Avizeh’s case. It took me two hours to put the gorgeous contraption together, including an interruption from that meathead Sean. But I followed the instructions, and it holds my weight. I’m lying in it right now. I’ve got two rooms down here, in addition to my own bathroom. The living room looks like any seventies rec room, but the bedroom is my baby haven. I’ve managed to keep that obnoxious goon from stepping too far onto my turf. Kate’s father used to leave me alone. He was a very polite man.

  I used to think I took a basement apartment because of shame or guilt about my adult-baby lifestyle. I started to see Zirknitz in an effort to sort through those feelings. What a waste of time. The old fool thinks everything in my life—my relationship to my mother, my choice of employment, my thoughts on my own penis size—ties into my life as an AB. I think it’s all bullshit. I’m moving into an expensive condo; I can afford it. So what if the movers balk at moving a crib that holds a man who’s thirty-one, five-nine, and weighs 205? I don’t need to hide. I do, however, need my diaper changed.

  A trio of firm knocks on the door. Perfect timing.

  Kate had missed her period for the first time in a long, long time. Nineteen days late. She was usually like clockwork.

  “How was the flight, Dad?” Auckland to Sydney. For a funeral.

  “Long, Kat. The movie made me cry. I’m not up for this.” Over Skype from his hotel room, Kate’s father’s voice had a computerized texture reminiscent of the chorus of Styx’s “Mr. Roboto.” He had dated a man from Sydney named David for a year, but it didn’t work out. David had been a very large man. One day, he just didn’t wake up. This would be the first time her father had seen him since the breakup. She didn’t know whether to pray for a closed casket or an open one. At the very least, a sturdy one, she thought.

  “I’m sorry.” Kate was organizing a pile of financial ledgers while she talked. As she put the top half of the stack down, the phone cord strummed against her left nipple. It felt sore.

  “I could use some good news for a change, that’s for sure.”

  She took this as her prompt. “I think I’m pregnant.”

  Excited, his voice sped up, rattling off questions without waiting for a reply. “Are you sure? How do you feel? Do you want to keep it? I didn’t think Sean had it in him. Always figured that dick was shooting blanks.”

  “I’m not sure.” Kate fanned herself with a balance sheet. The central air was on the fritz again. She had asked Sean to take a look, but she would just have to call the repair guys herself later today.

  Her father’s voice cracked. “I love you, Katty. Whatever you want to do, I support you. I love you so much.” The impending funeral, she thought. That’s why he’s over-emotional. She decided to pick up a pregnancy test. And make a doctor’s appointment.

  “Feel better, Dad. Call me again after the service, okay?”

  Kate traced in her mind the times she’d messed around recently. Sean’s brother Danny had put it in for a few strokes before she’d got a condom on him. Kate put the phone down and placed her client’s financial papers back on the desk. She needed to get outside. A walk to the bank. Get the rent cheque and deposit it. She walked downstairs and knocked three times on Les Montague’s door.

  Sean’s last client was a plump lady named Mitsuyo who worked for the government. She came to Modern Fitness on her flex hours, and Sean put Mitsuyo through her paces. The elliptical machine, an increasing number of push-ups. She would never be a supermodel, but he watched as a seed of new confidence germinated within her. That’s what made Sean feel good.

  He wore his gym shorts and tank home. Christ, it’s humid. The front door was cracked open when he got there. Got to deal with that busted central air, Sean thought. He wondered if Kate could take a break. For the first time in ages, he felt horny. Maybe it was the heat. He was developing a visible, potent chub.

  Sean picked up the handful of letters on the hallway table. Three for them and two for Les. He went downstairs to slide them under the door, but found it ajar. Sean poked his head inside, and was startled to hear the sound of a crying infant. “What the … ”

  The noise came from the corner bedroom. Not bothering to knock, Sean shoved the door open and strode through the basement, ducking his head for the low ceiling. Something was wrong. If Les is hurti
ng a kid, I’ll strangle him. Sean’s rod stopped throbbing and his balls moved protectively upward. He knew something was sick about that guy. He pushed the bedroom door wide open.

  The room smelled vaguely of fresh piss. Pastel blue walls festooned with a cartoon border—a recurring image of SpongeBob SquarePants chased by an electric eel wearing a lime-coloured baseball cap. The balding freak knelt inside a gargantuan wooden bedstead, balancing himself on the frame atop the vertical slats, wearing an enormous black terrycloth jumper. Kate stood shirtless next to the Brobdingnagian crib with one breast cupped in her hand. Les Montague slowly lapped at her tender aureole with a long flat tongue. He paused mid-lick, and offered Sean an infantile simper.

