Theories of Relativity

by Barbara Haworth-Attard

  Actually, she’s letting all the heat out, but I keep that observation to myself. I step inside to a hospital odour of bleach, pills, and illness. Miriam leads me down a dimly lit, tiled corridor to a small office. She shuts the door, turns on a lamp, and sits behind a desk. She gestures to a chair across from her and I’m in every principal’s office I’ve ever been in. I automatically tense for a confrontation.

  “So you’re Ed’s grandson,” she begins.

  “Dylan Wallace.”

  Sharp eyes take in every detail of me, and I cringe, wishing I’d had a good wash before I came. And brushed my teeth.

  “You have the look of Ed about you,” she says.

  She gets up and leaves, returning a few minutes later with a steaming cup of chocolate that she places in front of me. “How long were you on the bus?”

  “Five and a half hours.” I sip the chocolate and feel its warmth slide down my throat.

  “I’m Miriam Collins. I was in school with your mother,” she says. “She was a couple years behind me. She left in grade ten.” She flushes as she puts two and two together and figures out that I’m the reason Mom left school. “It’s a small town. No secrets here. How is your mother?”

  “Fine,” I say. I toy with the idea of making up a great job for her, husband, family, but I’m too tired to work out all the details.

  “You haven’t seen your grandfather in a long time.”

  “Not for years,” I say.

  “You never got the letters he wrote to you?” she asks.

  “I got one, just the other day.” There were others? And how does this woman know about them?

  The question must have been on my face because she smiles. “Like I said, it’s a small town.” Then the nurse in her takes over. “Your granddad has lung cancer,” she continues briskly. “He’s in the final stages. We’re surprised he’s still with us, but maybe there is a reason for that.”

  “What?” I ask dully. My brain can’t process all this information.

  “You,” Miriam says. She stands. “Would you like to see him?”

  I jump to my feet, but not to go see him. I want to leave, but it’s real dark on the other side of the closed curtains and I have nowhere to spend the night. I follow Miriam down a second corridor and into a small room. It’s full of shadows, and I can’t see who is in the bed, though I hear a strange, uneven sighing, which I soon realize is breathing.

  “You can sit here.” Miriam takes my arm and steers me into a chair. She turns on a lamp on a night table that casts a small pool of light. “He’s heavily sedated and on morphine for pain, but he wakes now and then,” she says. “You don’t have anywhere to go for the night?”

  “No,” I whisper. It’s a place that discourages loud voices.

  “You can stay here, then. If you need me, press this button.” She points to a buzzer and cord attached to the bed with a large safety pin.

  She leaves, and I immediately want to push the button, bring her back, and have her lead me out of this twilight world of near-death.

  I listen to the breathing. It stops. Alarmed, I start from my chair, but with a gurgle, it begins again. After a long while, I get the nerve up to look at the man in the bed. Granddad.

  No way! There is no way this shrunken, skeletal form beneath the sheet is my grandfather. Granddad was huge. The nurse has taken me to the wrong room. Over the bed is a small card with a name printed on it. I lean forward and read “Edward Wallace.” I slump back in the chair and study him. Was he always this small? I know people shrink when they’re old, but hell, he’s barely a crease in the sheets! Maybe he was just big to a little kid. Maybe I needed him to be big. I still need him to be big. But he isn’t.

  Laying my head on the edge of the bed, I feel my tears wet the sheets. I must have fallen asleep, because I dream I feel the weight of a hand on my head, a large hand, and hear a voice whisper, “Dylan.”

  Chapter 19

  A hand on my shoulder wakes me. At first, I think it’s Granddad, and I raise my head quickly, but it’s Miriam with a tray balanced on one hand.

  “Merry Christmas,” she says.

  “Merry Christmas,” I reply.

  “You can use your grandfather’s washroom to freshen up, and I brought you some breakfast.” She sets the tray down on a table. “I’ll be back soon.”

  I go into the washroom and find soap and have a wash. A quick look in a drawer reveals a half-used tube of toothpaste. I spend a long time brushing my teeth. It’s been a while.

