The Sky Is Falling

by Caroline Adderson

  So I asked. “Did you only Google me?”

  “What?”

  “Did you look up any of the other people in the group?”

  “No.”

  I thrilled when, after a pause to off a dozen more cyber citizens, he asked, “Why?”

  “I just wondered. I haven’t either.”

  He blasted a few more. A-a-a-a-a!!! A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!!! “Why not?”

  Just a tinge, a little tinge, of curiosity in his voice.

  I left him alone while he ate his cold bacon and eggs. When he showed up in my office forty minutes later, he’d showered and looked more himself, more spiniferous anyway. The stud under his lip caught the light and blinked. “Hi,” I said.

  “Do you want to do it?”

  “All right,” I said, closing the editing file I’d been feigning work on. He pulled a chair over beside mine and, when he was settled, I let him do the work. His fingers are so nimble. Compared to his, mine move like I’m decoding Braille for the first time. He could have done this on his own, of course, but the fact that he didn’t was heartening.

  He asked for a name and I gave him Dieter Koenig’s.

  “That was easy. Usually there’s a lot of people with the same name. He’s a lawyer.”

  I leaned in to read the home page on his site. “He’s partner in a firm that specializes in ICBC claims.” In other words, he makes his living suing the provincial auto insurance corporation. Think you have whiplash? You probably do! read one of the subject headings on his pull-down menu.

  “What do you call a lawyer at the bottom of the ocean?” I asked.

  “What?”

  I told him, but he didn’t get it. “Never mind,” I said.

  “Carla Steadperson” got no hits whatsoever, though there were a number of Carla Steadmans, one who was jailed for three months for shoplifting in England, another who worked for the Red Cross, and one who owned a tanning salon in, of all places, Hawaii. It was impossible to say which of these Carla Steadmans, if any, was the one I once knew, lark-voiced lesbian, serial scrawler of “Lies!” on newspaper boxes.

  There were even more Timothy Brandts, among them an oncologist in Colorado, a specialist in spray-on foam roof insulation, and Timothy Brandt the actor, who had appeared in the Italian cult film Arpeggio. There were no Timos, but numerous Tim Brandts—a motivational speaker, a motocross racer, the victim of a fatal 1999 car accident. Of everyone in NAG!, it was Timo I had the clearest feelings for, an unadulterated, entirely unconflicted fondness, which made me loath to pick his fate even if it was only in my imagination. But if pressed, if I absolutely had to choose, I would like to have seen him towering on a podium, one pant leg rolled to the knee, stuttering hope the way he used to pass around the Chipits.

  Belinda had changed her name again. We tried Isis, Goddess, Redhead. We tried that brand of hair conditioner.

  Peter English turned out to be a fairly common name. His million-plus hits Joe Jr. quickly narrowed by adding “anarchist.” There were still more than a thousand references to him, many archived news articles, but also blogs which Joe Jr. read with fascination while I made and brought him a sandwich and stood by, biting my tongue, as he crumbed up my keyboard.

  “He has a defence committee working for his release. They say he’s innocent, that he’s a political prisoner. His father was president of a mining company. He wouldn’t even pay for a lawyer!” Indignation in his voice.

  I sighed.

  “How did you get in with them anyway?” Joe Jr. asked.

  “I came out here to go to university. I wanted to live closer to campus so I moved into a shared house with three of them.”

  Joe Jr. took a break to go to the bathroom, but came back and threw himself into the chair again. He rubbed his eyes, then, instead of returning to the search, picked a book off the pile on the desk, as though paper had soothing properties the screen lacked. The book was Fathers and Sons, which I still hadn’t put back on the shelf. He flipped through it. “Look at all the underlining. Children! Is it true that love’s an imaginary feeling?”

  We both laughed.

  Like Pete, many of Sonia’s hits belonged to other people. Many of the ones that were hers were also Pete’s. And Joe was right about her lawyer. He was mentioned many times. Not only that, he was based in Vancouver. He would be as easy to contact as Dieter Koenig of Koenig, Hit, and Run.