  Sean’s remnant semi-erection turned to sand in his shorts. Kate stood still, swivelling her neck to face him.

  “I’m having a baby,” she said. “I don’t think it’s yours.”

  The Eden Climber

  Ruthann was always a simpleton. It was true when we were children, and as true seven decades later. Glancing from my own bed to hers, I felt a tart mingling of pity and disappointment, like a sour taste at the back of my throat. But her drab cot was empty; the trio of welded steel bars that form her industrial bed rail imprisoned no one. She was in a different sort of jail: the chapel at the end of the hall. For a few hours, she traded physical incarceration for a spiritual one. I’d have smiled at my cleverness were the whole thing not so depressing.

  For decades, we saw one another just once every few years at holidays, then at our parents’ funerals. Little did I expect that my sister and I would share a bedroom once again, especially in as decrepit and demeaning a place as the Brentwood Pines Home for the Aged.

  “Where’s Ruthie, Cassandra?”

  I jumped in my chair. Gildette, a large, buxom orderly, had appeared in our room. And trailing behind her, a faint, sickly sweet whiff of feces. She’d just visited Ethel Grennier next door. That ancient Quebecois biddy was a veritable shit factory, moaning and yelling about her pained bowels in nasal, sharply accented English. The pale green walls were far too thin.

  “Praying,” I said, picking up one of the books next to my chair—Doris Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell—and acting as if I were reading it, to avoid further conversation.

  She smiled and put something down on the tray table next to Ruthann’s bed. Based on her facial features, I identified Gildette as West African, but hadn’t figured out exactly where. I didn’t recognize her accent. Of course, my travels in Africa were long ago.

  “I brought her a photocopy of today’s crossword puzzle.”

  “As long as it’s just the Vancouver Sun—she’s not lucid enough for the Globe.” It was true. Five years my senior at seventy-six, Ruthann was not the sharpest hoe in the proverbial shed. Thank Christ for her magnifying bar. The last thing I wanted was to read scriptures to her or help with an infernal grade-six-level puzzle. I felt a pang of longing for the days when Rupert and I used to work on the Sunday Times cryptic together. That would have been far beyond Ruthann’s capabilities, even back in her prime.

  Gildette turned and walked away, humming. How annoying.

  I peered out the window. Beyond the Brentwood Town Centre mall, one of the North Shore mountains poked into the sky. It reminded me of Mount Fuji, which Rupert and I saw on our honeymoon. This snow-capped peak felt just as distant.

  I’d just put the paperback down when I heard the telltale squeak of my sister’s wheelchair and her high-pitched, animated voice accompanied by a deeper, more melodious male counterpart. I grabbed the book, opened it to a random page, and pretended to study it.

  The blond, fresh-faced man who pushed Ruthann’s chair was Devon, her favourite orderly. He leaned into her and nodded, staring with attentive blue eyes. His short, trim haircut gave the outward appearance of an old-fashioned, conservative male, but I wasn’t fooled. The body language and physical build told a different story: he had the shallow and confident comportment of a soap-opera actor. His blue scrubs were too tight.

  I am suspicious of handsome people. They never have to work as hard as the rest of us, which blemishes their character. The orderly’s good looks had a single flaw: a wandering right eye that trailed behind his left for a second or two when he turned to look at you. I narrowed my gaze when he looked over, one eye lazily tracking the other.

  “ … and what sweet children they were,” Ruthann blathered. As usual, she was deliriously happy about something. “And such beautiful voices as well.”

  Devon nodded and murmured something in his low, seductive register. What a gigolo. I turned a page in my book but watched them discreetly. As they continued to chatter, Devon lowered the bed rail, elevated the upper half of the adjustable bed using the control button, then carefully lifted Ruthann from the chair to the bed. I’d only seen Gildette assist her that way. I didn’t know male orderlies were allowed to have such contact with the women residents. He set the tray table in front of her, grabbed a pencil out of his uniform’s breast pocket, and placed it delicately next to the sheet of paper.

  “Have a good afternoon, Ruthie. Maybe we should bring your sister to church next time. It might lift her spirits.”