  Breakfast is scrambled eggs, toast, juice, and milk, but, disappointingly, no coffee. I wolf the food down, pile the empty plates together, and then I have nothing to do.

  A poinsettia sits on the windowsill. What idiot would send flowers to an unconscious man? I wander over, pick up the card tucked inside the leaves, and read, “From Myra and Jack.” Jack—that would be the man in the store. As I put the card back, I feel vaguely ashamed.

  Leaning over the Christmas plant, I pull the curtains open a crack and blink at the bright world outside. Snow powders each branch of a tree outside the window and glitters, diamond-brilliant. I leave the curtains open a slit and turn back to the room.

  In the light from the window, I look at Granddad. Really look at him. His hair is still thick, though white now rather than the steel grey I remember. It sticks up in places, and I reach out a hand to smooth it. He stirs and his lips part. I wait, but no words come. With my forefinger, I touch the thin hand lying on the cotton sheet and feel skin like paper, bones brittle beneath, and remember the weight of a hand on my head. Was that real? His mouth is caved in slightly, and I realize his false teeth are out. I used to see those teeth in a glass by his bedside at the farm. They fascinated and repelled me. An uncomfortable-looking tube runs into his nose. Except for the hair, I can’t find the grandfather I remember.

  Miriam comes in and changes a bag on the intravenous stand.

  “Are you sure this is Edward Wallace?” I ask.

  “Of course this is Ed,” she replies, surprised. “I’ve known Ed all my life.” She glances at me. “You haven’t seen him for a while, and you were just a little kid.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s it,” I say. “He probably wouldn’t recognize me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “We recognize the people we love no matter how much they change.” She busies herself writing on a chart but keeps darting tiny glances at me.

  “What?” I say finally.

  “I guess you don’t know this, but Phil is out at the farm,” she says. “He arrived last week out of the blue.”

  “Sort of like me,” I say, though my mind is in turmoil from her words.

  “Sort of like you.” She picks up the breakfast tray. “My shift is over in an hour. If you want a ride out to the farm, I can give you one.”

  I can’t say yes or no. Instead, I gesture toward the bed. “Can he hear anything?”

  She creases her forehead. “I’ve heard of people regaining consciousness and saying that they’ve been aware of everything that went on around them. It certainly doesn’t do any harm to talk to him. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  I sink into a chair. So my father is at the farm. Dad. I try out the word and don’t like it. I might joke about having three fathers, but I’ve never called anyone Dad.

  I pull the Einstein book from my backpack and wonder how Twitch is doing. He, Amber, and Jenna seem so far away, in a completely different world. I open the book, but that’s as far as I get. Miriam said I should talk to my grandfather, but I feel stupid chattering away to myself. My thoughts turn back to my father. Do I want to see him? He has never wanted to see me, so why would I want to see him? But I do.

  If you stuff them too full, do brains explode? Mine is definitely going to. My head aches dreadfully. I force my mind to the book. At the age of fifteen, Albert Einstein took an entrance exam to the Swiss Polytechnic, a university, attempting to bypass high school. He passed the technical portion but failed the arts exam. Sort
of overestimated yourself, didn’t you, Einstein.

  I leaf through the pages, and the words black hole catch my eye. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity describes the motions of bodies in strong gravitational fields at or near the speed of light. Though he did not believe in them himself, his work in physics is the basis for theory regarding black holes. It is believed that black holes form from the collapse of stars. The term “black hole” did not come into being until after Einstein’s death in 1955. Imagine an object resting in the vast emptiness of space, totally undetectable except for its gravitational pull. An object so massive, and so densely packed, that no matter, communication, or even light can escape its immense gravity.

  “Have you decided if you want to go to the farm?”

  Miriam is back. I haven’t decided, but I stand and pick up my backpack.

  “What a beautiful morning,” Miriam exclaims as we head out the door.

