by Camilla Gibb
At night, Emma retreats to the library to do research about the emu’s habitat and diet. In one series of photographs, an emu bounces freely across the desert terrain of the Australian outback. In another, it’s presented on a plate as carpaccio-red, raw, and sliced over Boston lettuce and drizzled with honey mustard dressing. Mmm, mmm.
She’s copying down the recipe for Nina when she notices the cover of the latest issue of Scientific American. A major breakthrough in quantum mechanics. Some physicists have apparently found that elusive quark named Truth. She secretly hopes that Andrew has totally missed the boat on this one. Curious, she picks up the magazine and flips through the article in search of Andrew’s name. She doesn’t find it, only the revelation that the discovery of Truth wasn’t an end in itself. A team of scientists had located the quark only to discover they had ten thousand new problems to solve. Truth was apparently full of secrets and lies.
Blue’s been talking about truth lately, talking about Oliver, about finding him, speaking his mind, putting an end to all this. He and Amy use the word “closure”—new to their vocabulary thanks to the nice lady he continues to see. Emma suspects that if they found Oliver, the truth and reality of him, they would find that, like Truth, he concealed thousands of other secrets. Tip of the iceberg, can of worms, that idea but stronger. More like the killing fields of Cambodia where the discovery of one skull assures you there are ten thousand more.
While Emma busies herself with the resurrection of the holy flightless one, Amy and Blue plan their journey. There are all the practical considerations to do with money and the shop, but things are slowing down naturally with the colder weather—people forgetting their skin as they cover up for winter. He’ll direct his few booked appointments to Mitch and take a commission for doing so. He’ll close for an extended Christmas holiday. He’ll think of this as a long-term investment.
Although no one’s been asked for their opinion, everyone seems to think it’s a good idea. Nina thinks it will be cathartic, even Elaine seems to buy it, whatever “it” really is. She’s given Blue an envelope for his journey. A note wrapped around a photograph of a wild-haired man in a poncho. “Your dad,” she’s penned. “In the good old days.” Emma, seems to be the only one who has any doubts.
Imagine. Just imagine. Imagine you could shrink at will. Imagine that the world was just one big jigsaw puzzle and you heard that the last piece was lying on a beach on the West Coast. Imagine that you hitchhiked out west with a knife down your pant leg and called that the Quest for Closure. Your girlfriend, unknowing and well intentioned, her head on your shoulder, sleeps through Manitoba and wakes up in the Prairies, pasty-mouthed and confused. She’s had a dream that the two of you have just adopted a black Lab from the Humane Society, but in one of those horrible moments where you wish you could just turn the clock back by two minutes, you’ve driven the Jimmy over the dog’s front paws. You comfort her in the only way how—kisses followed by sick jokes. The two of you are dying to get out and have a cigarette.
Blue and Amy do hitchhike. Not the wisest move, but Blue seems to want to make the journey in the roughest way he can. A tortuous emotional journey requires an equally dangerous mode of transport. They ride all the way to Vancouver in the back of a pickup truck, wrapped in sleeping bags, rubbing cold noses, Blue’s hands buried underneath Amy’s sweater. She is full of love for him on this journey. She loves his courage. She loves his innocence. She loves him because he is the first guy she’s been with who doesn’t treat her like she’s a weak little girl.
She remembers when she first met him and they went camping. He was determined to catch her a fish, and when he had no luck with the rod he even stood in the stream and tried to spear one for her. She waded into the river and put her tongue in his ear and convinced him to give up. They swam upstream instead, where they spawned like horny salmon.
“In the winter, I’ll dig a hole in the ice and catch you a whole school of fish,” he told her. He had wanted to ice-fish ever since he’d first watched Red Fisher—the guru of the Canadian fishing world who littered his Sunday fishing show with passages from the Bible. They had never been believers, but Blue begged Elaine to write a cheque for Red Fisher’s book of religiously inspired poetry about fishing. It came in a brown paper wrapper and was inscribed to Blue. He kept the poetry under his pillow and he carried the slim volume with him to the Sportsman’s Show at the CNE where they had heard Red Fisher would be a special guest.
