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Chameleon (Days)

Page 3

by Dean Serravalle


  “Just someone I helped a while back.”

  “Before you knew me?”

  “Before I knew you were alive.”

  Not the greatest choice of words. That’s for sure. She seems disgusted with me. In her eyes, I can read judgment for leaving her alone to think. Her mannerisms beg for a magic trick, like the queen expecting distraction from a hired fool. What am I paying you for, then, her body language seems to speak. We’re married, not divorced like you are with your other wife. Why have you escaped back into that world? Are you planning on returning to her when I am gone? Do you still love her? Do you love the son you had with her over the three children you’ve had with me?

  Thankfully, an image from my research strikes her.

  “Does this man kill the other for his house? Is that the only reason?”

  “Yeah. It’s a border town, just like ours. Except it is war ravaged and invaded on a daily basis. One of my characters passes through it on his way to Bsharri.”

  “Bsharri?”

  “Yes, it’s the town where my main character resides, in secret. A village in the clouds.”

  “A village in the clouds, nice.”

  She’s finally on board.

  “Let me guess, it’s in Lebanon too.”

  She just jumped off again.

  “Good guess.”

  I could have easily defended the choice by raising my voice, but I have learned through two marriages that picking battles at two in the morning very rarely leads to makeup sex, especially when one of you believes herself to be dying already.

  “Can I help?”

  She surprises me with the softness of her voice in this offer. Deep down, I know she knows I need to write, despite what little income it procures for our children’s futures. It seems everything we do now is directed at this target. Where they will go to school in twenty years. Who they will marry in twenty years. How can we help them for twenty years.

  “Am I wasting my time?” I ask her.

  “Not if you are in love with it,” she says with some vinegar on the tip of her tongue.

  She doesn’t ask what the story or chapter is about. She ­doesn’t ask about the characters or where they are headed in twenty years. She doesn’t even skirt around the papers mapped on the hardwood floor on her way out. She steps on them, as if on purpose, and disturbs the perfect circle from which the previous chapter emerged.

  When I hear her footsteps on the stairs, I run our conversation through my mind to see if I missed the hint where I inadvertently admit I don’t love her the same. It seems every argument we have ever had revolves around this insecurity. If anything, I have never loved her more. Life happens in between fantasy, unfortunately, and it takes its own time to absorb into your bones.

  “She doesn’t understand, it’s not that simple,” the Man from my Preface interrupts. He takes the seat vacated by my wife in my office. He must have descended from somewhere and cleaned up the mess because the papers are aligned again in a circle, the two of us in the middle. I don’t see him with my real eyes although I know which cushion on the couch he occupies.

  “I like where you have taken The Messenger, by the way. A man who wants to die is fearlessly poetic, isn’t he?”

  I agree. It’s nice to bounce plot lines and character details off of one of the characters in the novel. I suppose this is a privilege.

  “Of course it is. How many authors write alone? Secluded? James Joyce liked writing in his furnace room because he lost himself in the hum of the motor. Even he needed some sound to keep him company. Hemingway preferred the life sounds of Cuba, God knows why.”

  I sit crosslegged in the circle of my research trying to find the opening detail for the next chapter. I gave The Messenger a car to travel by but I’m not sure I want him to arrive in Bsharri so quickly.

  “Strand him somewhere. Make him find the protagonist on foot, like a lost man on an ironic pilgrimage,” The Man from my walk-in closet suggests. He makes a good point. It shouldn’t be easy, although The Messenger is travelling in a murder victim’s car, gifted to him by the murderer himself, cleaned by the murderer’s sons, who so happened to bury the victim in their backyard, formerly the victim’s own backyard.

  “You can’t let her into the story just yet,” The Man hints. He means my wife, although I feel I have already let her in. She knows the story isn’t mine, that I stole it.

  “She doesn’t know who you stole it from. How you took advantage of that situation.”

  How does he know, The Man from my closet? Obviously he has access to my thoughts. It isn’t fair he uses this access against me. I remind him he is my creation.

  “All things created are not your own, just borrowed for your convenience, son,” he preaches in a condescending manner.

  “I have to get back to the story.”

  “You have to get back to your wife first.”

  I hit save and nearly kick an opening from the paper circle. Life happens, and as Hemingway used to say, I was out of juice anyway.

  DAY 5

  I find myself head first in a toilet the next hour. For the past six months my stomach has been gurgling like overcooked oil in a frying pan. I never paid it much attention. Mind over matter, or in this case, mind over digestion issues. After cuddling my wife, I couldn’t find the peaceful comfort to fall into a deep sleep. My stomach was regurgitating its contents so I descended the stairs searching for a glass of water. Halfway down, I rushed to the basement bathroom to vomit. And I haven’t stopped since, losing count after ten. Never thought I held so much in. The story of my life, I suppose. I can’t even leave the bathroom for that glass of water. There is a fire alarming an evacuation within and everything is poised to escape through the front door.

  The Man keeps me company in this lonely state and I appreciate his silence. He sits on the other side of the toilet without disgust. I realize his expectations for me and my story, and his distaste for digression, but I think he feels sorry for me. He doesn’t even joke. In my mind’s eye, I can see him staring at me with a friendly face. The way my mother would do before she placed a wet, cool cloth over my forehead. How I missed that nurturing detail after growing up and similar ones like it.