  She’s right. It is beautiful. It looks like every Christmas card I’ve ever seen, blue sky above, clean, unbroken white stretching before me. Jenna with her silver hair would fit in perfectly here. Snow princess. Miriam and I tramp through sculpted drifts to her car.

  She drives carefully over snow-rutted roads. I try hard, but I don’t remember the town we pass through or the road going to the farm.

  “Did you know my mother’s parents?” I ask.

  “The Murrays? Sure.”

  “Do they still live here?”

  Miriam nods. “A little ways out the other end of town. I don’t know them well. No one does. They keep to themselves. They’re”—she hesitates—“quite religious. Evangelical.”

  So Mom wasn’t lying about that.

  We drive in silence for a few minutes, Miriam concentrating on the icy road.

  “The family is delaying Christmas until I get home,” she says. “The kids will be going crazy wanting to open their presents, but I told them they had to wait.”

  More silence, then, “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “Two brothers,” I say shortly. I don’t want to talk about them. Don’t want to be reminded how much I miss them.

  We turn down a second road, and Miriam stops at a snow-filled lane, a house attached to the end of it. “I’m not going down there—I might get stuck. But that’s Ed’s place,” she says.

  I look down the lane, and it’s hard to breathe. I make no move to leave the car.

  “You haven’t seen your father for a long time, have you?”

  “No.” Never.

  This is silly. Miriam has to get home so her kids can rip into their presents. I climb out of the car.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asks.

  “Yeah. I’ll be fine.” I slam the car door shut. She does a careful U-turn and waves goodbye as she passes.

  As I watch the car disappear down the lane, I realize I forgot to say thanks.

  I heft my backpack onto my shoulders and trudge down the lane. Snow crunches beneath my running shoes, and Jack’s prediction is correct. It’s up to my knees. I glance behind me to see my footprints, the only indication of life in this white world. It’s so quiet, it gives me the creeps. Halfway up the lane, I stop. A maple tree used to stand here. I’m so sure that I sweep aside snow with my foot and hit something hard. A stump. It makes me almost cheerful to know I was right.

  The house looks smaller than I remember. I’m developing a theory that when you’re a kid, everything appears twice as big as it really is. I must warn Micha so he’s not devastated when he’s older.

  I climb ice-encrusted porch steps, slip, and grab a railing that wobbles alarmingly. A single rocking chair sits on the front porch, a forlorn sight.

  It’s so silent, I wonder if my father has left—the same way he came into town, without telling anyone. I’ll probably leave that way myself. Who is there to say goodbye to?

  I knock on the door and wait, but no one comes. Dropping my pack on the rocking chair, I go back down the icy steps. As I round the corner of the house, my feet falter, then stop altogether. Memories are everywhere. The yard, the barn, the vegetable garden, the bushes—brown and dead now, but forever green in my mind. This is where the fireflies flitted. And I know that really is my grandfather in the hospital bed. I’ve come too late. I catch my breath at the sudden pain in my chest. Heart-wrenching. That’s a word I read once in a book. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I do now.

  A faint impression of tire tracks leads to a shed. I follow them and look through a window to see a rusted Ford inside. My father must still be here. Passing through the back porch, I knock on the door, then turn the knob. It’s open.

  “Hello,” I call, as I walk into the kitchen.

  The house is refrigerator cold, and my breath puffs white in front of me. I hear a crash, cursing, and a man staggers into the kitchen. My father. A stained T-shirt covers a flat belly, trousers unzipped beneath. He’s shorter than me by nearly a head, but his arms are well muscled. His eyes are bloodshot and taking in the liquor and beer bottles on the counter, I wouldn’t expect them to be otherwise. He’s got Granddad’s thick hair, but black. Like mine.

  “Who the hell are you?” He glares at me and examines the bottles, shaking two. He flops into a chair with them in his hand.

  “Well, whoever the hell you are—leave,” he says. He drains a beer bottle.

  “I’m Dylan.”

  He shakes the second bottle.

  “Dylan Wallace,” I say.