  “Anyone else?” Joe Jr. asked. He probably meant me. I hesitated, then told him, “No.” I didn’t remember Pascal’s last name, if I ever knew it.

  But I must have. I’d read the article Sonia tied to the grate. What stuck in my mind was a word not a name.

  Osteosarcoma.

  They come as soon as they’re called, these dog-loyal tears. Joe Jr. pushed the chair back and, standing, launched into a Y—arms extending, fists unfurling, spreading. Suddenly he seemed so alive, as if some energy, some life force liberated by the stretch, was streaming off his fifteen-year-old body. He stayed like that, suspended, refracted green through my tears, for nearly half a minute until he remembered he was supposed to be mad at me. Then he dropped his arms and, rearranging his expression, turned to leave.

  And what might happen to him if he walked through the door of my study now? Anything. I knew that for a fact. We had just read so many possible fates, every one of them unexpected, because all we had ever expected was to die.

  Everybody dies.

  And I thought—if I can hold him back for just a moment, something different will happen instead.

  “Do you want to meet Sonia?” I asked.

  I immediately regretted the offer, but, having made it, I had no choice but to phone. I talked to her lawyer’s secretary, who said she would pass the request along. As soon as I hung up I felt elated, not just for getting the call over with. It was like waking from a pleasant dream with the feeling sticking to you, but in this case the dream was a memory. I used to know Sonia’s timetable. It was tacked to the wall above her desk and I memorized it so I could correctly place her in my imagination throughout the day. It’s 11:20 so Sonia is in the Scarfe Building for Techniques in Reading Education. Whenever possible I tried to get home early and be in the kitchen making tea when she got in. Though my timetable didn’t always mesh with hers, next year, when we were living together, if we were still around, if the world hadn’t ended, I’d make sure it did. I’d choose my courses so that I would always be there for her. In the meantime, I stood by the kettle, urging it to boil, dried letters of spaghetti stuck to the ceiling, compost steeping in the bowl, the smell—beans, rotten table scraps, life, death—me poised and listening for the sound of the front door opening. Oh, joy.

  But that was twenty years ago. We were two completely different people now. A ruined one and a saved one.

  I was quite certain that she wouldn’t want to see me.

  In this age of e-mail, the phone doesn’t ring that often any more. Every time it did I sprang for it, but it was never the lawyer’s secretary with the slightly nasal voice getting back to me as promised. Sonia’s lawyer must be busy these days with all those people trying to get off no-fly lists, all those terror suspects detained under security certificates, not to mention the ordinary addicts, prostitutes, and mentally ill needing counsel. For one quick glance at his website confirmed that she had engaged the St. Jude of the profession, a man no doubt kept extremely busy by injustice. The secretary didn’t call back that day, or the next.

  Good, I thought.

  At dinner Joe Sr. broached the subject of contacting Mr. and Ms. Zilch. “I think if we had them over they would see we’re not so bad. We don’t eat babies. We don’t do drugs.”

  “Or do we?” I glanced sidelong at our sullen son.

  “Your mother’s not a terrorist. She’s perfectly harmless. And she’s an excellent cook.”

  “I’m not cooking dinner for that horrible woman,” I said.

  “We could go to a restaurant then. The six of us. Talk it out. What do you think, Joey?”

/>   He shrugged and put more food in.

  Joe: “We’ll call them. The worst thing that could happen is they’ll say no.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Call them.”

  Joe said, “Who? Me?”

  It became a mental mat routine, waking hopefully but quickly putting hope out of mind—because, logically, the likelihood that the secretary would call while I was hoping she would call was virtually nil. Not that I really wanted her to call. No, I did. I wanted her to call and say that Sonia didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to see her. It was just that I had made this offer to my son, I would explain to the secretary. He’s going through a phase.

  I focused on other things, on work, even as my mounting wretchedness subverted the plan; it proved I was hoping, subconsciously and in vain. Next move: rationalizing. It wasn’t as if Sonia wasn’t calling me. The secretary wasn’t. Sonia would have called me right away. Then, as four o’clock approached, I abandoned my faith in logic and entered the actively hoping phase, willing her to call, crossing fingers, muttering pleas. Because there were things I was desperate to know so that I could put it all behind me once and for all. Such as: why did she lie? Why did she say she was in any way involved?

