by Mike Barnes
Mom submitting herself to Dr. Spira’s treatment table, meekly and somehow happily. Another sacrifice. She looked small lying there. Her feet dangled off sideways until I shifted them in line with her body. “Thank you, dear.”
No sign of pain, even in her eyes, when Dr. Spira injected the freezing in her upper lip, then cut the wedge out of her filtrum and seared the spot with several blasts of liquid nitrogen. She lay still as a statue, hands folded across her stomach.
“A high threshold,” Dad used to say of her. “The highest pain threshold I’ve ever seen.” Which meant something coming from an anaesthetist. But a strange thing to say—I thought so even as a child—about your wife. An odd compliment to keep repeating.
When her leg veins became varicose—she would have been in her late thirties, all of her children born—they used to go over to the ER in the evening so he could “strip her veins.” They made the procedure sound minor—though how could it be, the stripping of veins? She would come back bandaged from thigh to ankle, limping and joking about her “elephant legs.”
An online site tells me now that vein stripping—when it is still done—is done under general or spinal anaesthesia. Yet they were gone and back in an hour.
A high threshold.
Now I’m the one who feels cold—the cold I’ve felt before with the Wyverns. Cold to give you the queasy shivers. It drives me out of the silent shade and into the populated sun. Two Chinese men sitting on lawn chairs under a willow, fishing poles planted, bobbers out where the stream widens through rushes into the pond. Seeing them like emerging from a deserted subway into a city square at noon.
The more I read, the more light is shed, the more darkness is discovered.
Sandor’s growing sorrow and pity, multiplied by guilt, remorse. Exhaustion. Burnout. Which broke him, surely, I have no trouble believing that part. But why did contrition never make it up into atonement? Giving up on visiting Maude eventually, downing pints with his friends the night after her death. Doing nothing—nothing I can see—to help Judy, his sister and a windblown moaning ghost these four-and-a-half decades. Like a confession record stuck on bad I’m sorry bad I’m sorry… Can’t unstick to make it better… make a start.
No wonder you needed a high threshold.
From the deck of the disused snack shop, I see us looking back from the bench across the pond.
Maude and I. Snack bags in our laps.
No trace of fucking Sandor.
There’s a stone bridge at the other end of the pond, near the parking lot, with a sluice gate under it controlling the waterfall that drops down fifteen feet or so and runs on in a fast, narrow stream curving past willow banks. The volume of water coming through tells how much water the lazy-looking stream at the other end brings in through the deadfall and bulrushes. Leaning against the railing, looking up occasionally at the dark clump of trees at the other end where I was, I open the book again. People pass behind me, saying “Excuse me” to squeeze a stroller or walker past.
Sunflower 21 August
I feel guilty for snapping at her, and alone in that feeling too. The special loneliness of being with someone with dementia is to be alone with your understanding. To be singly responsible for the total survey of two people and their situation. But the wrong in that is that it places too much emphasis on companionship of the mind. I pack up the lunch and we go on. Slower and slower she moves, hunching further over the walker. She shows no sign of unhappiness. Only an endless puzzlement and curiosity about the now always new-to-her. “What is that orange?” “The worker’s vest on the next property.” “What’s that sound?” “A cicada.” “Bzzz. Humming. Humming brr, hummer brr…” “A humming bird?” “Yes, that one.”
And then one of those astounding moments. As we pass the window of her room, which she usually can’t recognize from outside or another direction, I say, “There’s your sunflower.” “Yes,” she says. “Facing east. Is that right?” Peering up at me. “Yes, it is. Exactly.”
Driving home, more of the visit comes back to me, as often happens. Driving a kind of processing. When I arrived, she talked of what a wonderful place Vivera is, how kind the people are to her, how “lucky” she feels—beaming with unfeigned gratitude. As if she needs to believe, and has succeeded in believing, that she is in the best and safest of all possible situations. In her smiles and wide-eyed exclamations I saw a terrifying vulnerability.
The same terrifying vulnerability that prompted her anaesthetist husband to pack her away after her suicide attempt? The hassle—the endless hassles—of dealing with people not asleep. The Sandman seems to hover behind these pages, a source of unspecified darkness. Stripping veins. The daughter he wronged.
