by Mike Barnes
Reaching, moving my hands about, I feel them. Feel her colours.
Red. Green. Yellow. Orange. Blue. Purple.
Redyelloworange, crisscrossing slashes of flame. Her far cors. What she loved best.
Touch them, gently. Feel them. Sitting with your back against the wall, your knees drawn up. A small dark space. The only space in No Name with no name.
Closet does for strangers.
I found them one day with a flashlight, looking for something before I emptied it. I doubt if Lois ever saw them.
How did Megan find her way in here? And when?
Found a few moments when she could be alone and came in here. Reached up to shut the door behind her. Not afraid of the dark, wanting it. Needing it. Needing it to reach up—as high as she could, tiptoe—and slash upon it.
Feel them! Fiercer than any colours in sunlight could be. Burning to the touch.
Far cors!
Our fierce arguments that last fall. Fiercer than I realized as we were having them, since even war was giddy life. She’s Daddy’s girl all right. Lois sneering but afraid. Our child listless, sitting sunk for hours in torpor, her eyes dim and unfocused. Then, with Lois still murmuring suspicions of autism, clambering up to stand on a chair, waving her arms wildly, screaming with glee. Screaming herself hoarse. Lois with her hand over her mouth, eyes wide. She knows these things, lives with them. Mad ecstatic dances, trance-paralysis in caves. Daddy’s girl.
Smashing the crayons into paper so hard they broke into bits. Racing the bits across paper and onto the floor.
Far cors!
Fire colours, honey?
Far cors!!
A magical place, even the air feels electric.
You can hear another voice, every other voice, sensible and friendly, saying, Just a child reaching up with short chubby arms and scrawling with her crayons. Random, the voices say.
Hear them and know, calmly, with no need to repudiate, that the marks are far more purposeful. Are a map. Uncanny. Precise.
Map to where she was. Is.
Map to where we are.
Colours burning in the dark.
§
Jared and his parents return around 9:00. It’s the first time ever he’s wanted to join Trick-or-Treat. Brave the streets when recess is everywhere. Lucy teared up when she told me. Tuesday’s door-bangers aside, she still considers me her staunchest ally in strengthening Jared for a normal life. But our purposes, I know guiltily, diverge. I want to strengthen Jared for himself. Wherever that may lead. To people… or away from them.
He shows me his pillow case, half-full. They went everywhere. His plastic, head-to-toe outfit is expensive. Costly for Lucius and Lucy, even at Walmart. Alien superhero that will have a special name, special powers, but which to me looks utterly generic. Breastplate. Talons. Helmet with battery-powered blinking knobs. Cape. Gold. Red. Black. Blue belt with flashing red tips hanging from a yellow “weapons cache.”
I nod, try to be glad for him. Get partway there.
More power in his lichen-munching snail than in warehouses of this dreck.
My days as his tutor may be numbered.
No Name’s real Trick-or-Treat begins soon after, a farce of activity on the steps and sidewalk. 305’s new couple pull up with their helpers, even though I warned them three times today—until I stopped answering their calls—that the cruise shippers had till midnight by law and would likely take every minute. They’d be better advised to wait until morning and move in leisurely.
“They can’t take all day.”
“They’ve got all day.”
That deep furrowed silence from the other end—someone struggling to fathom that what I want and what’s coming to me do not precisely coincide.
Sure enough, the minstrels start around 10:00 and take their surly time about it. Ferrying small armloads of practice amps and a shower curtain and an LCBO box with the bottom going and an unwashed cereal bowl teetering on top. One chubby girl passes carrying a music stand. More naïve or sentimental eyes, watching this, might surmise they’re seeing the artistic temperament out of which creativity rises and for which allowances must be made. But I know I’m seeing the asshole temperament out of which nothing but bullshit rises and for which there is no excuse. Prolonging an eviction is the best number these birds have.