  Finally it hit, the devastation of five o’clock when legal offices everywhere closed for the day, followed ten minutes later by another bout of hope, for a lawyer like that, he’d work his clients’ hours. He’d hang his shingle out all night. Then the whole cycle started again until bedtime when, dejected, humiliated, I crawled between the sheets and had a little cry without waking Joe, who is long accustomed to these unexplained fits of sorrow and remorse.

  The weekend came and went. Monday, the agony resumed. I was on page 376 of the novel when the proverbial moment of least expectation arrived, just as I was getting up from my desk to start dinner. Telemarketer Hour. The nasal secretary apologized for taking so long to call back. Sonia had given permission for me to call her.

  It was a local number, which seemed too good to be true, but the woman who answered—she couldn’t have been Sonia. Only a lifetime passionately committed to smoking could produce such timbre. “Who’s this?” she asked.

  “Tell her it’s Jane calling.”

  “Jane?”

  “Zwierzchowski,” I said.

  “Who?”

  1984

  A mosaic of wet petals was pasted across the windshield. I wondered how Timo had driven over, for only now, while we were waiting out front in the van, did he put the wipers on. Swish, swish. They crushed and scraped the petals aside. He turned around to address us—Pete in the back corner, bristly, giving off a campfire fug, me hunkered in the middle seat, in misery. “Hey! We’re in the vvvvan! Remember? From the play?”

  Dieter, up front in the passenger seat: “What’s taking them so long?”

  Pete: “Honk.”

  But the front door opened just then and Sonia hurried down the steps, arms floating at her sides as though about to take to the air and fly. She threw her small weight back, slid the van door open, hopped inside. “Pascal’s not coming,” she joyfully announced.

  “Fuck,” said Pete. The other two asked why.

  “He’s sick. He’s throwing up.” She got in beside me, tucking her pack at her feet.

  “When did that start?”

  “Just now.”

  Hours earlier Pascal and Sonia’s laughter had woken me, then their thousand little kisses had kept me awake. Maybe they made love again, I don’t know—I stormed off to the bathroom so I wouldn’t have to listen a second time. Beside me now, she squeezed my hand to thank me. Everything about her glowed—her hair, washed that morning and lustrous, her face, flushing now that she was with the one person who knew, who knew more than she realized. She kept her eyes demurely lowered.

  Pascal was not throwing up. I’d seen him myself through my bedroom window, leaving the garage with the garden gnome in his arms. It seemed a cumbersome souvenir to be taking all the way back to Saskatchewan on the bus.

  “Is everybody ready then?” Timo asked, starting the van.

  I pressed the side of my face to the cold window and shut my eyes. Sonia was still holding my hand.

  Dieter: “Wait. Here he comes.”

  Sonia let go of me and swung around. When she saw Pascal approaching the van, loaded down with his duffle bag, she tore her seat belt off. Pascal put his bag in the back and opened the side door at the same time as Sonia did. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” he said, eyes darting at all of us.

  “Are you coming or not?” Pete asked.

  “I’m coming.”

  “No,” Sonia said, pushing him back. “You’re sick. Remember?”

  Pascal whooshed the door closed on its rollers and took the seat behind us, next to Pete. Immediately Sonia curled forward, as though over a stomach ache. At first I just sat there, in shock too, while Timo drove away. When we reached the Blenheim house a few minutes later, I forced myself to look back. Pascal blinked, one eye closing a fraction of a second before the other, which somehow suggested to me guilt, though nothing else on his face indicated he felt bad about what he’d done to Sonia. Carla and Isis were carrying a cardboard box and several plastic bags, which they loaded into the back too, along with their packs. Suddenly Pascal leaned forward and, taunt or benediction, placed a hand flat on the top of Sonia’s head. She jerked out from under his touch.