I button the book in my lower jacket pocket and resume walking around the pond. I do the whole circuit on the path. Once, twice, three times. Then a fourth—quickening my pace each time. Like a power walker—one who passes me, in spandex and wrist weights, beams solidarity—though I’m chasing a totally different kind of fitness. In fact, each lap brings more stabs and throbs from all the fracture and dislocation sites. All the ones I remember—from fights, from accidents, from stupid stunts—and all the ones I sense but can’t remember, since they happened outside of conscious memory. Damaged goods.
Stop… ease up for chrissakes! Anyone seeing my increasingly distorted limp, the grimaces I can’t suppress at particularly sharp jolts, would tell me that. But the pain is just what I’m after. It stokes the cold fury I need stoked.
Infants gumming grins from strollers. Seniors from walkers or wheelchairs. Middle-aged man matching the slow advance of a younger companion between canes. The able-bodied, the disabled. Young, old. Singles. Couples. Even teenagers breaking out of mutual engrossment to say hello. The whole human family at its warmest is greeting me with a smile of welcome. It’s almost unbearable—like a travel brochure in the hole. It makes me walk faster, but the faster I walk, the faster it comes towards me.
Family. Belonging.
Why do—how can—Max and Sandor prefer their hamster wheels of piss-smelling pints and porn shots in a dental bib?
Especially when Sandor knows better. Or knew, at least. Around Toogood Pond proves it. He saw a better path—walked it for a long time—and then stopped. Gave up. His “breakdown.” Fair enough. But breakdowns come and breakdowns go—what’re you going to do about it, that’s what I’d like to know. Graceland Lois’s favourite album—and the songs sank into me too. Before my all-jazz era.
It’s Sandor I feel the greatest rage for. Probably because he’s not all bad, far from it—and the not-bad part goads me like a key just out of reach. Max a clearer case. His royalties for Christmas Music are coming to him, coming soon. No need to think further on it. But Sandor? Comes from a family that, behind a glossy veneer, operates like a drug cartel: the strong reaping the family winnings, the weak tossed to the side of the road. Judy. Maude. And Sandor himself? Nobody said this breakdown was his first. But somewhere along the way, he did the hard and tricky work of escaping from the family freezer, stepping into the sun. Maybe just partway, maybe not for long—few escapes are permanent.
There’s just now, now. Lois’s mantra.
Every goodness in the world owing fidelity to that. And every evil to its flouting.
A plump Jehovah’s Witness with thinning hair has set up where the path meets the parking lot. You can’t retrieve your car without bumping into him. The woman ahead of me pushes through his outstretched arm like a turnstile. I stop momentarily, long enough to glance at what’s placed in my hand. Usual atrocious art—a couple from behind, her head on his shoulder, staring at a fading wall of photographs of a girl. Can the dead live again?
“Of course they can,” I say. “Who else do we spend our days with?”
Push the pamphlet back at his chest and move on without clocking his reaction.
§
Sandor’s at the
long table in the front room of the Queen’s Arms. With his group from a week ago. Some of them anyway. There’s the blonde’s refined husband, nodding intelligently at something Sandor’s saying, but no sign of the blonde. One of the younger faces I seem to recall, but another couple are new. And a pudgy, middle-aged pair with round, cheerful faces I’ve never seen before. Sandor’s in the center, explaining something with hand gestures.
Can a breakdown actually enrich a social life? From what I’m seeing, maybe yes.
At my entrance, all three Kims go for the phone behind the bar, each anxious to make the call. Ella gets there first. Father watches her while Mother keeps an eye on me. I won’t be staying long enough to meet the cops.
“Ah, my evil twin!” Sandor says, raising his glass as I approach the table.
It stops me for a moment. My mind goes blank. Which Sandor obviously relishes, peeking at me over the rim as he guzzles.
Then he wrong-foots me again, when I start to tug his book from my pocket. “Are you going to sit down and join us? We’re always hungry for new members.”
