117
Under a Montreal overpass, bike temporarily beside him not beneath him, he sits with the damned in shrunken light. He had watched the rain gather, felt the air dampen and thicken, watched it squeeze the city’s light. When the undersides of leaves began flashing regularly, he switched from flight to a fuel-up.
In the concrete sprawl outside a major city he no longer looks like an excommunicated touring cyclist. Finally he’s just another guy in dirty, ill-fitting clothes, someone poor or crazy, not able or permitted to drive, another skeletal, grumbling reeker who sets chilled beer onto the counter of a corner store. Transformed from fugitive to trash, sweating in the one Canadian province free of paternalistic liquor laws, he has beer, bread, fresh cheese, yogurt and more cheese at every corner store.
Hunkering down in the fug under an overpass, sitting on the sloped, grimy concrete, he uncorks a strong beer and launches the cork across both lanes of traffic. The first sweet gulp goes down with the cork’s burst still ringing the muzzy air. The pictorial label of the large brown bottle depicts a canoe flying through a burning sky. He guzzles the high-alcohol beer, trying to hop into that canoe.
Before a supper lecture from Betty, he had thought a wine bottle of strong, unfiltered beer all the explanation necessary for its name (Maudite, the damned) and its image of a flying canoe. Drink this and you too can sky paddle.
“No, no, no,” French-immersion Betty had explained, “this is a crucial French-Canadian myth. All the big themes: isolation in a merciless wilderness; humans fighting an inhuman climate for home or profit; hairy men alone in the woods. These guys — all guys — are chopping down wood in the middle of Nowhere, Quebec. This is pre-electricity, pre-Confederation. No light other than the fires of their camps as far as the eye can see, nor woman either. Saw wood in the winter; tend your farm in the summer.”
“Tend your wife in the summer.”
“And make the annual new mouth to feed. Hence the isolated wood cutting.”
“Ugh, get wood, cut wood.” He shuddered.
“They cut their trees and make their cash. Christmas approaches, but they won’t be getting out. Too much snow. Too much money to be made. Tyrannical boss. Greed and need keep them working in the woods while their wives and kids huddle somewhere under the same sky trying to make the apples last. Whammo, here comes the devil to take bets on a cold night. Hey, fellas, who wants to toss down the axe and head in for a night of soft flesh?”
“Or who wants some titty with their shag for a change?”
“Right. Everybody’s game, and that’s the clincher. Voila, one wave of the devil’s hand and here’s a flying canoe. Sometimes the canoe’s on fire.”
“Soundtrack by Hendrix.”
“To keep their souls, they all have to come back, together, before sunrise — one big canoe. They all want sex as individuals, but have to work as a team to get it. The very reason the sky canoe is tempting is that they don’t want to be with each other. But give in to the need to leave and who’s going to return? So they all go down. Individual versus communal want.”
Now on his wet concrete perch Andrew eats a lonely meal out of grubby hands. Drinking his beer, he watches car after car pass empty save for the driver, sees the individual match and the collective SUV fire.
In his debates with Betty, when they each temporarily became a bloodhound for hypocrisy, she didn’t have to say much to disparage his (inherited) car compared to the Eurorail pass she had bought for herself. Yet he was the cycling advocate.
The Argument of Slavery
“Nearly one-third of North American car trips are for five kilometres or less. Nearly one-third of North Americans are obese. Any connections here?” Andrew ranted. “Slaves used to be skinny, used to be housed; now chemistry has let them go fat and free-range. Get in the car to get cigarettes or chips or pop. Gasoline and nicotine. Gasoline and trans fats. Where’s my Prozac? Chemical warfare. Class warfare. You can even get jerseys: Riding is revolutionary.” “You have a car,” Betty pointed out. “Which I don’t use to get to work or to do most errands and rarely drive alone.” “Aren’t you going to use it to move out east? Won’t you be a driver out there?” “No, I won’t. I’ll leave it in the garage,” he said, surprising each of them. “I’m trying to be part of the solution here.” “By doing the grunt work for your supervisor? By being a slave?”
Now, under a Montreal overpass, he tips his orange canoe and drinks, already keen to make various appointments in Kingston. He’ll give concessions then confessions.
