by Alan Cumyn
She was sitting beside him now in the squad car, older, with shorter, more ordinary hair and a thicker body, suddenly much more human and approachable than that younger version. Her child was on his lap and Donny was breathing with the cosmos, thinking thank you, thank you with every tingle of energy that squirrelled up his spine, circled his brain, dripped down his front to his middle energy reservoir buried behind his navel. Waylun Zhi said that he should have faith, that if he repeated the sacred patterns daily, worked towards no-mindedness without hurry, without ambition or goal or desire, but faithfully, with an open heart, then balance would be achieved and great channels of life vision would open up to him. His health, his disposition, his energy for work and love, all would improve. Good things would happen because of his positive thought energy. You couldn’t predict exactly what they might be, but a diligent practitioner would be in a steady, peaceful state, ready to accept the gifts of universal harmony.
Julia was holding her temples, now, drying her eyes. She was full of a seasoned, more vulnerable beauty than when he’d sat behind her every day and rehearsed, fruitlessly, snatches of nervous conversation. Did you get the assignment done for Billings? What’s happening with your science project? Are you going to the __? The __, the whatever it was – the football game, the fall dance, the Christmas concert, the event, the non-event, the nothing, the excuse. Will you go with me? Five words, impossible to articulate, but whirling inside his head day after day.
Now here she was, in a different lifetime almost, so small beside him, her head leaning on his shoulder, everything up to him.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I think we’re probably going to find your mom is fine.”
She didn’t respond.
“What do you call your grandmother?” Donny asked Matthew. “Do you call her Nana?”
“Gamma Lenore,” the boy said. “She’s bongo.”
He was younger than his friend Ramone’s kids, was full of spark and kick. His eyes were never still but constantly roamed over everything.
“She’s what?” he asked.
Julia shifted slightly, didn’t look at them but seemed to be listening.
“She eats nappies!” Matthew blurted.
“What’s a nappy?” Donny asked.
The squad car pulled up in front of the hospital’s main doors. It was a sprawling, weathered, brown brick building covered in ivy turned rusty now with the cold weather.
“It’s a napkin,” Julia said, getting out. “My mother poured her wine on her napkin a while ago, put it on her plate, and then started to cut it with her knife and fork. For Matthew it was a real highlight.”
They followed the police officer into the dull corridors of the aging building. The officer was tall and rectangular and had a head that looked as if it had been carved out of a tree trunk. Like Ian Lambton, who used to play for Brookfield and then went on to four seasons at tackle with the Rough Riders before they went under.
“Has your mother gone missing before, ma’am?” the officer asked.
“No. Never. It was my fault,” Julia said. Her voice stretched tight.
“It was?”
“I was late going to get her,” she said bitterly.
Up the stairs, down one corridor, around the corner. Through two heavy security doors, past the sign that said General Psychiatry. The officer addressed the desk nurse first.
“Julia Sterling is here with her husband to see the confused elderly woman who was brought in earlier. They want to make an ID.”
“He’s not my husband,” Julia said.
Donny thought, It’s Carmichael, Julia Carmichael. Sterling is all wrong.
“Sorry. You’re not the husband?” the officer said to him.
“No. We’re not married,” Donny said. He hesitated, realized that it sounded like he was trying to tell the world they were just living together. “I’m doing the kitchen,” he said.
The nurse looked from the officer to Julia to Donny. She was a heavy woman, used to knowing everybody’s business.
“My husband is away at a conference this weekend,” Julia said. “Donny is just helping me. Where’s the woman you think might be my mother?”
“I have to warn you,” the nurse said, “she’s been sedated. She was very agitated when they brought her in. A woman and her son found her.”
The nurse stood and led them down the hall. “This can be a bit of a shock,” she said. “Has your mother been hospitalized before for her condition?”
“She just wandered off!” Julia said. “I don’t think she needs to be hospitalized!”