Blue’s whole body trembled when he saw Red Fisher. “Go up and say hi,” Emma had encouraged him. Blue practically kneeled at the towering giant’s feet as he mooned, “You’re my hero.”
“That’s just fine, son,” Red Fisher bellowed largely, patting him on the head without looking down and walking on by.
Blue just stood there in bewildered silence, willing himself not to cry. Red Fisher had just come ashore and landed like a beached and bloated whale. Blue was nothing more than an inconsequential minnow—too small to even consider frying for breakfast. And all that talk about brotherly love.
So much has happened since. Red Fisher was the first of Blue’s heroes to betray him.
Somebody’s Father
The salt of the Pacific tastes like sweat to him. The taste of fear. Reminds him of standing in front of his father, not knowing how to anticipate his reaction as he held out offerings, like a pilgrim visiting the shrine of some unpredictable God. Some days, Oliver would be grateful. Take the sweater Blue offered him and say he was glad it was wool because acrylic didn’t breathe. On other occasions he would bark, “Do you think I’m a beggar?” and throw back the used item of clothing in disgust.
Blue had kept trying, though; trying to make him happy, proud. Trying to find himself a father: to locate a paternal pulse in the unpredictable mass of Oliver in front of him. The man who once built him a bicycle. Gripping the handlebars of a familiar yet dangerous beast. He’ll never let go: he’s still holding on for his life.
Blue and Amy are staying with Amy’s ex-stepsister-in-law in Vancouver. It’s a long and complicated story that no one can keep straight, but it seems Jolie was once married to Amy’s stepbrother, Michael. Michael apparently went and moved to Israel and enlisted in the army and blew his own head off with an Uzi somehow. But that was after he and Jolie had already split up. Nobody was ever sure if it was an accident.
Jolie knows what Blue is going through; she knows that nothing hurts like a heart. What Blue seeks is reunion, and letting go. He seeks an end. He knows that ends are supposed to involve forgiveness, at least in Hollywood, but the fantasies of meeting Oliver are often full of revenge. He’d like to be able to say, “See, Dad, I’m not a faggot. And I’m not a loser, or a wimp. I’m tough, tougher than you could ever be. I’ve got a girlfriend and I’m running my own business. Successfully. Can you see me? This is me. Not you. Not a byproduct of you.” He’d like to be able to say that and believe it. He’d like to see himself reincarnated as nobody’s son, but try as he might to disassociate himself, the toxic residue of past life continues to contaminate, and that’s why he’s here.
He carries a picture of Oliver around to all the homeless shelters, asking anyone if they know the man. There’s a lot of shaking of unwashed heads. He does the rounds every other day because there’s a near-daily turnover of staff and he wants to be sure to ask as many people as possible. Amy doesn’t accompany him on these visits. Sometimes, if he gets chatting with the staff, he stays for lunch. Eats a bowl of dusty soup and breaks bread with a bunch of foul-smelling men and asks them, “Are you anybody’s father?”
“Not just anybody’s,” one old man says, shaking his head. “I’m Isabel’s father.”
“And where’s Isabel?” Blue asks him.
“She’s in jail for murder.”
“She killed someone?”
“Yeah, me,” he nods. He seems to be serious.
He hears story after story. Meets hundreds and hundreds of ghosts. Everybody has a story, a past life, it seem
s. Everyone’s dying to tell someone. But none of the men he meets ever ask him what his story is. Only Amy asks him questions. Asks him every night how the day went, where he went, what he saw, how he felt. He doesn’t know whether he is speaking truth or lies: the stories are all getting tangled, lives are crossing like bad wires.
Blue calls Emma from Jolie’s apartment. He tells her he’s been visiting the homeless shelters, carrying around Oliver’s picture. Emma knows the photo, it’s more than fifteen years old, but she supposes it doesn’t really matter because she really doubts Blue is going to be able to find him.
“Em, why don’t you come out here for Christmas?” Blue asks her. “It’s really beautiful, and you’ve never even been west of Niagara Falls. Imagine, if I find Dad by then, it’ll be like a family reunion.”