“Goody!” says the round-faced man, rubbing his hands together theatrically. “Another quorum-booster in our claws!”
Among the glasses of beer on the table are notebooks and loose pages, a couple of paperbacks. I was so intent on Sandor I hadn’t noticed them. More proof I’m not his bipolar gumshoe.
“It’s not a judgemental group at all,” says the long-nosed girl with orange hair. “Believe me, I’ve been in other groups that were.”
“Fresh meat, fresh meat,” chants the boy beside her.
“Don’t listen to him,” she says. “You share whatever you want, whenever you want. I didn’t bring anything my first few weeks. Which was fine. And you can say before you do what kind of feedback you’re looking for. Hard-nosed. Encouraging. Or just some ears, no comments required. If someone’s not constructive, they don’t stay long.”
Sandor eyeing me over the rim of his glass, obviously enjoying himself.
“Actually,” I say, “I’m a fan, not a writer. I just came in to collect an autograph.”
The sight of the book I set down brings the dark thing up in his eyes.
The young man beside him slaps him on the back. “You see, Sandor,” says the blonde’s husband, “We told you it wasn’t a vanity publication.”
“Depends on whether he paid for it,” says the author.
“I did. Two bucks.” Chuckles here and there, quickly suppressed. “But it was second-hand.”
“Still. Wait’ll Lynette hears,” says a voice.
“Lynette?” TAL Lynette? I don’t know another by that name.
“His publisher.”
The blonde, I think. It has to be. The swirl of déjà vu I’ve felt around her. The tug of familiarity that made me try to stare through her Infinite Tunnel. But try as I might, I can’t fit that slumped, dun-braided farm girl from the ward—TAL-consoled one night, then back in the dumpster at breakfast—with this svelte, high-maintenance blonde.
“Well, I like her style. As a publisher anyway.”
Sandor looks up at me with a weary, tapped-out expression, the red veins in his eyes prominent. A shape-changer, I can’t get hold of him. I see a gamester, drinker, charmer, some kind of victim—at least in his own mind. A quitter but also a fighter, a convalescent in need of constant R&R… but also the author of the passages I’ve been living with, walking around with, coming back to. All the sides are there but not quite meeting. Like overlays that don’t quite match up when you try to stack them. The only line that makes sense to me is the one that has him saying goodbye definitively to something in his past, closing the door on it firmly—maybe at someone else’s behest, maybe feeling it was the only way to save himself. And good advice perhaps. But I keep scratching at the door, knocking on it, prying.
He picks up a pen. “You know me by two names now,” he says. “Which signature do you want?”
“Whichever one wrote the book.”
A frown at the inscription to Grace—he flips the page quickly to prevent the others seeing it—and then he signs: Wun Wing. Closes the book and hands it back to me. I turn to go.
“Wait. Wait.” The orange-haired girl. “What about some feedback? You didn’t even say if you liked it.”
“I sought out the author for his autograph.”
The faces expectant, fearful. Writers. Except Sandor. He just looks blank.
“It was a revelation,” I say. And the faces begin to smile, but tensely. The artistic ego: used to the set-up before the smash. “Seriously,” I add. I didn’t get to ask him about Christmas Music—what he knows, if he knows—but maybe I’m not leaving entirely empty-handed.
§
A cop getting out of the patrol car at the curb, his partner inside at the wheel. They must have been close by. A bounce at the Arms hardly an urgent call.
“We got a call about a disturbing patron,” he says after the usual head-to-toe. “But it looks like you found your own way to the door.”
I turn towards Avenue Road, start walking. “Hey. The army jacket. Are you a veteran?”
“Soldier of fortune,” I call back, not giving a damn whether he hears me or not.
After a few steps, I hear the car door close behind me. Walking away, along with not answering, two black marks in a cop’s book. But maybe, it being a slow night, they want to keep it that way.
The Face has got me in a lot of trouble with the law, no question. But it’s saved me some, too.
§
“I thought we were done. I thought that was the deal.”
With a sigh, 303 lets me in. Similar-looking alien frozen on his big screen. Attacking this time—not splattering yet.