A young woman in a light-blue hospital gown, with pale skin and dark smudges under her eyes, limped down the corridor, her brown hair falling in front of her face, her lips trembling in a constant muttered explanation. Donny tried to distract Matthew from behind but the boy’s eyes followed her in wonder. They passed an open door where a rail-thin man in his late thirties, perhaps, with a shaved head and sad eyes sat in bed, turned listlessly to watch them go by, then peered without interest at a magazine.
Finally they came to a locked heavy steel door with one small window.
The nurse said, “Maybe, Mrs. Sterling, you could leave your baby with your friend here, and we’ll just go in alone.”
“Matthew has seen his grand-” Julia started to say, then she stopped and handed Matthew over to Donny. “Thank you for this,” she said, and it was her old Julia Carmichael velvety voice that sent a wave through him, warmed the roots of his hair.
“Come on, Matthew,” he said. “We’ll go for a walk.”
The boy was so light, he fit easily into the crook of Donny’s arm and snuggled against his shoulder. They walked back up the corridor while Julia and the nurse went into the locked room and the police officer remained outside the door, his feet spread apart, hands clasped in front of his flat belly, as if standing at ease on a parade square. Donny could feel Matthew turning to look at the policeman even as they walked away.
“Have you ever been in a hospital before?” Donny said to Matthew.
Matthew was looking at the sad-eyed thin man in the bed with the magazine.
“Ever been in a hospital, Matthew?” Donny repeated.
“No.”
“I bet you have! I bet you were born in a hospital! Do you remember that?”
“Oh yeah,” Matthew said.
“You do? You remember being born?”
“Daddy flover.”
“What’s that?”
“Daddy flover!”
Donny asked several more times then said, “Your Daddy fell over, is that right?”
The pale woman with the lank brown hair walked by them again, still muttering. Donny thought she said, “… detergent in a whorehouse.”
“Flover boom!” Matthew said.
They made three more trips up and down the corridor, then Julia came out of the room. She was having a heated discussion with the nurse while the police officer looked on. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether or not to pull out his pad and take notes – his hand kept going to his pocket, then withdrawing, then going back.
“I would like to take her right now!” Julia said, near tears. “I can’t believe you would sedate her like that and tie her into her bed!”
“Mrs. Sterling-”
“Oh, Matthew!” Julia said and reached for her baby.
“What’s the problem?” Donny asked.
“I want them to release her to me right now but they’re refusing -”
“Mrs. Sterling,” the nurse said. “We need to keep her under observation at least through the night. When she was brought in to us she was very agitated and distressed, she kept taking her clothes off-”
“Oh please,” Julia said. “This is my mother!”
“She might have suffered a stroke, we’re not sure. We need to keep her at least overnight to run some tests. Then I would suggest you can bring her back to Fallowfields -”
“I am not going to return her to that place!�
� Julia said. “Oh, God,” she said to Donny, “you should see her in there. When I left her yesterday she was full of spit and fight -”
“Maybe we should go back,” Donny said. “You should get a good night’s sleep.”
“Oh. Bloody likely!” Julia said, then almost immediately, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! You’ve been wonderful. You’ve all been … very helpful.”
“This is upsetting, I know,” the nurse said.
They returned to the parking lot at Hog’s Back in silence in the back of the squad car, Matthew asleep at Donny’s shoulder, Julia staring blankly out the window at the night, Donny breathing little sips of microcosmic energy. The police officer drove swiftly but not recklessly, his radio bursting forth from time to time with news from the underside of the night. Donny remembered the night Billy Marcello killed that guy in Hull, the swarm of cruisers around Billy’s parents’ house, the crackle of fear in the air, the odd light of the rotating red lights. He used to play road hockey with Billy in the neighbourhood. Billy had a terrible temper even then, used to pick fights, and when he got older carried a knife.
The parking lot was dark, deserted; all of the other squad cars were gone and the searchers had left. Julia was distracted, exhausted – she didn’t even thank the police officer but walked dully to the van, strapped Matthew in his seat, and got in beside him automatically, without thinking.