  Carla, then Isis, climbed aboard. “How y’all doing this morning?” Isis asked as an American. As a Canadian she commented that we looked tense. “This ain’t good, y’all. It looks suspicious. How ’bout we take a sec to shake them jitters out?”

  She, Carla, Timo, and Pascal hokey-pokeyed as best they could in the limited space of the van, Timo behind the wheel with barely enough room even to drive, let alone jiggle himself. He looked in the grip of some kind of seizure. The rest of us stayed planted in our seats for all our different reasons. Then Carla slid in beside Sonia, leaving Isis to Pascal.

  “Where’s my mask?” he asked. “Can I see it?”

  Isis reached behind the seat, took a handful of fabric from one of the bags, and tossed it to him, saying, “How clever you are, Pyetia!” She kissed Pascal’s cheek like she’d done yesterday when he’d played Trofimov so hopelessly. On the other side of Pascal, Pete yawned loudly and turned toward the window.

  Carla noticed first and asked if Sonia was okay. Sonia wasn’t. Weeping silently against my shoulder, she kept on weeping through Carla’s back rub. “Shh,” Carla told her. “It’s going to be fine. Everything will work out.” The van filled with soothing murmurs, a susurrus of platitudes that had no effect until Carla began to sing “We Shall Overcome.” Then Sonia dried her tears and settled into a catatonia that lasted the rest of the trip. All the things she should have been feeling—betrayed, humiliated, used—I took on on her behalf, shooting fresh daggers back at Pascal every few minutes. He goofed around with Isis, elbowing her, pulling at her braids until she swatted him off, benignly tolerant, like he was a puppy. He was acting like one. He couldn’t keep still, was practically bouncing on the seat. And while I felt a barely suppressed urge to scream things at him that weren’t nonviolent, eventually I started to sense that it was an act, that these antics were to distract him from what he really felt. He pulled the burn mask over his head. “Take it off,” Pete said. Pascal wouldn’t. He sat there between Pete and Isis, ghoulish, barely human, twiddling his thumbs. When Pete accused him of being stupid, he finally removed it.

  Rain flowed across the van windows in jerky diagonal tracks. Outside, the trees looked stripped, their petals already browning in the gutters. The fan failed in its one task, and Timo and Dieter, unrolling their windows to clear the fogged windshield, let in the sweet smell of decay. Carla had stopped singing and for a long time no one spoke. We were too nervous for small talk. Isis said she wished I’d brought a story to read aloud.

  We were the story now.

  Over the Oak Street Bridge. Soo
n the sodden fields in the Agricultural Land Reserve opened on either side of the highway, the sky white like in an unfinished drawing. Up front, Dieter played with the radio dial and found an oldies station. Timo asked, “Do you think they’re marching yet?” and Dieter snorted. “Who cares?” When we entered the tunnel under the river, the music morphed to an angry static and Pascal belched loudly in the dark. “Who did that?” he asked and someone sighed.

  Back in the matte light of day, we reviewed the border plan. Going over the various scenarios helped dispel some of the tension. Then “The Times They Are A-Changin’” whined out of the radio and we all cheered. The drug of idealism kicked in. Ahead, a sign: Peace Arch Border Crossing.

  “Peace Arch,” muttered Carla. “That’s so ironic.”

  About five minutes from the border, Pascal put the mask back on. Once again, Pete called for him to take it off.

  “Take it off, Pyetia,” Isis cooed.

  “Off!” Pete roared, cueing everyone to start shouting.

  Dieter: “I knew involving him was a bad idea. He’s too immature. Look at how he’s acting. No one listens to me.”

  Then I understood. Pascal didn’t want to be recognized. They would know about him at the border, and if they asked for ID, there would be trouble. We might be arrested even before we got across. I tried to think if harbouring a runaway was an actual crime and turned to Sonia in a panic, but she was no help, sitting there in her stupor. Finally Pascal gave in and, plucking the mask off, slid low in the seat. And it came to me, what we’d done: we’d been irresponsible.

  The van pulled to the side of the highway. “What are you doing?” Dieter asked Timo, whose full pink face contorted. He struggled but not a word came out. “Just say it!” Dieter snapped.