“It was. We are. This is just a bit of overtime. There’s a little research I need your help with. I could do it at the library, but not Sunday—”
A bony hand in my face. Too close, but let it go. “You can stop there. I know what you’re looking for. And it just happens I’ve already got it.”
And he does. There are a few drugs that might have been used by the producer of Christmas Music, but 303 has hit on one as the most likely. Has the name and specs written out on a torn half-sheet of paper. Midazolam. A short-acting drug in the benzodiazepine class. Skeletal muscle relaxant. Sedative properties. Used for inducing sedation and amnesia before medical procedures.
“Why’d you underline that part?”
“Wouldn’t you have? I quoted the next parts exactly too.”
“‘Drawbacks include adverse events such as cognitive impairment and sedation. Used in executions by lethal injection in the USA in combination with other drugs.’”
“You just Googled this?”
He winces, a twinge briefly wrinkling his face like I’ve zapped him lightly in the balls. “It wasn’t a random search. I didn’t just barge into chatrooms saying, Hey, any you freaks know a good date rape drug for knocking women out in a dentist’s chair? I used some parameters.”
“Parameters.”
“I narrowed it down. I was pretty sure what I was looking for even before I found it.”
“Really? Why was that?”
303 just stares at me. My eyes flick to the alien forever charging. Emerald green with a yellow cowlick, red eyes, black talons and white fangs. The pastime looks incredibly stupid, but colourful. “You think I’m just your resident drug dealer, don’t you?” 303 says.
“Any reason I shouldn’t?”
“Believe it or not, I actually had another life before I became your IT man.”
“Tell me. I’m interested.”
And he does. And I am, mildly. It’s not as uncommon as he seems to think. A scholarship student in Natural Sciences at U of T. Good grades, but not good enough for med school. The competition unreal against “Asians who study twelve hours straight for fun. Six
teen when they get serious.” Settled for Pharmacy, but quit after a year. Too much rote memory, which he found boring as well as insulting. Got in with a group developing game ideas, moving a little dope to support their own use. Then the gaming business—“insanely competitive” as well—fell away, and pot got moved in more substantial quantities.
“Until you became my resident drug dealer.”
A bigger zap in the balls, a bigger twinge. This one warps his face for half a second.
“You’re welcome. Now fuck off, thank you.”
I owe him that much. As I’m leaving, though, something occurs to me. I put a hand on the door he’s closing, stick my head back in.
“You had this information but you didn’t tell me? Didn’t think to slide it under my door? How long were you going to wait?”
“Not very long. I was thinking of coming up tonight. But how did I know you weren’t the guy taking the pictures? Or a friend of the guy who does?”
It stops me briefly.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would I expose myself by showing them to you? Why would I think they were music, not pictures?”
“I don’t know, man. You’re an actor? You’re a psycho? A lot of what you say and do makes no sense to me.”
I consider it a moment. “That might be why we’re still on speaking terms.”
“What is?”
“Mutual incomprehension. It can be a social aid.”
“Whatever, man. Look, are we done now? For real? Quits, I mean.”
I consider that a moment too. “I’d like to tell you yes. I think so. But you and I, we’re”—I search for the right image—“we’re like two leeches fastened to each other. Neither of us is getting anything very nutritious, but until something else swims by, we’re hanging on.”
That image is so unappealing that he shoves the door shut, locks it, and gets back to his charging alien.
14
Green light blinking on the phone machine when I come back upstairs. First I wash the plaster and white paint off my hands. For the moment, the couple in 405 have an intact ceiling again—until the next heavy rain knocks the plug out in soggy chunks and they’re forced to catch the dripping water in a roasting pan in their living room. When the season of freeze-and-thaw sets in next month, the dripping will accelerate and patches will be impossible until May. The couple, who seem intelligent, have never withheld a rent cheque, though they’ve lived here ten years, for eight of which their ceiling has leaked, and they should know that until he feels the sting of absent funds the Owner will play patch-and-pray rather than hire a roofer to find the leak and fix it. He calls them his “best tenants ever” and shakes the husband’s hand on the rare occasions they meet.