  When my stomach finally stalls the exodus of its poison, nausea sets in like a weather pressure movement pressing down. I want it to stop. I beg for it to stop. Nothing like nausea to bring your face to the coldness of a ceramic tile in the basement bathroom. With my cheek on the tile I see those long-legged spiders caught in their own web, possibly dead in their own web. I worry about centipedes exacting their revenge on me. I’ve killed so many down here. The fast, wormy way they move is reason enough to run for a wad of toilet paper or Kleenex.

  The Man disappears after the nausea attacks. I don’t see him anywhere, not even in my imagination. I wonder if I vomited out my concern for him and flushed it down the toilet.

  My wife finds me barely alive, or at least feeling that way, when the baby gets up for her first feeding in the morning.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Keep the baby away,” I mumble.

  “She’s upstairs. Do you want me to call in sick for you?”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  I try to get up and crawl on hands and knees towards her feet, like that diseased person in the New Testament who solely wants to touch the robe of the Saviour.

  “I’m calling you in,” she leaves. And I collapse again. All I can think about is not giving it to the kids. I don’t want anyone to go through this feeling that won’t go away, despite my best efforts to will it away.

  And then I think of The Messenger, stranded in my story. I apologize for leaving his journey suspended.

  “I didn’t see it coming.”

  My wife is back, though, with my glass of water.

  “We never see it coming, honey,” she says. “St
ay down here. I’ll keep the kids upstairs.”

  She means our spare bed in the basement for guests that never stay over.

  The Man is upset with me.

  “Don’t think you can talk to them too. I’m the only one you can talk to.”

  He defends his privilege.

  “I’m sorry. I promised to write every day.”

  “He can wait. He’s already crossed the border. I’m not sure you want him to nearly die on his way to Bsharri anyway.”

  “How do you know, I was thinking . . .”

  And then I pass out again.

  DAY 5 (CONTINUED)

  I can’t tell if it is day or night in the basement, although I suspect it is raining outside. I can hear it on occasion when a breeze slaps a sheet of drops against the smaller basement windows.

  I can also hear footsteps upstairs. My wife’s lengthy ones. All of my children. My one-year-old daughter’s hurried steps. My five-year-old son’s heavy steps. My four-year-old’s bull-legged steps, his ankle braces dragging along the floor, up the stairs. He is four but just learning to walk. With Down syndrome, his muscle tone is so low. It is miraculous he can stand up, but he does to our constant praise, which he loves and imitates.

  My eldest son is not upstairs. It is mid-week and he is living with his mother four hours away. Every two weeks, I pick him up in London, the mid-point between us. I get him for the weekend and then drive him the same route back on Sunday. It isn’t nearly enough time, although it has been our reality for the past ten years.

  The Man has disappeared for good, I believe, and I worry I betrayed him by trying to speak directly to my other character, The Messenger. Perhaps I am too polite with my characters. Or maybe, I don’t want to hurt their feelings. And the more I think about it, they will surely take advantage of me if I am too nice to them. They are my creations and as such, they need to do my bidding. Not the other way around. What is wrong with speaking to more than one character? The Man doesn’t own me. He isn’t some Darth Vader type with the secret identity of my biological father hiding behind a ventilated mask. So why do I care either way? I can kill him off if I so choose. It’s my story, not his, so he needs to know his place in it.

  When you’re sick and lying in bed staring at a drop ceiling tile with the light bulb burned out (my wife has been nagging me to change it for as long as I can remember, and go figure, now it is symbolic), you can’t help to re-evaluate how you live. Your body turns off but your mind is ready to sign the treaty, make amends, work together again with the flesh to live better, healthier, happier.

  I feel guilty my wife has to take care of me when she needs to be taken care of herself. Her footsteps are determined upstairs. I can virtually translate them. Her convicted, ‘you kids need to get dressed’ footsteps. Her gliding, collecting misshapen toys, footsteps. Her quiet, stoic, at the stove top rooted footsteps. Those heavy, I’ll carry the both of you upstairs, footsteps.

  The nausea hasn’t gone away yet and the only act I am permitted to perform is thinking. I think about the next chapter some more. Where do I take The Messenger before I introduce him to Kashif in Bsharri? Do I stop him in another village? Do I have him pull over on the side of the road to admire the view of higher altitudes in the distance, only to have him run over an Improvised Explosive Device (IED)? That seems a little harsh, but him surviving it only adds to the irony of his life. How he wants to die and how he can’t, for the life of him, finally achieve it.

  Once again, I worry for his hurt feelings. He might think I am playing with him. I had similar thoughts after feeling the lump in my wife’s breast, like I was being played with again by the possibility of another tragedy rolling in.

  Or am I misinterpreting tragedy for life, the nature of it. Its remarkable ability to surprise you with a fateful punch from a hidden fist.