“Blue, I, uh … kind of already have plans for Christmas,” she stammers. “I’m going to spend it with Nina.” Elaine wouldn’t be around, she was planning on going to Cuba with some new boyfriend. Even if this weren’t true, Emma’s not sure if she could stand the heartbreak of witnessing Blue’s fantasy come to an end.
“Nina?” Blue asks.
“Blue”—she hesitates and swallows—“we’re kinda seeing each other.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like it sounds.”
He falls silent.
“Blue?” she prompts.
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he says plainly.
“Well, I mean, so what do you think?”
“About what exactly?”
“Well, about me being in love with a woman?”
“Dunno. What do you want me to say, Emma?”
“Just something, I mean, anything.”
“It’s a little unnatural. Kinda creepy,” he says, his voice shuddering.
“It’s not so unnatural.”
“Sure it is. I mean, how would you feel if I called you up and told you I was a fag?”
“I wouldn’t mind at all.”
“Well, that’s because you’re a lesbian!”
They’re getting nowhere.
“I’ll pass you to Amy now, she wants to say hi. Just be careful, Em, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, although she’s not sure what, in particular, she is supposed to be careful about.
“Gay bashers,” explains Amy. “He worries about you. Now he’ll worry about you even more.”
“But I’m kind of worried about him,” Emma replies. “Amy? Does he really think he’s going to find our father?”
“Seems to need to at the moment,” she replies.
But what’s he thinking? A family reunion? Does he think he’s going to find Oliver, and that if he does, he’ll say something like, “Glad you could make it home for Christmas, son. Call up your sister and we’ll roast a bird in the oven and celebrate.” A dead pigeon on the hot tin roof of a car maybe. That he’ll say, “Thought you might like this, Lou. Picked up a little Christmas present in the L.A. airport for you last year,” and hand him a tightly wrapped shiny package containing a portable CD player.
“Ah, thanks, Dad. How’dya know this is exactly what I wanted?”
“I know my boy,” Dad would blush. “Now give your old man a hug.”
Whatever he’s looking for, he’s not going to find it, Emma thinks. Least of all a hug from Oliver.
Blue goes for a drink that night with Amy and Jolie at the bar around the corner. Amy and Jolie talk about the guy Jolie’s dating. “I just don’t get it,” Jolie sighs, exasperated. “Some kind of different internal clock or something,” she says, speaking as if men are a different species. She turns to Blue to ask him his opinion. Blue is sullen and withdrawn that night, and he doesn’t appear to hear her. After his ninth bottle of beer he says he’s going for a walk.
“Let me come with you,” Amy says, but he’s not in the mood for a romantic stroll. He wants to pound his boots against pavement and thunder his way around the block. He wants to punch holes in the thick air and mutter profanities to himself.
When he leaves the bar, he is ready to kill. His fucking sister. He’s been protecting her all her life—all the sordid truths he has had to absorb in order to spare her pain. She has no idea. No fucking idea at all. Someone had to take care of the two of them. Someone had to become tough.
His fucking sister. He had stood between her and his angry drunken father—the buffer between Emma and the man who squatted on the floor and threatened to kill Andrew. The man who frequented prostitutes and molested children when he couldn’t pay. When his father said that Emma was an arrogant cunt, he defended her and took blows to the head. She was trying to create a new life for herself, and even though Andrew was a wimp and the rest of his family was a bunch of stuck-up snobs, Blue wanted her to believe that she could.
His fucking sister. After all that, she goes and turns out to be a dyke. He wonders why the hell she wants to fuck it up and make it so complicated. He’s worried she’s going to get her head bashed in by a bunch of homo haters. He’s tried to make life smoother for her, but she insists on complicating it. Nobody wants to be gay. He knows that.
