Original Prin

by Randy Boyagoda

  He didn’t know what, but he knew it was more than merely a child’s game. He knew this was true from when he was very small, because of the final time his father had taken him to pick up his mother from where she worked. Prin sat beside daddy on the front seat of the big blue Caprice. Daddy kept his arm around him the whole time they drove, using the other to steer and smoke and point out all the birds and cars in the world.

  Then one day, while they were waiting in the parking lot, a baldy man came to their window. He tapped and Daddy opened it. Cold wind came in first. It must have been winter. The baldy man put his hands on the open frame of the car door. He had a funny yellow bracelet on his wrist. He put his head into their car, and he screamed at them for a long time. He screamed and screamed and screamed. No words. It was like he was standing on frying pans. Then the baldy man leaned out, let go of their car, turned, and went and sat on the concrete steps leading to the front doors of the hospital.

  Daddy had his arm around Prin the whole time but Prin only noticed now that it was shaking. Then he said, “Wait here, son. I will come back,” and he got out of the car and went over to the man sitting on the steps. He leaned in on him and screamed. He screamed for much longer than the man had screamed at them, then turned and came back to the car. The man never looked up. Two nurses wearing white hats meant for French fries came out and took him away. Then his mother stopped working at the funny hospital and got a job at the regular hospital.

  What did it mean if the candles didn’t flicker? What if they went out? And never mind what it meant. What would happen if they didn’t flicker? Was that why that baldy man was yelling? Had he already figured it all out? Was he trying to tell them? But the baldy man was wrong! Whenever Prin peeked during Mass, there they were, the candles. And this was, for Prin the boy, sufficient proof of the existence of God.

  Prin the man knew he was supposed to know better but still, when he wasn’t preventing his children from executing hip hop moves between the pews at Mass, he still dared those candles. Only now, in this dark zoo of his life, there weren’t even any candles to dare.

  Then everyone got a text.

  It was from the zoo itself, informing patrons in the lemur house that due to unsafe conditions, they were to remain where they were until further notice. Emergency personnel had been contacted and were en route. Backup generators would be activated shortly.

  3

  Thirty minutes later, the children began screaming as a monster came out of the dark. The back-up generator cleared its throat and grumbled to life. The place warmed up fast, and the moms took everyone’s wet gear and hung it all to dry on the corners of information boards flashing error messages. The Asian girls conferred and left, smiling and nodding their way past Shane and Prin’s attempts to stop them.

  So now it was just the two families. Within an hour the iPad was dead; an hour later the phones were, too. Soon all the games and songs and snacks and ghost stories were finished.

  They toasted the lemurs as a family—as two families. Prin’s girls scooted and crouched along the glass, waving and beckoning, popping up and down, their faces bright and urgent.

  Who could get a lemur to look first?

  Who would pick the New Year’s lemur this time?

  Only they stayed away, the lemurs. They turned in on themselves and peeked at the people over coils of tail and the furry backs of family members. The twins were banging on the glass with their action figures and calling out threats that were shouted down by Shane’s demand that his older daughter join in the fun and then by his own cajoling and banging on the glass with his camouflage-coated e-cigarette. Never mind his curdling soul, Prin’s heart belled when he saw how his daughters placed their hands on the boys’ wrists to make them drop the Iron Mans.

  The three older girls calmed the boys and showed them how much better it was to be soft, quiet, gentle. Little Pippa reached up to do the same to Shane, who stepped back like a giant backing away from a hummingbird made of spun sugar.

  Now all six children were bright and urgent and pantomiming along the enclosure. Soon furry heads began to pop up and linger. Curious, the lemurs began to advance. One called out and the sound was like a comedian impersonating a monkey impersonating a loon. Dart and stop, dart and stop and turn, dart and stop and go on, they came closer and closer, their big eyes panning up at their hard-pinging heavens.

  “Daddy, look, I think that little one on the side is looking at me!” said one of the boys.

  “You picked the New Year lemur!” said Philomena.

  The children cheered. Shane cursed the battery in his camera, which had died unexpectedly. Prin could find nothing sour or false in his daughters’ cheering, in these other people taking what should have been theirs. He felt rebuked and rebuked.

  “I think you should talk to Shane,” Molly said.

  Still more rebuked.

  “About what?” asked Prin.

  “Alanna had breast cancer. It’s in remission now,” Molly said.

  “Oh. Is that what you were talking about, before the power went out?” asked Prin.

  “Yes, and he might have some advice about how to tell the kids,” Molly said.

  “Molly, I have a plan for how to tell the kids, remember?” said Prin.

  “I know, dear, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out. Anyway, she said Shane had a really good idea for how to do it,” Molly said.

  “So, you told her about me, about the diagnosis,” Prin said.

  “We were just talking about how we’re both always just so tired, and I must have mentioned it,” Molly said.

  “So yes, you told her,” Prin said.

  Molly made a pained face.

  “Molly,” he said.

  “The children know something’s wrong. You need to tell them. Your surgery’s only a few weeks away. And they can tell I’m worried about something, about you, but I’ve said nothing because I know you’re trying to be careful and thoughtful with the news. Only the plan’s not working out the way you wanted. So do something else. Talk to Shane. Or play with the kids while you can. Do something else. Don’t just stand here looking at your dead phone.”