118
In a breakup, you might get officially pushed or pulled away from your partner’s family and friends, but friendship and affection don’t honour custody agreements. Not only does the ride finally have Andrew thinking affectionately of his mother, he’s also been thinking repeatedly of Betty’s parents. As he returns to his own house, he thinks of the week when part of the furniture of her childhood home moved into his.
Aside from having to clean (“So, that’s dusting?”), Andrew had been keen to finally meet Elaine just before Easter. Elaine was Betty’s mom, not his, so he had chores but no worries. Betty, however, dashed around all week, acquiring a suddenly crucial lemon zester, two kinds of German chocolate, Polish vodka and South African white wine. Foolishly, they cooked a joint along with their late afternoon snack, so by six p.m. Andrew suggested she just bring the mirror down to the kitchen rather than going up to check on herself every eleven minutes. They were recuperating in each other’s arms when Elaine’s knock finally found the door.
Andrew genuinely regretted that his eyes weren’t the only thing noticing Betty’s mother. Throughout the evening he’d forgive himself a little, reminding the court that her ecru shirt could not possibly have been intended to cover the visible straps of her black bra. Here in the entranceway, shaking a ringed hand, trading cheek kisses as brief as whispers, he could feel all too well how long she was in the leg and spotted a familiar volume in the chest. Damn it.
“So you’re the young Bluebeard she doesn’t stop talking about.” Elaine handed over a tall bottle of chilled wine.
“It’s hardly a castle.”
“Or a prison, Mom.”
“Well, Andrew, let’s with the tour. Betty, are you getting us drinks? Hey, bevelled baseboards. Somebody once cared. Were you ever here for these French doors? Don’t worry, inside they just take up space. Oh, thanks, Bet. Cheers. Mm, chilled Gertz, you peach. Was that once a pantry back there? Oh, that inherited lamp, just tear off the old shade and recover the frame with rice paper. Then rice paper blinds here and there. At Toronto’s Hoa Viet, they must rip them right out of the prison workers’ hands they’re so cheap.”
“Mother.”
“What, Andrew’s a big boy. You ever have to sell, Andrew, you’d pay dearly for this little gab. The work, though. However you acquire a house, you sell it on your knees. Scrub. Scrub. Scrub. Oh, a Turkish rug would be perfect here. Just go to Turkey. Shall we go up? New railing. Home Despot really can’t be beat on the retrofits. Nice orange there. Skylights would be perfect here. Have you thought of a reno loan? Remember, parents buy houses, not kids. Enlarge this bathroom into that bedroom, pave the thing in the tile and let junior have a smaller room. All right, Betty, but as we walk back down, I want Andrew to picture a deck off the kitchen. Trust me; I’ve seen it a hundred times. Renovation is the best way to mourn.”
“Mom, that is not appropriate.”
“Well, Betty, it just happens to be true.” Turning to Andrew with a complex smile, she added, “I say death makes us live.”
As they sat for dinner — “Stuffed eggplant. I’m probably impressed.” — Elaine slipped off to the washroom and Betty dropped her forehead down onto her empty plate.
“I’m so sorry,” Betty murmured. “I think it’s men. I’m so used to her with other women. I had no idea. Be flattered if you can.”
“She’s a scream, an absolute scream.”
Betty rolled her forehead to one side of the
plate to look up at him. “I get fucked after this, right?”
Always.
Wine and conversation flowed. No glass sat empty for long. “Andrew, do you mind my asking if your father got funnier as he got sicker?”
“Well, it was such a steady — I was really, really young — no, yeah, absolutely. He did. I never realized, but sure.”
Flush with wine, Andrew started in on the leg bag story, was just about to get to Stan’s astronaut jokes when the ringing phone gave way to a man loudly barking into their answering machine.
“Where’s Betty Craig? I got these walls —”
Betty rushed to the phone.
“Hello. Hello. This is Betty. What? No, that’s no longer true . . . No, the nineteenth was once a date. Then the date became the twenty-sixth . . . I left a message. Of course messages count. No, that’s impossible. Impossible in a variety of ways . . . I agree. I will have to take them. On the twenty-sixth, no — impossible. Do you think the Better Business Bureau would agree, It’s now or the dump? Sounds like we’re threatening each other . . . Your warehouse is not my concern . . . Not at that price. Do it for two and I’ll leave the porch light on . . . Cash in hand is what it is. Fine — 149 Collingwood.”