“Don’t be such a pansy,” his father used to say. “I’ll show you what you’ll get if you’re a fairy,” he said, making a crude gesture with a broom handle and biting his lower lip. Blue’s sure he only ever cried once after that fateful day at McDonald’s and that was when they asked him in hospital if he’d been having anal intercourse. They thought he was a fucking faggot and he wanted to kill them. He hasn’t let anybody make him cry since—hasn’t let anybody touch him either. It’s not surprising he grew from small and scared into large and scary. His leather, his tattoos. He’s built an armour of ink around his body and soul and fallen in love with a woman a third of his size. No one would dare call him a faggot now.
When he crashes into bed late that night he reeks of beer and rain. “What’s eating you?” Amy mumbles, stroking his forehead.
He’s silent. Doesn’t want to talk. Eating me? he thinks. Something like arsenic. What if I told you the truth, Amy? That sometimes I am so angry I could kill. That I love you, but loving you doesn’t change the fact that my dad’s somewhere out here wandering around with my intestines in one of his hands. Dragging my guts through the streets. That Emma seems to think she can get off scot-free. Walk away, call herself Oksana, or Mrs. Franklin, or a lesbian, and leave it all behind. Leave me to search. Leave me to take care of it all.
“Don’t worry, Amy,” he says, pulling her into his shoulder.
He lies wide awake much of that night with his tiny bird of a girlfriend breathing erratically in his arm. He sees her eyelids flutter like a butterfly, and wonders if she dreams of animals. Through the open window, he picks up a familial scent. It’s lingering there in the damp streets of Vancouver, Oliver’s out there somewhere, he can smell it in the air.
In the morning he follows the scent straight to the Salvation Army.
“No luck yet, eh?” the same staff member he encountered the day before says to him at the door.
“Nah,” says Blue, shaking his head.
“Well, I’m keeping an eye out for you. In the buildup to Christmas you get lots of new faces. Worms crawl out of the woodwork. It’s a hard time. Even the ones whose memories are totally shot seem to get upset by the season. He could turn up yet.”
“Yeah, I’ve just got this feeling …”
“Instinct’s a good thing,” the man nods. “Sometimes it’s all you have to go on. You stayin’ for lunch? It’s a special day. We’ve got beauty contestants serving today.”
“You’ve got what?”
“Delegates from the Miss Pacific Rim contest are here today to rack up some good karma points.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“That’s sort of perverted.”
“It’s a hoot. We get a kick out of it and they feel holier than thou.”
They walk into the dining hall where Mi
ss Fiji and Miss Vancouver are standing behind the metal food wagon in full goodwill ambassador regalia. They are wearing their Miss So-and-so banners over their matching sweaters and full C-cups, and ladling stew into green plastic bowls. Miss Siberia is on doughnut duty, and Miss Japan stands at the end, pouring coffee.
A group of dazed and oblivious men stand in line and hold out their trays, taking little notice of the temporary change in staff. Blue and the staff worker take a place at the end of the line. Blue reaches into the box for a plain doughnut.
“I’ll get that for you,” says Miss Siberia, pushing his hand away.
“I can do it myself,” Blue says, annoyed.
“We’re here to help you today,” she coos.
“No,” he shakes his head. “You don’t get it. I don’t need your help. I’m only here because my buddy invited me.” His explanation falls on deaf ears, though. “You don’t seriously think I’m like these guys,” he says, nodding over his shoulder.
“Hey, take it easy,” the staff guy behind him says, putting a hand on his arm.
“But she thinks I’m one of these homeless guys,” Blue says.
“So what if she does? What does it matter?”
“I just don’t want to be mistaken for something I’m not,” he says. Being mistaken brings him one step closer to being there. He wants to find Oliver; he doesn’t want to walk in his shoes.
She Flies
Nina comes to Toronto most weekends now—long weekends, which last from Thursday night to Monday morning—and continues to work alongside Emma. They’re growing, both the birds—Nina’s from the ground up, Emma’s down the length of the lab table. At night, Nina listens to her, teases her as she waxes on passionately about the distal region of the emu’s pelvis.
“Sounds sexy,” says Nina, slipping her long legs into the bath. They sit there with their knees to their chests, Nina’s back against the drain, her head against the hot tap.