  He waited for her to start crying, but this time she didn’t; she didn’t offer to split a Hail Mary and she didn’t wait around for a hug, either.

  They had met in a church basement in Milwaukee in the early 2000s. At the time, Molly was an undergraduate at Marquette. She lived at home and was volunteering with a Montessori program. Prin was a graduate student from Toronto who spent one morning a week at a soup kitchen helping old men read Sports Illustrated. Secretly, he liked the way they talked about food and women. He could never. Volunteering gave a little moral ballast to the hours and hours he spent reading and talking about reading and writing about talking and reading.

  The two of them met a few days after Prin had broken up with his graduate-school girlfriend, who was five years older than he was, didn’t want children, and didn’t really eat food. She was sort of Jewish, and from New York City And everyone always thought Prin was a good little Catholic boy from Canada. This would show them!

  The entire time Prin had dated his graduate-school girlfriend he willed himself to believe that the life ahead of them, when they got married, or did whatever you did instead of getting married, was what he wanted. At friends’ parties in hot apartments full of ferns and cats named Sontag and Mephistopheles, she liked to say that they were the ironic Abelard and Heloise: he was a celibate who wasn’t a priest, and she was a none who was no nun, the homonym being the joke that led into a discussion of her dissertation research into sexual wordplay in popular women’s magazines.

  She was small and bony and post-everything, including monogamy, as Prin was shown in the worst possible way one afternoon.

  Whereas Molly was beautiful and round and baked every day and was everything Catholic and Catholic ev
erything, and they married inside a year and he got a job back in Toronto and after four children and a three-bedroom house and two lines of credit and one positive diagnosis, their life together had been good and was good. Like skating on a river. You hear what might be cracks but what’s the good of thinking about them? It’s good, even great, so long as you keep going.

  Had been, was, and would be good, great: it was only prostate cancer! And early stage, no less! This was not cancer cancer. He certainly knew the difference. We all do. A school friend’s father, an uncle, a few of Molly’s aunts, assorted neighbours and godparents: all suddenly wasting and suddenly bald but grinning for pictures, and then wasted and bony and glancing off-camera, and then, now, gone.

  Whereas this was Prin’s cancer: he had trouble going to the bathroom for a while and then he wet his pants without noticing at a neighbour’s backyard party. And now he had to tell them. And he had had a really good plan, a plan that was prayed-about and well-researched—he wasn’t screaming and screaming and screaming like he could have been.

  What more could God ask of him?

  “Excuse me, Shane, can I get your advice about something?” Prin asked.

  4

  Shane and Alanna told their kids she had breast cancer by driving all the way to downtown Toronto, paying twenty bucks for parking, and then sitting down to a sushi dinner. Shane had looked at the same website that Prin had.

  “They were crying anyway because of that green Wahhabi stuff you put on it, so that’s how we told them,” said Shane.

  “Wasabi,” said Prin.

  “Killer for sure! It totally works! Good luck to you in your situation, buddy, you got some great girls. They’re so smart! I don’t know half the words they’re saying! And I’m cutting my goatee and stuff back to rock a moustache for you next Mo’vember, hundred percent. You’re going to beat this. You should friend me so I can show you my ’stache,” said Shane.

  “Thanks, Shane,” Prin said.

  They fist-bumped.

  Shane cleared his throat and cracked his neck left, then right.

  “Look, can I give you some advice?” Shane asked.

  “Sure,” Prin said.

  “Life is highway, right? But at some point, we all hit a deer. And what do you hope?” Shane asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Prin said.

  “You hope you hit a fawn, or at least a doe. Not too much damage, and if you can field-dress by the side of the road, you got a freezer full of meat for your trouble. That’s the best situation. What’s the worst?” Shane asked.

  “Hitting a moose?” Prin asked.

  Shane stepped back like someone had spattered paint in his face. He blinked violently.

  “Whoa. I never thought of that. I guess the moose is like, well, death, right?” Shane asked.

  Both men went quiet.

  “I need to go back and think about that one, buddy. But anyway, I don’t think you’re in a hitting-a-moose situation with prostate cancer. It’s more like you’ve hit a buck. That’s where I was going. Fawn and doe, okay, but a buck? Let’s say you hit a buck. Wait, are you still following me?” Shane asked.

  “Yes,” Prin said.

  “So hitting a buck’s not death, but it’s a lot of damage, right? And you can sort of give up or you can still get something out of the situation. And here’s the thing. It’s buckmeat. You ever eat buckmeat?” Shane asked.

  “No,” Prin said.

  “It’s tough. Like life right now, living with cancer,” Shane said.

  “Indeed,” Prin said.

  “So that’s where your girls get the fancy words from!” Shane said.

  “Daddy, come see! It’s raining on the lemurs!” one of the girls said.

  Moments later, a branch came down on the see-through ceiling of the lemur house. Panels gave way and fell with a great crash of broken glass and ice. The branch itself dangled and dripped down through the opening. The lemurs stared up at the rain now pouring straight down into their world.