  I snorted and turned another page in my paperback. Mentioning my atheism would probably only confuse him anyway. This boy was no doubt raised on apple pie and Jesus of Nazareth. Ruthann touched Devon’s arm and smiled. I grimaced. I peered over my book toward the weathered yellow floor tiles and watched the orderly’s blue suede running shoes recede from view. Once he was gone, I addressed my sister. “You were a lot longer than usual at chapel today, Ruthann. Why is that?”

  Ruthann looked up from her crossword puzzle and smiled. “Well, first of all, we had special visitors. The Kelowna Songsters. They were very talented boys and girls.”

  “They came all the way from Kelowna to Burnaby to sing at the chapel of Brentwood Pines?”

  Ruthann nodded excitedly. “They sang a song by Janet Jackson!”

  I’ve never been impressed by my sister’s devotion to the church, but I’m always amused by religious hypocrisy. I could imagine few celebrities more godless than the Jacksons. I tutted with mock indignation, pleased with myself. “That doesn’t sound very Christian to me.”

  “It was uplifting,” Ruthann protested with a benign smile. “After that, Devon and I practiced for tomorrow’s wheelchair race.”

  I gave her a withering look. A few days ago, an announcement was made in the lunch room about a wheelchair race to be held in the auditorium downstairs. I hadn’t been down those stairs since I got here three months ago. Loath as I was to make the effort tomorrow, I wanted to keep a watchful eye on that suspect orderly.

  “Why are you doing that with Devon? Why don’t you race with Rory’s help instead?” Rory was the other male intern on our floor. A long-haired, fat homosexual, he was fond of quoting Bette Davis while pushing Ruthann around in her wheelchair. If I ever reach the point where I’m reliant upon someone like that for my own mobility, I will end my life. This cane is torture enough. On further thought, maybe a chair might be better. My bunions make it feel like I’m walking with stones underfoot, and these ugly old-person shoes they gave me aren’t helping.

  “Devon is a lot stronger than Rory, I’m sure of that!” Ruthann giggled.

  “Nonsense. Rory is twice his size. You’d have a much better chance of winning.”

  “The person on your support team is only allowed to help you turn the corners around the pylons,” Ruthann corrected me. “The race will be a test of my own efforts.”

  I sighed, and she continued.

  “The Songsters will be there to sing a song and cheer us on. Then they are off to a benefit concert for VANDU, a support group for drug addicts in Vancouver.”

  How preposterous. Wasn’t Vandu the name of the killer whale at Marineland? Ruthann needed to get her hearing checked. I made a note to interrupt Gildette’s infernal humming the very next day to have that arranged.

  �
��Well, make sure Devon keeps his hands on the handlebars and off your shoulders. I don’t trust him.”

  Ruthann went blank and looked down at her crossword. Scanning the clues, a look of confusion crossed her face.

  I emitted gas. Grasping my cane with my right hand, I stood slowly and began to make my way to the toilet. I needed a bit of alone time. With any luck, Ruthann would fall asleep while I was in there, and I’ll have some peace and quiet between now and dinner time.

  Dinner. Speckled mush that resembled puréed carrots but tasted like wheat paste. I missed real food.

  “Well, Liza from the dementia ward has been with him, and she says that he’s got one fine instrument—and he knows how to play it too!”

  I sat at the smallest table in the grey dining hall, which I had all to myself. It was right by the open kitchen and also near the exit. This allowed me to get in and out of there as quickly as possible. My ears pricked up when I heard these bits of conversation from the nearby kitchen, accompanied by tawdry laughter. I figured out quickly who they were talking about.

  “Better a skin flute than a skin piccolo, I guess!” I recognized the voice of Rory, the gay orderly. It was deeper than the others, but still possessed feminine characteristics.

  Another woman replied. “The way she said it, it sounded like the tuba of love!”

  Laughter erupted in the open kitchen. At the table nearest me, a bald man with thick plastic eyeglasses dumped a forkful of greens into his juice. Low murmurs filled the dining room, punctuated occasionally by one large woman’s even larger voice. The one with Tourette’s—what was her name?

  “Suck my knob!” she bellowed. Her outburst hung in the air. With her right arm, she deliberately knocked over someone’s glass, spilling liquid all over the table. A man across from her wearing a fuzzy wool vest began to cry, shoulders convulsing. I had to look away.

  Through the kitchen doorway, I could see the bustle of orderlies assembling the last of the evening’s meal for the people they had to feed themselves. I fingered the fork on my tray, unable to take another bite of the dreadful meal. Another orderly spoke.