“Is she going to be all right?” the officer asked, and Donny said she’d be fine, that he would take her home.
It was silent on the drive. Matthew was asleep and Julia stared out the window. Then in her driveway she got out of the van without a thought for Matthew but walked, heavy-footed, to the door, then fumbled with her keys. It took her quite a while.
Donny got the sleeping Matthew out of his car seat, closed up the van, and carried the child to the porch. “I think you’ll find your mother is in very good hands,” he said to Julia. Then: “Are you all right?”
Julia didn’t answer. She walked inside, her shoulders slumped, head drooping. Donny carried Matthew in, closed the door. Julia kicked off her shoes, let her jacket fall to the floor without hanging it up. She seemed to be almost in a trance. “Just put him to bed,” she said, not looking at either Donny or Matthew. Donny hesitated, meant to ask if that’s really what she meant, but she left, half-asleep, trudged wearily up the stairs. So Donny carefully stepped out of his own shoes and followed her. Julia walked past the baby’s room without looking, but said numbly, “Just come and rub me when you’ve got him down. I have a terrible headache. I think you should sleep downstairs tonight.”
“Sorry?” he said.
“Just do it,” she muttered and walked into her bedroom.
Donny was left standing in the hall with the child asleep at his shoulder. He could hear her undressing, then a moment later all was still, and he could hear her breathing on the bed. He stepped into Matthew’s room then. There was a nightlight and he gradually figured out the set-up: the changing table was on the far side, the clean diapers were stacked neatly on the shelf near the lamp, the wet ones went in the big white plastic pail. Donny struggled with the first pin, but he had good hands for close work and learned quickly. Matthew didn’t even wake up. He stirred slightly when Donny put him in his bed, stretched his arms out briefly, made a sucking motion with his mouth and opened his eyes, just the once. Settled back into sleep.
Donny stepped out quietly, stood in the hall for several breaths. Microcosmic energy. She wasn’t in her right mind, he knew. She was exhausted from the trauma, dead on her feet, didn’t know what she was saying.
He put one foot tentatively into her bedroom. “Julia,” he said, then shifted his voice immediately into a whisper. “I’ll say goodnight now,” he said.
He waited for a reply, then stepped back and pulled the door softly closed.
“You have to come rub me,” she said then.
He waited, then opened the door a crack again. “Pardon?”
“You have to come rub me. Just for a minute. My head is splitting.”
He knew he shouldn’t, but somehow his feet wouldn’t turn away. He hesitated, then stepped cautiously into the darkness. His eyes adjusted slowly. It was a large bedroom with a thick carpet on the floor, two massive dressers, a wide bed in the shadows. Donny felt something soft through his socked feet, nearly tripped trying to step around once he realized it was Julia’s clothes. There she was, face down on the bed, naked under the sheet.
“Julia -”
She pushed herself up on her knees. Her eyes were closed, she was facing away. Donny could see part of the outline of one of her breasts.
“Just at the base of the skull,” she said sleepily. “Like you do.”
Donny knelt on the bed, took a breath, then put his fingers in her soft hair. Massaged up and down her neck and head.
“Oh that’s good. Oh,” she said.
He looked down at the carpet in the shadows, felt just with his fingers. The scalp and neck, then around to the eyebrows, pulled them apart nine times like Waylun Zhi had them do in self-massage classes. Down the sides of her nose, reaching from behind, leaning over her but trying not to press his body against hers. Then he touched her shoulders and she eased herself flat against the bed again. “Oh that’s good,” she murmured, her eyes closed.