  I try to force myself up and find myself dizzy again. In front of one of those illusion paintings with no legs or the swivel of a neck to escape. I have to wait it out so my story will have to wait it out with me. The Man is in the darkened room. He agrees. He is not angry, as I suspected. Just patient, like all of my characters, on page or not.

  I realize that his loneliness is part of his disguise. Although he created this island for himself, it bores him on most days. He seeks adventures, like all of us. He seeks to know people, to hear about their exploits. But he is far more sophisticated than a Facebook stalker and more complicated. Seeing other people in foreign lands taking selfie shots or recording themselves for the general audience doesn’t appeal to him. He desires something homemade with homemade intentions. He wants it from scratch, with love in it.

  I communicate my dilemma with him.

  “I’ve reconsidered,” he answers.

  “Reconsidered what?”

  “His unfortunate luck. It defines part of who he is, not all of it, but part of who he is. He managed to cross the border rather easily and the murderer spares him. It’s time to balance his luck a little. Remind him what he is up against.”

  “Which is?”

  “His desire to die. Those who want to die, never do. And those who fear it are the first to go.”

  “So you think I should send him off of a cliff.”

  “No, he’s done that already. He needs to explode, before he pieces himself together again.”

  “Is that believable to a reader?” I ask The Man.

  “Make it believable . . . sip some water first.”

  I do as I am told and the water feels good in my mouth.

  DAY 6

  I call in sick another day. Still nauseous. Still unable to read, even my own writing. I find my old glasses. I’ve been squinting through life after I tried contacts two years ago. I think it led to a bout of Bell’s Palsy and nearly three months of facial rehabilitation. The stimulation machine vibrating the soft nerves of my face and some pretty painful acupuncture fixed the frozen nerves, except for when I smile. My left eye closes entirely, like it is swollen from a punch.

  Three of my kids are at school and my baby daughter is happy I am home. She locates me downstairs with a mischievous smile. She slaps my face to wake me up. She finds it funny that someone is sleeping on her awake time.

  The sight of her face gets me up on my feet but my legs are weaker and I have lost weight. This I can feel.

  My mother is upstairs when I come up.

  “What is wrong with you? I didn’t know. You guys don’t call.”

  My mother has her own health issues, not to mention nursing my father, who found himself in a wheelchair after a closed brain injury and some doctor malpractice. I try my best not to need her. She often reminds me that you can never eliminate this connection.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  My daughter reaches for me to pick her up and everyone in the room, including my wife, stare at me wondering what decision I am about to make. They know how particular I am about these things, about protecting my daughter from my germs.

  “Not now, sweetie,” I answer her. She runs off to draw attention to her independence before playing with a dolphin toy.

  “You need to take more days off, take care of yourself,” my mother preaches.

  “He does. He takes care of himself.”

  My wife feels the need to defend me, although she knows I’ve been spending late nights writing. My mother suspects I am lying. She too, more so than my wife, sees no value in sacrificing your health for the possibility of publication. Especially with no monetary reward at the end of the sacrifice. My parents are immigrants. They worked hard so that we could have “clean” jobs. Creating additional work or stress for yourself is counterproductive to their American Dream, except they often forget we live in Canada.

  I return to the basement and collapse onto the bed again. The pillows have cooled and they renew my faith in feeling better. I fall in and out of sleep, in between Tylenol dreams
, and then I wake up to an idea before I realize—I need to be better.

  DAY 6 (CONTINUED)

  With one foot out of the basement of my sickness, I find a crayon downstairs and locate The Messenger on a journal page waiting to descend a road into a pine shaded valley. I discover him abandoned in the story, alone, although content in his temporary suspension. The Man in my story jokes in my mind’s ear that I did The Messenger a favour by not writing him out. He says I gave him some time to think before his next adventure. Instead, I am surprised by The Messenger’s quiet perseverance. I see him as someone willing to wait to be written correctly and in this context I use him as an example to The Man.

  “Why can’t you be more like him?”

  “I stood by you when you were sick, didn’t I?”

  I can’t complain so I decide to write something out of the ordinary pattern of The Messenger’s life. I decide to make him happy for a moment.

  I realize The Messenger would despise any notion of happiness. However, his body’s reaction to the old cedars and the crisp air entering the car from a rolled down window allow him to breathe with a smile on his face.

  He is not accustomed to feeling good about himself. He expected much more frustration crossing the border of Syria into North Lebanon. He anticipated injury, outright rejection and maybe an abusive deportment. He encountered neither. If anything, the accomplishment of his plan justified an acceptance of success or something going right for once in his life.

  His descent into the valley is steep and he is distracted by the aesthetic beauty of his surroundings, which resemble those hiking days from his youthful years in Canada. He had visited Lebanon many times before, in a working capacity, but never did his former life’s career provide him the opportunity of wandering or exploring his surroundings without purpose. In the present, he considers himself beyond a reliance on time. This newfound patience inspires the wisdom of appreciating his immediate surroundings with an artist’s sensitivity. The rocky cliffs interrupted by blankets of wooden green offer him serenity. He thinks about his message and the mission wrapped within it. It would come as a surprise to this mysterious man named Kashif. And the surprise would inspire retaliation, which, to his personal benefit, would mean his salvation.

 

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