Betty returned to the dining room, looking at each of them in turn. “Andrew, I’m going to hold you to that mi casa speech. Mom, Dad’s walls will be here within the hour.”
Elaine, Jim and Betty’s house of hope, their house of resentment and their house of unwelcome cards had been intended, Elaine always claimed, as a “modular” set of cubes. This “unitization” included built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookcases for the walls of Jim’s study, walls he quickly found demanded he sacrifice a view or fresh air for excessive storage space. Redoing the house at fifty, he now wanted windows and agreed to let Betty sell off the wall units.
“I couldn’t have heard you correctly,” Elaine told Betty.
“The storage walls. You know he’s demolishing. I’ve been selling off the pieces for very good money. These walls are sending me to Europe. Would you rather they go to the dump?”
Andrew checked for frost on Elaine’s collar. “Maybe I’ll step out and think about that deck,” he proposed.
“Stay there, Andrew. I’d never want to be accused of driving a man out of his own home.”
“Mom, don’t.”
“Wouldn’t want you to feel caged within your own walls, Andrew.”
“It’s just wood, Mom, saleable wood.”
“Selling crack would also get you to Europe.”
“You started a career with his fear of commitment. Why can’t I do the same with his mid-life crisis?”
Andrew could see that one sink into Elaine’s face. A long moment inflated before she turned away from Betty to face him.
“Andrew, thank you for the lovely meal. The favour is gladly returned.”
Round Two — “Are you sure you’re all right to drive?” — was dislodged by the noisy arrival of the mover.
“Your fella there’s going to have to give me a hand.”
Andrew implored Elaine to stay, offering coffee or a walk while changing his shoes en route to the door. By the time he was backing up the porch steps with the first terrifyingly heavy wall-case, both hands lost entirely to the weight, Elaine had started her car. Andrew nodded his farewell just like Stan used to, dipping one eyebrow as if stamping the air.
119
Rolling back into Ontario, he’s ready to shed his stolen clothes. Tonight the sky’s mixing bowl spoons out heat — damp, inescapable heat. Free from kaffiyeh and cape for nearly two days, he has also clocked nearly sixty kilometres tonight with the sweatshirt tied superfluously to the pannier rack. Finally, he is warm on his own pushed heat again.
As the countdown to Gananoque and Brockville lessens, he becomes certain he’ll never need the sweatshirt again. A fungal pretzel, the filthy sweatshirt has drawn moisture in both directions, absorbing his sweat from one dark side and sucking humidity from the air with the other.
Just untie the knot. Let it slip into the night. Don’t even look back. Given the rubber flak and the flung sacks of fast-food litter, what’s one rag? Cotton, even. If he rolled back into the woods and left it beneath a tree, wouldn’t some creature use it for a nest? No, this reek is pure human.
Neither justice nor paranoia prevents him from dropping the sweatshirt in a garbage bin at the next road stop. Utility, if not sentiment, endears him to the damp rag. If nothing else, it is a good pillow, an auxiliary bandage. And, should he have occasion to, it’d be something to show Betty, a tangible relic for his story. Look at it, try it on. It was tight to my chest. See where I cut the sleeves off? He’ll have to wash it. Maybe he’ll just keep it for a rag, not sacrament. He’ll soon have plenty of painting to do.
Maybe she’ll understand. Let her pull the sweatshirt over her head. Take her out riding and show her the hatred you have to inhale on the side of the road, how you see what a bully does with opportunity. Betty, I wore this for five days straight to get back to you.
Andrew, she would say, you never had to leave me.
120
My father fell. My father has died. My father is dead.
He had to first think the words and then consent to say them into the plastic rectangle of a telephone, then practise saying them, then press numbers and say them aloud. All with Stan’s bloody body beside him in the hallway. He still doesn’t know if he kneeled down to check Stan’s vital signs or fell down. This sequence of memory is a slide show, not a movie. Rushing through the door. All the blood on the carpet. Then Andrew was at Stan’s head, trying rudimentary first aid when Stan was so clearly beyond final aid. Neither his nose, nor mouth, nor his trache tube released air because of the pulpy dent in his head. Bald men can’t hide a head wound. The finality of that wound was accepted just as the skin of Andrew’s legs, already damp with sweat from riding, began to feel the wetness of Stan’s blood seeping through his tights. He did not seem to stand up but was nonetheless running for the bathroom, puking and crying and puking.