  Now where was that coming from?

  And what was this new black-and-green climb-me that had poked through and now was beckoning?

  One of them was creative and curious enough to climb up and find out. It grabbed onto a long, thick rope leading from one play structure to the next and swung towards the sudden opening in the heavens, ignoring all the humans below banging on the viewing glass and screaming that it wasn’t worth it.

  Glancing back from the hard weather, the lemur paused, then scooted up and slipped out. Prin ran to the door to block the children from going outside to save the lemur and from there saw a furry black ball fall back inside. Everyone screamed, then cheered: the lemur had caught hold of a rope and saved its own life!

  Happy New Year!

  He was going to beat cancer!

  He would tell them right now.

  He made his way over to Molly and the girls, but before he could reach them there was more banging on the glass and pleading, because the lemur wasn’t curious or creative. It was just a trapped animal. It climbed up again, scrambling along the black, wet bark of the fallen branch. A new rope slipped down beside it.

  It grabbed the new rope. Only this time, it wasn’t a rope.

  The lemur falls a second time.

  The lemur shrieked and shrieked before letting go of the broken wire and falling a very long way, pinwheeling a little. It landed near the glass and ice. The sound was loud, sudden, over. They couldn’t actually see the body because all the other lemurs had gathered around to grieve, or maybe they were just curious. Prin walked over to his own grieving and freaked-out family. Shane gave him two thumbs up and nodded.

  They’d never come to the lemur house again.

  And what a small price that was to pay, Prin thought. He suddenly felt a tremor of love, of being loved and cared for well past his knowing, all of them loved and cared for well beyond themselves. They weren’t curious and creative and trapped and fallen animals. They each of them counted for far more than lemurs and sparrows. There could be no better time or place to tell them. He had trusted only in himself! How trapped and false and grasping he had been! God had a greater plan than any one of Prin’s, and now, at last, in His Mercy—

  “Girls! Listen up! Your dad’s got cancer of the privates. But don’t worry, he’s totally going to kill this buck! I believe in him! You have to believe in him! We all have to believe in him!”

  “Thanks, Shane,” said Prin.

  “Indeed. Hey who’s using the fancy words now, right?”

  They fist-bumped, a second time.

  5

  Early February: from his hospital window Prin could see red and green bars of holdover holiday light travelling up and down the CN Tower, and also the paper-white panes of office glass and the yellow beacons that tipped the endless construction cranes cranked up around the city. What a prosperous, busy, starry heavens was Toronto just then!

  Molly and the girls had left a few hours before, as had his parents. His surgery was scheduled for 6 am. He should have gone to bed, or read something spiritual, or written a letter to the children. But what could he possibly say? He loved them, and this is what he loved about them, about each of them, and this is what he would miss. The thought of it was terrifying. To name such things, just in case. Terrifying.

  He should have written to Molly. He owed her an apology. He owed her many apologies. The one that, well, weighed most heavily upon him just then concerned a very small, very hard little nailhead of a secret. For months Prin had wondered if Molly was just a little to blame for his getting prostate cancer. From the beginning of their marriage, she had fallen asleep every night with one of her big, beautiful legs draped across his small, bony midriff. How was that even comfortable for her? He slipped it off when he could tell she was sleeping, except during Lent, when he treated the loving burden, while not ex
actly as heavy as a cross upon the shoulder, as an opportunity for solidarity with Christ.

  Prin once told a priest as much during confession, as part of a larger reflection on the paradox of prideful humility. The priest listened to Prin go on and on and then said he was pretty sure that if Molly had to listen to this kind of thing from her husband, she was the one who was suffering in solidarity with Christ.

  But over the years couldn’t something have been bent, crushed, moved around, metastasized? Late night searching suggested there were no studies of this, because what kind of husband would ever volunteer such information to a doctor?

  He wouldn’t apologize to Molly because then she’d know what he’d been thinking and every night, for the rest of their lives, there’d be that moment when she turned to him and then stopped herself and he would wonder if she were lying beside him in rage or sadness, neither of which she deserved. None of a certain sub-basement portion of Prin’s thoughts did Molly deserve, probably going all the way back to that church basement in Milwaukee, when he saw her and knew she was perfect, the perfect opposite of his ex-girlfriend, and he decided, very quickly, that that could be enough.

  Prin gathered up the folds of his hospital sheets in his hands and crushed them, wishing these awful thoughts were in these sheets, crushed and suffocating. Just like his prostate had likely been crushed and suffocated for years on end in his marital bed.

  NO! Molly was neither perfect, nor anyone else’s perfect opposite, nor the cause of his cancer. Molly was good and true and beautiful in her way and had quietly and efficiently and obligingly given him such a life, such a good life. His salary as a professor at a small downtown university was considerable, were he a priest or nun from the 1950s. For a twenty-first-century city family, it was just enough; Molly extended the lives of running shoes and rubber bands across four small girls. She did this without complaint. Sometimes Prin worried not just that he treated Molly and their marriage as a lifelong morality play, but that she knew it, too. He never considered that she did the same, only that she deserved better than him and his thoughts.