I stay on the kitchen chair, pig’s head on a stick, eyeing them through black slits. Let three skinny guys lever a couch around me, almost losing it down the stairwell. A van pulls up around 11:00 beside their piles and they lean against it, yukking it up with the driver, jerking thumbs up at me. It’s Hallowe’en, all right. Dull lethargic devils who know they’ve got till the stroke of 12:00 to harass and goad the townspeople, try to drive them blind with rage.
Meanwhile the new saints, more than halfway to rage when they arrived, fidget by their rented U-Haul, stalk five steps forward and back, huddle griping with their oversupply of helpers: two hired movers (leaning against their truck, smoking), three parents, a muscular friend or brother. They chatter, mope, cast unremarked glares at the dawdling minstrels.
Twice the guy opens the door and holds a wrist up at me, tapping a big watch. I tap my own bare wrist, no watch on it now. Mid-night, I growl down through my mask.
I keep expecting the cops to come through the glass doors below. Dressed like adults on their way to a party, their costumes perfect.
By now they’ve had several hours to sweat Max over the pictures. Several hours, when minutes is all it would take to have him squealing like Gainsborough’s Blue Boy getting a hot lead enema. Vivian! he starts yelping. And she’s there now, in another room. Though how it helps his case to have an accomplice he employs and fucks and poses and, apparently, drugs—it would take a panicking pampered dentist to fathom.
The Super! he squeals next—or first. I don’t know his name. He never told me. The Super, is all. The Super made me do it! It makes no sense, of course. How did I make him do for years what they’ve got evidence of copied multiply: drugging women and girls in his dentist’s chair, undressing and assaulting them, photographing them, passing the pics to his father and who knows who else? But he can say I tried to extort money from him and he sent me to his father to straighten me out—all true, so long as English walks a tightrope. He can put me at the scene of a murder, and maybe he thinks, with flailing logic, if he gives them a murderer they’ll overlook, or go easy on, serial drugged sexual assaults.
Minutes stretch like days—the chair is hard, the light is harsh, the room is hot, his questioners smell and have yellow teeth—body and soul, he’s in pain—and he can squeal and yelp a lot before his high-priced lawyer gets there and gives him the excellent advice he’s paid for: shut the fuck up.
But the cops don’t arrive. Just Darth Vaders, Batmans, X-whatevers, witches, “ladies,” half-assed vampires in Dollarama fangs, zombies, and the inevitable ghost with ragged eyeholes.
No cops. Think.
The help Stone often gives in closing windows. Hints. Prompts. Cajolings. Coming faster as his time approaches. Hardly from a spirit of altruism. He wants me finished with my work, done with the adjustment, no hanging threads, when he takes receipt of me. A clean slate for him to scrawl things on. With every unobstructed minute of the shift he’s got coming to him.
Spoiled, of course. Spoiled rotten. What in his life has prepared him to believe he could run out of options? That there’s no safe tab to click. No card to swipe, insert, or tap.
So he clings to the hope that I haven’t sent the pics. Or not the worst of them. Since the cops aren’t saying yet. Tells himself I wouldn’t give up my leverage without getting something in return.
Or?
Or?
Think.
Handing out Hallowe’en candy a strangely good way to do just that. Sitting behind a mask as another mask comes up the stairs and mutters Trick or Treat, or stand
s there saying nothing at all. And you fish absently for some goodies and drop them in the bag.
Or… he doesn’t put me at his father’s house because it wasn’t him who sent me there. Wasn’t him who saw, coolly and without passion, that things had got to that point.
Which point?
The point at which you jump a sinking ship.
One home, Grade Eight or so, had these two little brainiacs down the street, twins, their parents both theoretical something-or-others, and the mother used to call out the door as they trundled off with their lunch bags: Remember, think! Warbled it after them in a high, posh voice.
For a couple of top-grade browners—nerds not yet the default word—they got picked on surprisingly little. They had a knowingness about them, an irony about their special status—yes, they’d been cast as angels in this particular play, but in the next act they might be dolts—that seemed to take the air out of bullies. Apart from the usual hissed remarks, some trippings and shovings, they got off pretty lightly, even in gym.