When Betty finally heard Andrew describe this, she immediately understood why he then got blood all over the telephone. “You didn’t wash your hands in the washroom after you were sick because, subconsciously, you knew that would have put you in front of the mirror.”
Alone with Stan’s body, Andrew had simply found himself on the phone, rational enough to try rehearsing his phrases first — My father fell. My father has died. My father is dead. — but not rational enough to understand that the blood on the telephone receiver had come off his hands. Maybe the paramedics would need to see this.
Pat would want to know, deserve to know, no matter the late hour. He could have called Larry, thought of calling Mark. No, no more phone calls, not yet. “Don’t move the body,” the emergency dispatcher had told him, unnecessarily.
He wouldn’t move Stan’s body, but he couldn’t keep his still. What, should he have walked up the stairs? Had a shower while his father lay dead? Should he have watched TV while he waited for the ambulance? He had stepped back out the door, wanting fresh air. His bike still lay on the step where he had dropped it. He picked it up. He moved away from the doorway and Stan’s body beyond it. He didn’t lock the door. One leg climbed onto the bike. His cleats bit into the pedals. The crank arms still went around. He biked up and down the street, just like he’d done as a seven-year-old.
By the time the police arrived, he was rational enough to recognize they weren’t using their sirens. When he rode up to the house and dismounted, the cruiser’s window showed him he was still wearing his helmet. He took it off as he ushered two police officers inside. One tried to sit him down and ask him whom he could call, who might come over, to whom could he go?
In the morning, the phone started ringing. The funeral process felt like socially imposed denial. The errands, the paperwork and the shopping of death would keep him distracted. Pat had tried to catch him with one of these supposedly necessary questions before d
riving to see him.
“Did he ever talk to you about funeral arrangements or discuss what he wanted done with his body?”
No. Stan and Andrew had talked about oral sex, poor voter turnout in Canada, programmable thermostats, a bowel movement of Stan’s that made him feel like he’d been splitting wood for an hour, mortgage paydowns versus RRSP contributions, seventeenth-century English poetry, short-suiting yourself on the deal in euchre, Churchill, engine braking, Tolkien and trench war, knee socks versus thigh-highs, trigonometry, the siege of Leningrad, curry, snow tires, chop saws and mitre boxes, Trudeau, Faulkner versus Hemingway and John versus Paul, customer service, desirable and undesirable assignments in the Second World War, how to shave up, Macbeth and Hamlet as opposites, loss and fear, Enigma machines, connaître and savoir, Switzerland, The Waste Land, nuclear winters, global warming, The Black Stallion, the importance of a woman’s jaw, charcoal versus propane, Russian oligarchies, marine locks, pancreatic cancer, Louis Riel, affirmative action, asparagus and urine, CSIS, brown dress shoes, Godfather I versus II, plaster walls, Sir Wilfred Thesiger, gun control, the Arctic, fuel injection, atheism, Genghis Khan, porridge, Khrushchev’s shoe, Newfoundland, pulling the goalie, a deaf Beethoven weeping at the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, Interpol, Catherine Zeta-Jones, cherry tomatoes, early Jaguars, Lucky Jim, Modigliani not getting the tits right, bullfighting, Turgenev, seamless eavestroughing, poached eggs, Stan Rogers, how to use white bread when plumbing, Castro, seppuku, border collies, Boswell and Johnson, Israel, wool, the Euro, caribou, AIDS, Ella Fitzgerald in the day and Billie Holiday at night, the Halifax explosion, The Lord of the Flies, Bosnia, frozen yogurt, the marathon, Gretzky, the Pope, overpopulation, field goals versus running it in, Hitchcock, whether Kristin Scott Thomas really eroticizes intelligence, Paris, the full Windsor knot, provincial school exams, the burning of the White House, tipping, Salman Rushdie, fog, how to use your cheeks when smoking a cigar, hot-air balloons, Cue for Treason, zebra mussels, Pelé and speeding. But they’d never once talked about how Andrew should deal with Stan’s death.
The Push & the Pull Page 28