  And, the wheels in his brain slowly start to turn. It’s an effort, but he puts two and two together and comes up with—me. He upends the second bottle and drains it also.

  “Hell. It’s freezing in here.” He stands and flaps his arms about his body. “The old man ran out of oil for the furnace. Bring in some wood.”

  Chapter 20

  No How are you, kid? Well, look at you. He’s been my father for all of three minutes and he’s already ordering me about. At that moment, I decide to think of him as Phil, just another guy.

  I get my pack from the rocking chair and find wood piled beneath the porch. Stacking logs and kindling in my arms, I go back into the house. I’m only doing this because I’m cold, too, not because he told me to. Cold in the city is bad, but out here it bites right through a person’s clothes. Wadding up a newspaper, I stick it and kindling into the wood stove in the living room. I remember that black stove, heat kicking out from it and Grandma warning me not to get too close. It feels weird that I’m here and they aren’t. It feels even weirder that Phil is. Flames leap up as the wood catches.

  Phil comes down the stairs and passes into the kitchen without saying a word to me. He’s pulled a navy blue cardigan over his T-shirt, one I remember as being Granddad’s. It bothers me seeing it on him. I follow him into the kitchen, intent on finding food.

  In the doorway, I stop abruptly. I was so shocked to see my father when I first walked in that I didn’t take in the room. The place is trashed. Bottles cover every surface. Dirty dishes are piled in the sink. A chair has been knocked over and left. A slow, burning anger begins in my stomach.

  The floor sticks to my socks. I cross to the sink, open the cupboard beneath, and pull out dishwashing liquid. I turn taps and discover the water is still hot and fill the sink to soak the dishes.

  “What are you, Little Susie Homemaker?” Phil asks.

  Finding a box, I pile beer bottles in it.

  “Anything in those?” He grabs one out of my hand and upends it. A small trickle hits the floor. I snatch it back, though I’m wary of those muscles in his arms.

  “You got any money?” he asks.

  “No,” I say.

  His eyes run up and down my frame. “Way you look, you got to be telling the truth.”

  He rummages in coat pockets and opens cupboard doors, pulling out cups and bowls. “I remember Ma used to squirrel money away in here for emergencies. And I guess we could call this an emergency. I’m out of beer,” he says. From over the refrigerator, he pulls out a jar. “H
ere we go. You’d think the old man would have got rid of this.” He unscrews the lid, pours out change onto the table, and counts. “Seven dollars,” he says disgustedly. “Guess I can get a bottle of something.” He scoops up the change and pulls on his coat.

  “Stores are closed,” I say.

  “What?”

  “The stores are closed. Liquor store, too.”

  He buttons up the jacket, unconvinced.

  “It’s Christmas Day,” I tell him.

  “Christmas Day? Shit!” He drops the coat onto the floor.

  I make a show of picking it up and hanging it on a hook in the back porch.

  “Quit doing that. You’re making me nervous,” he says.

  “Grandma kept this place clean,” I tell him.

  He drops into a chair and lights up a cigarette. He doesn’t offer me one. “Hey, you don’t think I know that? They were my parents. I lived with them a lot longer than you did. Cleanliness is next to godliness. That was their motto.”

  “Then why are you being such a jerk and wrecking the place?” I ask.

  He doesn’t like that. I can see it in the squaring of his shoulders. He flicks ash onto the floor. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see Granddad. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m between jobs. I came back to the old homestead. Longing for hearth and home. You know how it is.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I never had a home. Just a lot of different houses and apartments.” Let him make of that what he will.

  I open the refrigerator. It’s been cleaned out, but it still smells sour. I go into the porch and open the deep freeze. It, too, has been emptied.

  “Anything in there?” Phil calls from the kitchen.

  “No.” I stand in the porch. Something’s niggling at the back of my brain. Then I remember. When Grandma bought extra canned goods on sale, she’d put them on a shelf in the cupboard with the coats and boots. I look and, sure enough, there is a small stack of cans. I grab a chicken soup and go back into the kitchen.