Remember. Think.
Lucius comes down just after 12:00 to make sure change-over is going smoothly. It is. The cruisers have finally shoved off and the new team is working in quick-time, using a fireman’s chain up to the elevator, an operator to shoot loads up and down, and a chain on the top floor down the hall and into the apartment. They’ve had all night to plan it.
I’ve moved inside to keep out of their way, which is where Lucius finds me. I was just about to come up and return the chair.
“Is okay. I’ll take it up.”
“Sorry about the noise, Lucius. 305 might be up all night, cleaning and unpacking.”
He smiles. “Is okay. Last day of school week tomorrow.”
And his own busiest day—lawns needing sprucing before the weekend dinner parties—but his sleep doesn’t matter, only Jared’s.
“Your car. I notice is gone all day. You take it in somewhere?”
“It stopped. I left it on the street.”
“Just left?” Frowning, like his son. “Police gonna take it then. Impound. Probably they do already. And is expensive to get back. Parking fine. Towing. And something else—”
“It’s okay, Lucius. I’ve been walking everywhere lately. I think I’ll just keep doing that.”
“Just walk?”
“Yeah. Take the TTC if it’s too far.”
I realize I’m still wearing the mask. You get used to it, despite the heat. But as soon as I take it off, cool air surrounds my head, even in the hallway. A sour chemical stink comes off the sweaty latex.
“Why you keep looking down the stairs? Is midnight. Is all done, right?”
“It is, you’re right. Just don’t want to miss anyone, I guess.”
“Your chest.” Lucius points at it. “Those guys again?”
I look down at myself. Blotches in places, dark burgundy on the light gray T-shirt. Some bandages on the checkerboard must have soaked through.
“No. Another guy. But it’s minor, nothing to worry about. Get some sleep. I’ll come up in a while to make sure 305 are keeping it down.”
He nods, stands there a few more seconds before leaving. He’s back to looking at me again, but with worry lines almost as fixed as his son’s.
§
I stand in the living room a long while, like someone trying to remember or decide something important. Then go through the door onto the balcony. The tower blinking orange and blue—no such thing as black lights. All Saints’ Day. The devils have had their due and now it’s the turn of purified souls. Hands on the cold railing, I cock my head and breathe slowly and deeply through my nose—as if I might hear some faint blessed rustling, the glidings of super-goodness, or catch the sweet elusive scent of incorruptible will.
But nothing—nothing new—comes to ear or nostril.
I think the devils are just sleeping it off. A Venti Bold is all it will take to put them right back in the fray.
From halfway down the hall, I hear 305’s move-in clamour. Thud and slide of heavy boxes, shouts to each other about where to put things, water running, hammer bangs even. They’d howl to all the gods—they will—when their neighbours pull something like it. And yet I find it hard to get angry with these two. They seem too innocent, too unformed. Being their super will be like being their teacher. Like training an autistic élite to recognize and respond to others, to come a step closer to actually sharing the world with them.
I knock gently.
“Some of this can’t wait till tomorrow. We wouldn’t be doing any of it now if you’d given us a clean apartment instead of a pigsty.”
“When was I supposed to clean it—between midnight and a minute past? I told you to wait till tomorrow. Till later today.”
“Well, we didn’t know those clowns would be using a stopwatch. I hope you kept their damage deposit at least.”
“Show me the damage.”
They do, the darlings.
“That’s sweep-up stuff. Bag and drag. Some vacuuming—in the morning. Or Comet and a rag. If you want, I’ll show you what damage looks like sometime.”
“Thanks. I think we’re seeing plenty.”
Walking away, I feel light and clear when I shouldn’t feel either, and I ask myself when I last really slept. A nap on the mattress after the cleanup Tuesday is all I remember. Closing my eyes and maybe drifting off a few minutes. Just that until Doc Wyvern’s drug-daze.
Two and a half days ago. Catnaps in the days before that.