She had wondrously soft shoulders, and he tried to be gentle, not press too hard with his fingers. Then down her arms and squeezing her hands, the special points in the palms. “Don’t stop,” she said when he started to pull away, so he started on her back, went up and down her spine and then out to the sides, gently massaging her muscles. He pulled the sheet down to the small of her back but no further, and when he had gone up and down several times, and revisited her head and neck and shoulders and hands, he tickled lightly down her back with the tips of his fingers. She responded with moans of appreciation. He didn’t want it to end, so he stayed a long time. But finally, when her breathing was deep and even and contented, he stepped away. He was careful to avoid her clothes this time and had almost made it to the door when she said something. He stopped, sure she was asleep, but she repeated it.
“How was the conference?” she asked.
“Good,” he said softly, before he left.
He’d left his truck downtown, at least an hour’s walk away. He thought about calling a taxi, but it seemed too much trouble: he might wake Julia with the noise, and besides, the walking suited him. It was his own quiet brand of devotion. He didn’t want to be a bother, or even particularly noticed. She’d wake in the morning and remember, and he hoped she’d think well of him. Finally. Years and years too late, perhaps, but at least it would be something.
And he could think about her on the walk.
12
Bob woke from a deep fog, looked at the blurry red numbers on the hotel alarm-clock radio. The room was black and, for a moment, he receded into an odd, dreamy but bitterly real-seeming death struggle with Stephanie over the burgundy couch. She wanted it for her retirement but Bob couldn’t let it go; it used to be his mother’s, and there was all his loose change in the cracks. As the dream began to clear he went over everything as a pilot might check the facts of his aircraft before takeoff: Stephanie and I are now completely divorced, he thought; there is no burgundy couch; his mother would have wanted to give it to Stephanie anyway; there’s no loose change.
And Sienna Chu was here then left, probably for good.
Bob’s eyes hurt, even closed. His back was stiff and his knee throbbed from the debacle in the airplane yesterday. His head felt leaden. He pulled himself closer to the clock so he could read the numbers: 10:18. The morning sessions had started at nine. He’d meant to call Sienna. He remembered having had the thought and also having not moved a muscle. He sat up, reached, and opened the heavy hotel drapes a fraction then turned away from the glaring sunshine. “Awful,” he said as he got up, limped to the bathroom. His back felt like concrete. The rubber vagina was twisted on the bathroom floor like a dead ro
dent. He gingerly stepped over it and into the tub. He stared for a moment at the unfamiliar faucet control. It was a single round pull-knob with no apparent markings for hot and cold.
He stepped out of the tub then pulled the knob and let the water run. There should have been a lever or something to switch the water to the shower but Bob couldn’t find it. He also couldn’t find the plug for the bathtub. The one lever that was there didn’t seem to do anything. Finally, Bob stuffed a washcloth down the drain and let the tub fill up with water, then eased himself in.
I need to call Sienna, he thought. I need to tell her … what? To explain to her that he’d been sick, a bit of food poisoning. Everything was all right. Marvellous, in fact. She had come to him. It was a miracle.
Slowly, the tub filled. The hot water soothed his aching parts.
The phone rang.
He was out of the bath in an instant, grabbed a towel, ran into the other room. He let two more rings go by as he stood at the phone, dripping, trying to compose himself. “Hello?” he said finally.
It was Julia. “Oh, Bob! You are there,” she said. “I thought I’d be too late. I slept in badly. I miss you so much!”
“Oh, honey,” he said. “I miss you so much too. You wouldn’t believe -”
“I had the most amazing dream,” she blurted. “It was so powerful. It was about my mother. We were at the lake. Have you got a few minutes?” And she told him all about it, a garbled tale of her mother in a papyrus boat being unable to bring it to dock because of the slightest of winds. So Lenore had dived in to pull the boat along, and Julia – who was only a little girl in the dream – watched while her mother’s friends played bridge in stuffy clothes, and wouldn’t look up when Julia ran to them to tell them her mother wasn’t surfacing. Then in the morning, Julia’s father had come down for his swim, had started yelling, so Julia dove in, and there was her mother, just a few feet from the surface, reaching up, with a little chain dangling from one ankle.