I feel the drag I should, the anchor pulling me down. The spots, dark grains, in front of my eyes. Like a black veil, swirling. Everything on fire, the air alive with soot.
And yet I’m bubbling still. Ready to set up 305’s kitchen for them. Eager with it.
It’s why a window closes. To put a stop to these absurdities. To end the contradictions.
Substantial and profound 19 October
A drive down Unionville streets, admiring the houses as she loves to do—“These houses are… substantial”—amazed at the word, at the sound of it in her mouth. “Yes, they are, that’s exactly the word.” I made a bit too much of my delight. Then, walking around Vivera, we came to a tree with very dark red leaves, an almost black burgundy, which she reached for, saying, “This colour is… profound.” Profound. I wanted to weep, without knowing exactly what I would be weeping for.
If we met in an afterlife—which I don’t believe in—what could she tell the absent ones of these years they’ve missed? (Say death reforms them, say they grow an appetite for others’ news.) A handful of disjointed, contradictory phrases, scenes that change with every telling. They would be hungry for how it was with her, but she couldn’t give them that. She has moments, some good—but not news. Not a story made of stories.
She turned to me yesterday. “Something so… wrong with my mind. I think I must be dying.” And then, when I didn’t say anything: “I should talk to a doctor. Is there anything they can do for me? Do you think?” She was looking right at me, her eyes wide and guileless. “I think everything that can be done is being done,” I had to tell her.
A new idea comes to me. I feel excited thinking about it. She wants visible damage. Like it is with her, and smack my head with the obviousness of it. Why the checkerboard was no good. Bloody and determined, sure—but who’s seeing it under your shirt?
Snapping off the X-Acto blade to get a fresh segment, I begin scoring lines in a ring around my eye. Like a sun’s rays, up into forehead, down into cheek, out into temple and across the nose. It’s important to apply a steady pressure to each line until it starts to coagulate, especially the upper rays, otherwise I’m blind from the trickling and can’t continue.
Excited, really on to something, but I force myself to keep a steady hand and go slow.
Afterwards, sitting expectantly among the far cors, I know a disappointment so p
rofound that it would bring me to weeping if I wasn’t already so far below that.
I’d settled myself with such expectancy, my knees drawn up and trembling. Tried it with eyes open, closed—tried it both ways, not knowing which would work best. Which would delve me faster through the dark.
But no stairs came, and No One waiting on them.
A timeless, thoughtless daze. And then quickly, numbly, as if I’m exiting a room like any other, I leave that place and re-enter Big Empty and resume reading to be doing something, riffling back to near the end.
§
Black letters in a cone of light. How special they appeared, how different. Words you knew by heart, knew to clogging boredom, when you encountered them on a page by simple daylight, under soft lamplight. Now transposed to so much more, sometimes something altogether unconnected, trapped and transfigured in this zone, seared by this selective shining.
Move the source even slightly and the black all around responds like a living thing, lets fall pieces of itself into the radiant charged circle, squiggles that squirm and oscillate before finding their new, proper shapes.
Old, old memory. It comes from far away.
Fabrics, rough and smooth, above me. Touching my head, grazing my neck and back. A tent of bedclothes? Forbidden reading at night?
No. Nothing touching my legs. A hardness under me. But my left hand, reaching up, ripples cool uneven textures.
I pause a long moment, flashlight and book in hand, before entering. Not sure how she’ll feel about it, I’ve never carried anything in but myself.
But it feels permissible. More, it feels right. Not reading yet, but she loved hearing stories. And talked non-stop, babbling like a tiny old drunk.
And fire slicing dark. Pouring pure white far upon the black squiggles.
That she would love.
It’s the final entry I’ll try. Sandor’s non-conclusion, non-epilogue. Non-anything but end.
Undated
Some things can only be reported. In the four months since I agreed to lock her into the Memory Gardens, she has grown increasingly combative. Insults and threats to other residents. To staff. The reports reach me by phone, by monthly checklist with Comments box.
